GOLF:

Barney Adams has always fascinated me. The founder of Adams Golf has always been a straight-shooting guy and one of the most approachable CEOs I have ever encountered.

It is nice to see that in addition to his candor there is some personal reflection and some great advice in his autobiography, “The Wow Factor.”

Adams was a member at Mesa Verde Country Club back in the early 1970s when he was a sales representative for a company that sold equipment to supermarkets.

What Adams did was what he would do throughout his professional career; that is, he took a chance. He had no experience, had never been west of Oklahoma and no real knowledge of the product he would be selling.

Still Adams moved out here and settled in to Orange County, joining Mesa Verde Country Club.

Though his professional experience had nothing to do with golf, he was fascinated by golfers and their equipment. Adams was an engineer at Corning in the early 1960s and when he was back there he was sending out resumes to golf club manufacturers.

With no experience, however, he couldn’t get an interview and temporarily gave up the dream to work with golf equipment. His love for the game, though, did not diminish. He was nearly a scratch golfer when he was at Mesa Verde and was the 1975 Club Champion.

Mesa Verde was a golfer’s club and there were several golfers that were involved in the golf industry. Adams got exposed to them and decided more than ever he wanted to be part of the golf industry.

Adams met short-game guru Dave Pelz and the two had similar philosophies regarding golf equipment. In the ’80s, Pelz asked him to run his company that was introducing a new type of club that was going to revolutionize the game of golf.

Like many ventures, it didn’t make it and Adams felt like a failure, but it didn’t deter him from staying in the golf business. Adams decided to start his own club company and in 1987 began Adams Golf.

“I was a complete failure when Pelz Golf went bankrupt,” Adams said. “I had invested money in the company and I was virtually broke. The next step was the most illogical thing in the world. I stayed in the golf business and went out on my own, with no product and no money.”

The book takes the reader on that journey and in addition to a historical timeline of events, Adams presents personal reflection and some advice for anyone willing to follow his unconventional path.

“The reason I achieved success in the golf industry was passion,” Adams said. “I have tremendous passion for everything I do. I’m average smart, but I have a lot of drive, probably to the point of being dumb because I don’t know when I’m beat.”

Adams toiled for 10 years, splitting time with his company and working at golf instructor Hank Haney’s golf school doing club fittings.

In 1995, Adams took out a yellow legal pad and sketched the design of the Tight Lies fairway wood, which would become one of the most successful clubs in golf. The $25,000 he borrowed turned into $85 million in sales and Adams was soon building one of the most unique specialty golf club manufacturers in the industry.

The book is a must read for anyone interested in the golf business. And, it is not so dry that it is not entertaining. Adams has a great sense of humor and an infectious personality and both come through in the book.

“First and foremost, this is a story of how one obsessed person started from nothing and built a successful company,” Adams said.

JOHN REGER’S golf column appears Thursdays.