* I told them the name was Big Bertha, and that’s the way it was. Few people rebelled against Jack Welch, but I didn’t give a damn what Jack Welch thought. When you’re releasing a new product, you have to pre- dict how many you’re going to sell for the first six months of the next year so that you can decide how many to fab- ricate and what the lead time must be and how much money you will risk on inventory. Starting from scratch, it took 26 weeks to get a clubhead after placing an order with the foundry. You don’t go down to the corner store and ask for 10 000 Big Bertha clubheads and get them within two weeks. Someone suggested we order 40 000, but I said, “No, we’re going to order 60 000,” which at the time was a huge commitment. No customer had tried the club or even seen it, but still we ordered 60 000 clubs. We bet the farm on Big Bertha. Each club cost about $25 to $30 to produce, instead of the usual $12. We spent $2 million producing these funny-looking, oversized sticks. We had a feeling our casting technique would hold up to 500 clubheads before the mould deteriorated, but 60 000? We really had no idea. Meanwhile, the head of the casting plant was a heavy drinker and ran us all nuts. We couldn’t kill him, we couldn’t fire him, and we couldn’t ignore him: We just had to work around him. Hasn’t everybody encountered that kind of person in their workplace? We got the final factory samples of Big Bertha around Christmas 1990, with clubheads a whopping 190 cubic centimetres. It wasn’t just that it was bigger. By put- ting more weight around the clubhead’s perimeter, we enlarged the sweet spot compared to persimmon driv- ers. Our designers used our patented S2H2 technology to eliminate the neck of the club by extending the shaft through the clubhead, creating more energy at impact. We tested them at Bear Creek in Temecula, California, next to where I lived, and at The Vintage Club. The Big Bertha performed so beautifully, we just hit balls indis- criminately into the desert for sheer pleasure. wouldn’t sound so hollow, but the foam made the club heavier, causing our shafts to continually break. We then tried lighter foam, but that deteriorated within the clubhead after only a month. We had many problems, but they were the kind of problems you run into when you’re trying to do something nobody has ever done be- fore. The only question was whether the problems were going to kill the promise. Eventually, I decided to get rid of the foam in part be- cause of the weight problem but also because we decided we liked the sound of the early Big Berthas better. We were selling a whole new type of club; why should it sound like an old one?
club next year, and this is the first prototype. It is going to change the game of golf. I’ve even given it a name. Would you like to know what it is?” He said, “Sure, lay it on me.” “I’m gonna call it Big Bertha.” Nicholas shot back, “Dad, that’s the worst name for a product I’ve ever heard.” I replied, “Well, you’re wrong, for two reasons. First, it’s a great name because it has a story behind it: the World War One German cannon! Second, just remem- ber: The product makes the name, the name doesn’t make the product.” Nicholas retorted, “I still think it’s a terrible name.” To make the clubhead bigger but not heavier, we stretched the stainless-steel perimeter walls like blow- ing up a balloon. This had the unintended consequence of making our driver sound like an empty Campbell’s Soup can every time you struck the ball. The sound seemed like a disadvantage. Every player knows that that sound on impact is key. Or maybe they know it but don’t know they know it. We worked hard to preserve that classic persimmon sound. First, we filled the heads with foam so they
The original Big Bertha driver debuted in 1991 at 190 cubic centime- tres.
112 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JUNE 2025
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