Barney Adams of Breakthrough Golf

Video details

• Instructor: Golf Life
• Category: Profiles

Transcript

Welcome to "Golf Life." Our guest today is Barney Adams. You've probably seen Adams Golf in a golf store or watched somebody playing them on a Shavies tour, and this is the man. This is the legend. Mr. Adams, thank you so much for joining "Golf Life" today. I'm not going to respond if you call me Mr. Adams. Okay. Barney. Well, Barney, how is your golf life? How is your whole golf life? I know you still work, you're playing. Tell me about it. Well, yeah. First off, I'm not smart enough to retire. We have a new business that I'm very much involved in. Golf clubs are my life, and they have been my life, and so I'm still working in that environment. I still like it, and I still think about it. The other day, I thought, "Gee, if I change this club, could I hit it better?" That kind of stuff. I was able to do a little research on your book, "The WOW Factor," and I found it interesting that you stated in the book that the wow factor really came initially from the response that you got from golfers when they hit your Titleist fairway woods, and obviously you've changed the entire industry with those fairway woods. What is the wow factor? And kind of describe that, because I find it very interesting. Well, I would get asked, "Gee, Barney, golf. How'd you get started in golf?" And my answer was always, "Well, do you have an hour or two? Because it's a long, involved story." And that's what invigorated me to write the book. And the book is about our story in golf, but it's really about entrepreneurship. And it's about for people who want to start a business, and here's some of the things you'll run into, and so on and so forth. And I kind of took them through step by step, using golf as the issue, but still, entrepreneurship, at least in my mind, was the real objective. Ironically, I had to reread it recently because the book's been around for a while, and I was looking for something, and I thought- Yeah ... this is not bad. This reads okay. So I was never unhappy with it. It seems I've come across a new wow factor when you started Breakthrough Golf Technology with the putter shaft. I can tell you from personal experience that I had a wow factor right away . So tell us about Breakthrough Golf and the putter shaft. I'll be really interested. Well, wow is about people. You get somebody that hits a good shot, whether it's a putter, a chip, or a drive, I don't... And inevitably they'll say, "Wow, that's pretty good." And that's what I listened to, that's what I heard, because I was a custom fitter. And when you're a custom fitter, you're going through a fairly detailed technical analysis, so to speak. And I kind of tuned into, "Okay, that's all well and good, but how's the golfer like it?" And when I heard the wow, then I knew the golfer was enjoying the experience. So what made you get into the shafts? And also, my son and I have played your wedge shafts now. He's currently playing them. I really love the concept of the stability. Where did that come from? Our whole philosophy for our company, everything we make and everything we're working on, is based around a square face through impact. And that's what the putter does, the new Paradox putter. It's a low-torque putter, but it's more than that. And it's like I said before, visually... I just read an article, I don't know, one of the golf teacher things, and he's talking about just Scotty, and how Scotty keeps the face square through the impact zone so long. I'll take his word for it. I wasn't looking at it from that aspect. But the process, the thought of having the club face square through impact is a big deal. Our driver shaft, which I've had a lot of success with, with my friends and people I know, you hit the driver a quarter of an inch. Now this, that's about a quarter of an inch. You hit a driver shaft a quarter of an inch off the sweet spot, and you lose 14 yards. 14 yards. Now come on. That exceeds all of the supposedly wonderful design and other characteristics the club has, because the laws of physics show that you've got to hit the ball at the center of the club face, the center of percussion, if you want to maximize distance. Well, one of the reasons, or ways, you can help do that is design the shaft so it does not move. So it does not oscillate. So it wants to keep that club head face square through impact. Now, on the market today, there are some very, very, very flexible shafts that cost a lot of money. And if you catch them right, you can hit them a long way. Sure. But you can also hit them a long way left and a long way right. Or off the toe, right? Right. We don't do that. And that's what I get back from guys, oh, it happened yesterday. A guy said to me, "Barney, I can't believe how much better I'm hitting the ball in the fairway with your shaft." That's because we keep the club face square, and that is and will be consistent through everything we do. Well, I appreciate that the company has sent me a couple of your putters for my son and I to review. We just got them last night, actually. And we'll take a look at them really quickly. The Paradox. And I will say, first impressions, took a while to kind of get used to alignments, set up, obviously, because it's very different. Yeah, they're weird looking. Yeah, exactly. But right out of the bat, every ball, I started lining it up with the line, and every ball was just coming off dead straight, dead square. It squares up. I will say, I'm probably leaning more towards the mallet just from an alignment perspective. Me too, by the way. But wow. Talk about square. Just dead square. So obviously if I can hit it straight, now all I've got to do is get myself aligned or learn how to read a putt too. Yeah. And any putting instructor alive will tell you that the key to putting is having the face square at impact. Because if it isn't, you got no chance. It is different. Is there anything in particular that you find people or better golfers, areas that they're hitting on the face? Because I did notice there are a couple of areas where, man, it just has a sweet sound, and a couple of areas where it doesn't give you that feedback. Was that intentional? I'm just kind of curious. Yeah. Your center of percussion is very small, and that's where the maximum energy is delivered to the golf ball, and you recognize it with that solid feel. We all get it. Yeah. You can tell instantly. You know you hit the... You might miss it, but you hit it as good as you can hit it. And that's putting. All I can do is give you the best tools possible, and that's kind of what, we've talked about this amongst ourselves, what we want to be noted for is, hey, if you use their stuff, you're using good stuff, and that's about it. And it really is the wow factor, right? People try it and- It is. It really is the wow factor. It's like, "Wow, gee, I hit a great putt. Gee whiz." And I get that from users. I get emails and so on that say, "I didn't believe it till I started putting with this thing, but my gosh, it's really good." We are going to be rejoined by Mr. Adams here in a moment when we come back on "Golf Life," and we'll ask him a few more questions. We are rejoined by Barney Adams when "Golf Life" returns. Here's a fact. If you're over 65 and you're not hitting a seven wood, data shows you're adding at least five shots to your card every round. That's why this new category of club is quickly becoming the most popular club for senior golfers looking to hit more greens in regulation. It's called the 357. It's the first ever fairway hybrid that carries like a three wood, and it gives you the height and control of a seven wood. Take action now, and before we're out of stock. Welcome back to "Golf Life." The golf equipment legend, Mr. Barney Adams, joins us again. Thank you for coming back for another round here, Mr. Adams. I wanted to ask you your opinion of the golf space now. What do you think about just in general where golf equipment is today? Well, Scott, I think technically speaking, it's gotten better. It's funny. It's a really small business in the great scheme of things. Tiny, yeah. Yeah. And it makes up for it because the people involved with it are so passionate about it. You have engineers that could probably go on to different companies and maybe make more money and so on and so forth, but they just love working on golf equipment. That's right. And that's just what it is. But at the end of the day, it's a marketing business. Sure. It was before, and that has not changed. For example, golf retailers do not sell golf equipment. They offer golf equipment for sale, which you, the manufacturer, have convinced the customer to go and try and go and look at it. But they don't sell it per se. Right. So it's our job to put the word out, and that is why, if you look at the history of golf equipment, who are you looking at? Titleist, Ping, Callaway, and TaylorMade. Those four companies have owned 92 or 93% of the market for the last 40 years. Right. 40 years. So you're going to break into that as a new guy? You better be pretty strong-willed and have a few bucks in your pocket because that's a tough gig. Going back to BGT for a minute, this shaft concept, let's talk about that and just where that came from. Were you the inventor of this? I'm just curious about the nexus of this concept and how you take it forward. Through golf, they're still using a steel shaft, same one they used forever. Well, as we stroke, as we move the putter head, and on the end of that steel shaft, you get a slight oscillation because of the weight of the head. That means the putter face is moving. If the putter face is moving, it's not good. Look at the tour. You want to have something interesting, look up the putting stats on the tour. They haven't changed perceptibly in 10 years, 15 years. So what we're trying to do is break out of that with a technical base that says you can't do that unless the putter face is dead square from the minute you put it in your hands to the minute you make contact. And that's what we're using on that putter, both the head and the shaft. Are you having fun with the company? Yeah. I enjoy it. I say it that way. I'm 86 years old. Fun doesn't happen very much when you're 86 years old. But I still enjoy taking initial samples to the range by myself. Of course. I've tested golf clubs for a billion hours in my lifetime, and I like working at it myself and see if I've got a wow factor like, "Well, that really hit well." We were a success, and we were written about. It's going to be parties over. Everybody goes on with their life, and what do I do? I start over again. So I guess I like it. It's been a pleasure to speak with a legend in the golf equipment business, as someone who has walked the aisles of the PGA for three decades and gone up and down and talked to everyone. I haven't had the chance to meet you, so I'm thrilled, even though it's virtual. So thank you so much for your time today. A couple Coloradans . Thanks for watching.