Gary Adams: 1943-2000 : Metal wood pioneer - Obituary

Golf Digest, March, 2000 by Peter Farricker

It's not often that a man alters both the look and the sound of golf, but that's exactly what Gary Adams did in the late 1970s when he founded Taylor Made Golf and reintroduced metal woods to the golf marketplace. The game and the business side of golf would never be the same. Adams, who also started Founders Club and, most recently, McHenry Metals, died on Jan. 2 at age 56 after having battled a variety of illnesses for most of the past decade.

At age 22, Adams left Milton (Wis.) College, became a salesman for the Wittek Golf Company, a golf-range supply company, and sold his first metal wood, an aluminum-magnesium, driving-range model. A few years later, he noticed that the new brand of two-piece balls becoming popular went farther than balata balls off irons, but not off wooden woods. Ever the idea man, Adams was intrigued by the notion of a metal club enhancing performance and introduced Taylor Made metal woods at the 1979 PGA Merchandise Show. Taylor Made's Original 1-wood quickly gained a reputation on the PGA Tour as a superior product. After Jim Simons won the 1982 Bing Crosby National Pro-Am with a Taylor Made Metalwood, the company's first tour victory, the days of the persimmon wood were numbered. In 1995, he received the PGA of America's highest honor, the Ernie Sabayrac Award, for lifetime contributions to the industry.

"Gary really changed the sound of golf," says Harry Taylor, vice president and senior director of club design and player promotion for Mizuno, who, as a tour rookie in 1980, struck up a friendship with Adams thanks to the young pro's surname. "You used to hear all the woods go 'crack, crack, crack,' as you approached the range, but as metal woods became popular, the range had a completely different sound. He was on the cutting edge of technology, but he was a man with a lot of integrity. There never has been more of an optimist than Gary Adams. I've never known a person who could see the brighter side of a dismal thing better than Gary. And that was one of the most charming things about him."