Feature article written for Golf World UK
In 1991, a small golf equipment company in California created what is arguably the most revolutionary and pioneering golf club of all time. Tim Sweeney tells the incredible story behind the making of the Callaway Big Bertha Driver.
As Richard Helmstetter recalls the early days of his tenure at Callaway Golf over lunch not far from the company’s Carlsbad, California HQ, he pauses mid-sentence and a broad smile envelops his face. It is a quarter of a century since Helmstetter and the company’s founder, Ely Callaway, unleashed the Big Bertha driver on an unsuspecting golfing public in late 1991. And not even two and a half decades can wipe the grin from the face of the man known to many as RCH. “It was an awesome time; just fantastic,” says Helmstetter, who served as Callaway’s Senior Executive Vice President and Chief of New Golf Club Design.
With more than 400 international patents to his name, Helmstetter is a legend in the golf business, but it wasn’t an industry he ever expected to dabble in, let alone alter forever. A chance meeting with former textiles entrepreneur Ely Callaway in 1983 changed all that.
Nearly two decades after a 26-year-old Helmstetter and his late wife, Jeannine, moved from the US to Japan to build a high-end pool cue business, the Chicago native found himself in a three-car garage in Cathedral City, California.
“I met Ely at The Vintage in Palm Springs,” Helmstetter recalls. “I was on a round-the-world business trip with a stop in New York. My friend Mike Dunaway was a long-drive star, and he asked me to come to Palm Springs for a meeting with a guy who wanted to talk about wooden-shafted golf clubs.”
Although Ely Callaway had recently sold his Callaway winery in Temecula, California, for enough millions to never work again, in 1982 he purchased a stake in a small golf club company called Hickory Stick USA, which made wedges with a shaft that had a steel core and a wooden exterior. “They were having all kinds of trouble keeping these hickory shafts from bending and cracking,” Helmstetter says. “As an expert in creating round pieces of tapered wood, I made a few suggestions to help them out before flying back to Japan.”
Callaway’s vision was similar to the plan he had executed with his winery – build the company and then sell it on. Helmstetter saw Callaway’s successful track record and figured he was onto something. “I thought I’d do my thing, we’d grow sales, and I’d get out of there and pocket four or five million dollars,” Helmstetter says. “Good plan, right?”
Big Bertha is Born
At the start of the ‘90s, most drivers and fairway woods were made of persimmon. TaylorMade’s Tour Preferred metalwood was the exception. After several years of creating machined putters and wedges, Ely Callaway decided it was time to build a metalwood, too. But the club that would become the Big Bertha driver would not arrive overnight. When the first samples came back from the casting house, it barely looked like a golf club.
“The 3-wood was awesome, and the 4- and 5-woods were ok,” Helmstetter says. “But the driver was ugly.”
Helmstetter knew he had to find some “smart guys”, so he visited the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) to meet with John Kosmatka, a professor of mechanical engineering. “John and his students concluded the same thing we had – the 3-wood is just awesome but the driver sucks.”
The question then became how they could create a driver that would transform the category. Kosmatka went into what Helmstetter calls “professor speak”, talking about moment of inertia, forgiveness, ball speed and head speed. “We also wanted to make it easier to hit,” Helmstetter says. “I asked John, ‘So what do we do?’ He said, ‘Make it bigger. A lot bigger.’”
The challenge in building the 190cc clubhead was creating a steel shape that was bigger and thinner, but still strong enough. Ely Callaway wanted a bigger face, so the first few models had huge faces that Helmstetter says were “ugly.”
“The reactions from golfers was mostly, ‘Oh, no!’” he says. “They hit it pretty well, but it didn’t look good.” The first real adopters were Jim Colbert, Bob Murphy and Jim Dent, a trio of entertaining tour pros, who offered invaluable feedback. They told him the prototype was ugly and too loud. In the autumn of 1991, they landed on the design that would become the Big Bertha driver. “We knew right away,” Helmstetter says. “Once we got the shape we liked, we immediately went out and hit it. And it was good. Really good.”
Callaway and Parker went all-in, ordering 60,000 Big Bertha club heads.
Hello, World
At the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando in 1992, Callaway and Helmstetter unveiled their newcreation. At the show’s demo day, Big Bertha was a star attraction. They then began feeding the new driver to players on what was then the Senior Tour, where sponsorship deals could be had for relatively small money. The performance gains were obvious, but the driver named after a German World War I cannon was about as loud as one. Another problem needed to be solved.
“We were introduced to expanding foam, and that’s what the hole is in the bottom of the club head,” Helmstetter explains. “We’d squirt in 8-10 grams of resin and it would swell up and fill that hole. It turns out, that also made the driver much quieter at impact. The sound became a positive. Guys would say to us, ‘Man, that sounds hot.’”
With Bertha taking flight, Ely Callaway, Helmstetter and a few others hit the road to get Bertha into golfers’ hands. They traveled from golf club to golf club letting Bertha’s performances peak for itself. Most people reacted with disbelief. Still, the road to success was not without its potholes. One problem was the breaking of shafts because of the stress loaded so close to the clubhead. Other times, the drivers would rattle. With General Electric now an investor in the company, Chairman & CEO Jack Welch sent two quality assurance specialists from GE’s jet engine plant in Evondale, Ohio, to help find the source of the rattle.
“We realized it was the O-ring that would come loose and vibrate. Our engineers were so good.They’d come up with ideas to solve problems like that and we’d go and make what we needed. It was really fun.”
In February 1992, Callaway Golf went public on the New York Stock Exchange and Helmstetter recalls the honesty with which Ely Callaway handled what had quickly become a golden opportunity.
On the eve of the company going public, with bankers urging Callaway to price the stock at $30, the new darling of the golf equipment world showed restraint.
“He said, ‘No, we’ve been telling people we are going to price it at $18 per share. I will go to $20, but not a nickel higher,’” Helmstetter recalls.
Riding the Wave
While USGA and R&A rules, as well as scientific limitations, have ensured that the leaps in club performance today may not be of the same magnitude Big Bertha delivered 25 years ago, Helmstetter still marvels at modern club designs. “I love getting the new clubs that Callawaycomes up with,” he says. “They still manage to find two or three miles per hour of ball speed or head speed and that is not insignificant.”
Helmstetter departed Callaway Golf in late 2005, and though he says it hasn’t always been fun to watch some of the company’s tough times, he is thrilled with its current direction. He still says “we” when referring to the brand and he’s a huge fan of Callaway CEO Chip Brewer, who joined the company in 2012.
“We belong to the same golf club. At the weekend I see Chip out there with his youngest son grinding away and betting quarters. I love that,” Helmstetter says. “Things have changed over the years, but in a way they haven’t. Now we partner with Boeing, rather than GE.”
A vibrant-looking 74-year-old, Helmstetter plays golf regularly, and admits to having taken over one of Ely Callaway’s roles. “I am the old, high-end country club member. I don’t hit it so faror so good, but I am that market,” he says with a chuckle. “And I don’t care what it costs. If you give me a couple of yards, I’ll buy it.”
