Press Clippings
The Wall Street Journal,
Friday, April 9, 1993
"No matter what the computer tells you, you still have to make it
and try it," Mr. Moore says. "There is something about having the
actual piece in front of you."
He speaks from a lifetime's experience. Mr. Moore grew up in a
Toledo, Ohio golfing family-and he says, "I learned to play as
soon as I could walk." After attending the University of Toledo
on a golf scholarship, he went to work in a family business,
which did castings and forgings. In his spare time, he started casting
a putter, in brass. "I always felt I could make one better than I
could buy," he says. "I didn't succeed for a long time. What
looks easy is not."
He got a big break one weekend in 1989, when Frank "Fuzzy"
Zoeller, who was having putting problems, blindly pulled a Tad
Moore putter out of his bag-and so improved his game that he
finished second in the tournament. The mystery putter made news.
"Everyone wanted to know who Tad Moore was," Mr. Zoeller recalls.
"I said I didn't even know the gentleman. I don't know how I got
the putter. It was just one of those crazy things."
"I always wanted for golf to be my business," says Moore, an
engineer by training, who made putters as a hobby, of sorts, for
nearly three decades before becoming Maxfli's master putter
designer in late 1989. "It was like a dream come true."
SKY Magazine, Dec.
1997, by Michael Konik
"We start out with design ideas that come from all different
places-touring professionals, 30 handicapper friends, my own
imagination," Moore says, "I don't design golf clubs with any
preconceived notions, except maybe that they should be pleasing to
the eye.
My clubs come from having the total freedom of sketching on a blank
piece of paper, including sometimes, a cocktail napkin." When
struck by inspiration, which the designer reports can (and does)
happen anywhere, Moore eschews the half-million dollars imaging
computers presently in vogue and carves out a wooden master with
his own lathe and file. "Lots of times, if you just hold on to
something, you can tell if it's good," he says of his primary quality
control. Moore then takes his creation to a foundry, which make the
final metal master. From this, a mold is produced, and ultimately
a casting. From the initial idea to a finished club ready for
market takes about two years.
Moore says he was always a tinkerer. His dad would bring
something home-a new toaster, for example-and Moore would take it
apart. "I'm one of those guys who always thinks he can make things
better than the stuff you buy," he says. We hackers all look
for golf clubs that look and feel good, clubs that have a high
degree of what we call "playability." We seem to know intuitively what
makes for a well designed golf club. But what I ask Moore, makes
a successful golf club designer? "Inquisitiveness. Unafraid of
failure. Open to input." And he says, grinning, "good with your
hands."
Atlanta Magazine,
April 1998, By Bill Gregory
Quotes from James Achenbach, Senior editor for Golfweek,
"Tad Moore is a brilliant --- brilliant! --- designer and has a great
reputation,"
There's a resurgence of interest in traditional style clubs, especially
irons, and that's what Moore does best, it seems."
Quote from Adam Barr, Business analysis and reporter for the
Golf Channel
"Moore's design genius is undeniable"
And how did a man in southwest Georgia come to earn such a
sterling reputation? The old-fashioned way. He began by doing
favors for friends, first just fixing clubs and then grinding
them down or changing them to suit the individual golfer's needs.
But when he began making them, it became more business like. In
the late '70s Moore began traveling the PGA Tour circuit, going
from tournament to tournament showing his clubs to the pros. The
club of choice for most putters was Moore's putter. He was the first to
bring precision-milled putters to the tour, using modern
technology to make solid carbon steel putter heads by machine. The
advantage was a basic one. "Precision milling allowed for a more
precise flatness to the base of the club,"says Moore, "and
machine milling meant the exact process could be repeated over and over
for perfect consistency from club to club." It's that consistency
that the professionals began to rely on.
In Georgia, amateur golfers who know Moore swear by his designs.
Bill Ploeger of Columbus, recently named Senior Player of the
Year by the Georgia State Golf Association after winning their Senior
Amateur Championship in 1997, uses a Moore-designed putter. "It
just feels different," says Ploeger, "and the ball comes off the
club face much more solidly than any other putter I've ever used." Joe
Estes, of Atlanta, the GSGA Senior Players of the Year in 1989, who
still competes in golf tournaments throughout the state and
across the county, praises the irons. "Tad's irons are extremely
consistent," says Estes. "I'm always trying new clubs but I keep
coming back to theses irons because I know exactly what to expect from
them every time I hit them."
Southern Living,
Sept. 1998, by Diane Young
Blessed with a comfortably rhythmic swing, he could very easily
pass for one of those fifty-something fellows who regularly wins
on the PGA Senior Tour. But Tad Moore, a golfer who counts his
handicap on one hand, practices his expertise behind the scenes.
Described by current golf publications a a "design legend" and "a
player's clubmaker", Tad hasn't always made clubs for a living,
but a tinkerer by nature and a golfer by passion, he has never
strayed far from the links.
"I guess you could say I was born into the golf business," he
begins in his soft-voiced manner. "My mother was a very good
golfer and when I came into her life in 1941-Mom was 34 years
old-she didn't want to give up her golf game. So she took me to
the golf course." She left little Tad with the bag-room attendant,
Joe Battle, whom the youngster would watch repair clubs. "I was
always fascinated with what he did", recalls Tad. Then as he grew
older, he'd join his parents and brother for their afternoon
4-hole loop on the local course, a daily routine squeezed in before
dark. He was scoring in the nineties by age seven.
In 1963 he decided he could devise a better putter and fashioned
his first club. From there he learned how to make a complete
set-and that was before you could simply purchase component parts
for assemble at home.
Always looking to improve on any idea, in the 1980s, Tad, then
living in LaGrange, got serious about design. He started a
business in the basement of his home, naming it Peach Putters.
There he would spend as much as 20 to 30 hours fashioning a
single club. "I'd take my putters to the tournaments, sit there
by the putting greens, and try to get the pros to test them."
Tour champs such as Bob Murphy and John Mahaffey did-and liked
them.
In 1990 he delivered a special order-a very short putter with a
long blade-to Ian Woosnam at the Shoal Creek PGA in Birmingham.
Woosie eventually rode that putter to the Masters' title in 1991, but
even before that victory Tad had begun designing full-time for Maxfli.
Over the next several years both his putters and wedges earned
national acclaim, and at one point 74 PGA Tour players carried a
Tad Moore putter on the greens.
"Almost all the clubs today are designed on computer," explains
Tad. "There are only a few people left like me who actually start
with a clean piece of paper and design a golf club on it." His
ideas, which seem to arrive five and six at a time, come from
varied sources. "From the 1800s up until today, most all designs
have been tried at one time or another, so a big part of what we
do is refine older designs. I'm a collector of historic clubs,
and I take a lot of pride in trying to learn about old designs and how
they were made."
"And," he quickly adds, "a lot of ideas come from suggestions of
other people. You make it a part of your idea. And in my case I
always make the actual thing. I'll make a sketch, but then I'll
go ahead and make a part, whether it's out of wood or polymer or
metal."
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