TURF WAR.(Nike takes business away from Callaway Golf as well as others)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 10-JUN-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

I n the nineteen-nineties, a tin-pot West Coast company turned itself, almost overnight, into an industry superpower, eclipsing incumbents and increasing its sales by two thousand per cent in four years. This company had nothing to do with microchips or with Silicon Valley. It made golf clubs. Ely Callaway, a former textile executive and vintner, had founded it in 1982, to amuse himself in his golden years. In 1991, Callaway Golf introduced the Big Bertha, a metal driver with a giant head, which made it much easier to hit the ball well, both for the duffer and for the pro. Soon every golf company was hawking high-tech clubs of its own, and Ely Callaway was being hailed as the Thomas Edison of the links. Meanwhile, Callaway kept making bigger Berthas, and by 1996 it was the largest golf-club manufacturer in...

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