Now 83 years old, Barney Adams will forever be known as the creator of the Tight Lies fairway wood. The odd-looking club with the upside-down design that he fashioned and then began selling in 1996 through television infomercials became an instant sensation and deserves to be ranked with Ping Eye2 irons, Callaway’s Big Bertha driver and the Titleist Pro V1 ball as among the most ground-breaking pieces of golf gear of the modern era. And the company that Adams built around it turned out to be a great business story, as well. Revenues soared from next-to-nothing to some $90 million in just two years. Then in 1998, Adams Golf went public in what at the time was the largest IPO in golf history.
The fact that this happened when Barney was in his mid-50s makes his Horatio Alger story even more unlikely.
Born in Syracuse, New York, and raised in a small town some 20 miles away, Adams caddied at a local country club during the summers as a youngster. He also baled hay and shoveled manure at a dairy farm. After graduating from high school, he labored for a time at a local black sand foundry, so dank and dirty that it could have been created by Dickens. Or Dante. “More than anything else, that experience motivated me to study hard when I went off to Clarkson University,” he recalled. “I never wanted to work in a place like that again.”
After earning a B.S. in business, Adams took a job as an engineer with Corning Glass in 1962. Later on, he moved to California to toil as a salesman for a small Silicon Valley manufacturing company that specialized in the semi-conductor industry. Then came the third act of his business life: golf. It started when Adams relocated to Abilene, Texas, in 1983 to fulfill what had been a decades-long dream to work in golf by joining an equipment company headed by short-game guru Dave Pelz. After that business failed, Adams headed to Dallas, fitting golfers for clubs on occasion at Hank Haney’s golf ranch. An inveterate tinkerer who had long been fascinated by the technological side of the game, Adams began sketching ideas for a new fairway wood on a yellow legal pad, eventually coming up with an idea for one that featured a very low center-of-gravity – and that would be easy to hit out of even the most difficult lies.
Thus, Tight Lies was born.
Adams led his company for four years after the IPO, retiring as CEO in 2002 as Chip Brewer, now the top executive at Callaway Golf, took over. But Barnyard, as many of his good friends called him, remained active in the business until TaylorMade purchased Adams Golf in 2012 for $70 million. Within a couple of years, the new owners closed down the Texas operation and moved Barney’s old company to Carlsbad, California, by which point its name and the acclaimed equipment it had been producing began fading into obscurity.
But that did not end the Barney Adams story, and a decade later, the man remains involved and engaged. He concedes to having slowed some but still plays golf regularly. He continues to be involved with an equipment start-up (Breakthrough Golf Technology) and keeps encouraging golfers to Tee It Forward (and play from the proper markers).
The father of three – and grandfather of eight – Adams also finds himself being honored on occasion. In 2010, the PGA of America gave him its Ernie Sabayrac Award for lifetime achievement. And this month, Adams was inducted into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame for his many contributions to the game.
In the latest installment of the 19th Hole, Adams took time before traveling to the Lone Star State for that ceremony to talk about his decades in the game, his life pre- and post-Adams Golf, his new business venture, what golf clubs he has in his bag today and the remarkable strength and character of his young friend Ryan Dant:
These days, my wife, Jackie, and I divide our time between Indian Wells in the Southern California desert and Colorado Springs, where we recently bought a place. We leave California for Colorado when it starts to get too hot, and when we start to get too close to becoming California residents. The mix works very well for us.
I play golf in both places. I play like crap these days, but that’s OK. I still like getting out there. In the desert, there’s a great game at the Palms in which I tee it up three or four days a week. Everyone puts up $50, and we head out. They’re mostly single-digit handicappers, but they are nice enough to let me play even though I am probably now a 15.
And I play in Colorado Springs, as well, at this course where we live. That one is a straight skins game, and it, too, is a lot of fun. There is nothing special about the course, but the scenery is incredible, especially the mountains. They are really majestic.
I do not fish nearly as much as I once did, and I certainly don’t travel the world to do that anymore. But there’s a private club in Colorado where I sometimes go. It’s old man’s fishing, with a number of lakes and streams. I take my grandkids there sometimes and teach them how to fly-fish. It’s a low-key place, and we have a lot of fun together.
I now ride in a cart when I play golf. Believe me, I’ve slowed down, and I do not have the same amount of drive for some things that I once did. But I still have a good time with my golf.
What’s in my bag these days? Mostly old Adams Golf clubs. And they work pretty well so long as I have the right shafts.
I also keep busy with a little business I have in Dallas. It’s called Breakthrough Golf Technology and started with these two-piece putter shafts that make it easier to get the clubhead back to square at impact. And in the last month or so, we have introduced wedge and driver shafts that employ the same technologies in an effort to do the same thing. So now I am back to fighting the battles that all little companies face, but we are doing well and will do close to $6 million in revenues this year. I own a little more than half of the company, but I do not have to actually go to the facility. There are two or three people there with whom I stay in touch. I am sort of the inventor/CEO, just as I was in the early days with Adams.
I get energized by this company and what we are doing. I like the technology we have and the way it works. Consider our driver shafts: Due to the regulatory bodies, what you can do with clubheads is very limited these days, but our shafts do make a difference because they give you the chance to make good hits on a more consistent basis, so you get more consistently better distance.
It has been a while since I have seen someone come out with a noticeably better golf club. I think that has a lot to do with there not being a whole lot someone can do and still stay within the rules governing equipment. And it is a reminder of the fact that golf clubs are sold, not bought. It is a marketing business, and the key is getting a message to the buyer in hopes of getting him or her to make a purchase. That’s what we did with Adams and our television infomercials.
I don’t like LIV, and I think professional golf is a different game if you are playing 54-hole shotguns. It is not the same level of competition. But I can understand how hard it would be to turn down the money they are offering people.
Think of what the big four clubmakers are today: Ping, Titleist, TaylorMade and Callaway. Forty years ago, it was pretty much the same bunch, and they have invested so heavily in their brands over the years that the little guys who come in usually do not have a chance.
I don’t like LIV, and I think professional golf is a different game if you are playing 54-hole shotguns. It is not the same level of competition. But I can understand how hard it would be to turn down the money they are offering people. Not being on television hurts them right now, but things will change, I believe, if they get on a mainstream channel or network.
I have no idea how things will shake out. But I think whatever decision Augusta National makes about the qualifying criteria and whether to invite past Masters champions who have gone to LIV will carry a lot of weight.
I appreciate the successes we enjoyed at Adams today a lot more than I did when we were going throughout that incredible growth spurt, and going from no sales to $90 million in two years’ time. As good a situation as that may seem in retrospect, it was very difficult back then. The pressure we felt to fill orders, for example, was overwhelming. We grew too fast, and there was not a whole lot of time to sit back and enjoy what was happening. Now, I can see the bigger picture and appreciate how well the product was received and the impact we had on the golf equipment business. People coming up to me all the time and saying: “Hey, you’re the Tight Lies guy. I love that club!” And what the hell, they were good clubs, weren’t they?
Going into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame is a very nice honor. Certainly, I am grateful to be recognized like that, and especially in Texas, with its rich golf history. But it won’t give me any more distance off the tee, and the guys in the games I play are not going to give me any extra strokes. I did tell them that I am going to get some Hall of Fame shirts made up so I can wear them when we tee it up.
You asked about Ryan Dant. Well, his is a remarkable story, and it started back in 1992. I am sitting in our rental space in Richardson, Texas, in 1992, before Adams Golf and Tight Lies had taken off, when a local police officer came to the door and started telling me his story. His 4-year-old son, Ryan, had been diagnosed with a genetic disease called MPS (mucopolysaccharidosis) and was not expected to live beyond the age of 10. It was such a rare disease that it was receiving no interest in the research community, and there was neither treatment for it nor a cure.
Ryan’s father came to me because he believed golf might be a good way to raise money for such research. I did not have a dime to my name back then. But I gave the man some clubs and then began reaching out to other people in the industry, like Tom Fazio, to see how we might collectively help. Money started coming in, from fundraisers and through individual donations. And we were able to get it to a California scientist named Emil Kakkis, who was doing research in that field but was about to close down his lab due to a lack of funds.
With that influx of money, Kakkis was able to continue his work. And while a cure for MPS has yet to be found, there is now treatment for the disease. Today, that young boy is 34 years old and lives with his schoolteacher wife in Dallas.