Things were the way they were supposed to be way back in 1959. The Boston Celtics, the Montreal Canadiens and the New York football Giants were atop the sports world. Arnold Palmer was atop golf”s leader boards. The Dodgers would win the World Series that autumn, their first title since moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Eisenhower was president, the world was at peace, and the economy was booming.
Meanwhile, a General Electric employee was working nights in his garage in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Redwood City. His after-hours projects sometimes irritated his neighbors, but he had a dream and a vision, so he kept banging away in his garage. It was 50 years ago that GE engineer Karsten Solheim decided to form his company, Karsten Manufacturing, and began marketing his new invention, the Ping putter.
Born in Austrheim, Norway, in 1911, Karsten Solheim took a very long and winding road to become the most innovative golf club designer of the modern era. His father was the local shoemaker. The entire Solheim family immigrated to the United States in 1913, settling in Seattle. Young Karsten apprenticed and took over his father”s business as a young man. He was a tinkerer and had interests in science and engineering, but during the Depression he was unable to afford the tuition at the University of Washington.
When World War II broke out, Solheim entered a U.S. Army-sponsored program that trained people to become engineers. Solheim completed the program after six months of intensive study and was certified in the area of mechanical engineering. He worked on various military projects during the war and had a hand in the development of Fireball jets and Atlas missiles.
After the war, Solheim hooked up with General Electric. He was transferred a number of times while working for GE. In the early 1950s, he worked on the development of the portable television. Solheim was acknowledged in corporate circles as the inventor of the rabbit ears television antennae. Later that decade he developed the first banking computer system.
Karsten Solehim took up golf in the mid-1950s, playing with co-workers. He was a pretty good ball striker, but he was frustrated with his putting. Like a lot of golfers, he was convinced that the clubs were the problem, not him. Of course, as a top-notch engineer with a great mind for physics, Solheim was able to do something about it.
Using scientific principles, Solheim designed a putter that was center-shafted instead of the typical heel-shafted model. He also weighted the perimeter of the putter, basing it on the concept of a tennis racket. His earliest putters made a “ping” sound at impact, hence the name Ping Golf.
The San Francisco area was a hotbed of amateur golf in the 1950s, and Karsten”s putters were popular with local golfers. He started going to tour events such as the Lucky and the Bing Crosby, giving his putters to any pro would take one. A 1962 Sports Illustrated article featured Solheim and his musical putter.
General Electric transferred Solheim to Phoenix in 1963 and he continued making putters and meeting area golfers and touring professionals. He still had to keep his job at GE, but he was bringing in almost $50,000 in sales from his putting manufacturing business. The big break came in February of 1967 when multiple major winner Juluis Boros won the Phoenix Open using a Ping Anser putter. At the post-tournament press conference, Boros said, “The putter looks like a bunch of nuts and bolts welded together, but the ball goes in the hole.” Sales of Ping putters jumped to $500,000 in 1968 and Solheim quit his job at GE.
In 1969, Karsten designed his first set of Ping irons, once again using perimeter weighting and investment casting. The irons were more forgiving than the traditional forged blades, resulting in the first performance-enhancing clubs to hit the market. Solehim kept adjusting his irons and by 1980 his Ping Eye 2 irons were the top-selling irons on the market.
In 1987, the USGA and the PGA Tour ruled that the Ping Eye 2 irons with square grooves were non-conforming clubs, making them illegal for tournament play. Solheim enjoined both entities and after protracted legal struggles, the USGA and the Tour backed down and settled out of court. The remainder of his time on golf”s center stage was oriented toward giving something back to the game. Solheim donated millions to build the Karsten Golf Course for Arizona State University and Karsten Creek Golf Course for Oklahoma State University. In 1990, he formulated and sponsored the Solheim Cup, a team competition along the lines of the Ryder Cup featuring the best American women professionals against the top female golfers from Europe. He also sponsored three LPGA tournaments.
In the mid-1990s, Karsten came down with Parkinson”s disease. His son John took over the internal workings of Karsten Manufacturing and Ping Golf. He passed away in 2000. In 2001 he was posthumously inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, lauded for being in the forefront of golfing innovations.
Today, the corporate entity that Solheim left behind does research for clients as far flung as NASA, IBM and Motorola. The foundry that makes putters and irons also makes precision parts for airplanes and weapon systems. On the golfing front, the Ping G10 driver was named Golf Magazine”s innovative club for 2008.
It was 50 years ago that Karsten Solheim began his putter company in his garage in Redwood City. Golf is a far different game because of the influences and innovations of the man who first started out inventing rabbit ears for portable television sets.
