Harry Taylor - The Man Behind the Design

I have had a very fulfilling and wonderful career in golf.  I have been so fortunate that my dad, along with a very caring PGA professional introduced me to this great game of golf at the early age of 10 years old.  Throughout my life, golf has led the way.  The game of golf had opened many doors for me including the scholarships through the entirety of my college education, two years as an assistant pro in Chicago on through PGA Tour qualifying school.  As one of the youngest players on the tour and as most rookies do, I struggled.  Still, I learned my way around the Tour and competed in some of the most prestigious tournaments in the world when something happened during my first year on the PGA Tour; I met a man who would change the course of my life.

At a PGA Tour event in 1980, a man by the name of Gary Adams introduced himself to me and, asking if I was Harry Taylor, explained how he had launched a new golf company by the name of Taylor Made.  He said to me, “Harry, I have a company named Taylor Made but I have no Taylor. Since you are the only Taylor on the PGA Tour, we need to form a partnership.”

I don’t think there are enough words to describe how exciting this new metal wood company was to the golf business and would become personally to me.   Gary Adams was a true innovator with a brilliant marketing and sales mind.  As part of the original management team we wore every hat to make the company successful.  I really had the best of both worlds; I was a PGA Tour player and I had the ability to have clubs built by one of the industry leading golf companies.

After 11 amazing years I left Taylor Made to join with Gary Adams to help launch another new golf company called Founders Club. I agreed and brought along my club design partner from Taylor Made to help in club design and player promotion.  This man is today still one of my dearest friends and I am so proud of the success he has enjoyed as he now designs for Titleist. His name is Bob Vokey and he is a superstar in the wedge business and I will always cherish the times I had designing with him through the years.

Gary Adams became very ill during my years at Founders Club company and without Gary’s presence in the company I eventually sold my interest in the company.  In Early 1994 when I had only been gone from Founders Club for about 6 months, I was attending the PGA Merchandise Show and met Jack Curran, the President of Mizuno USA.  My early plan at Mizuno was to establish them as a very elite iron company with the production and education of the iron forging process that was Mizuno’s own grain flow process.  During the 1994 season Mizuno became the #1 iron on the PGA Tour; a title they held for eight straight seasons.  I still consider Mizuno forged irons the finest irons in the golf industry.

When I turned 50, I wanted to try my luck in the Champions Tour.  To give the over 50 a solid try, I left Mizuno to devote myself full time to the competition.  I was an associate member of the Champions Tour for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 season.  Then, in 2014, I had a major health issue where I was very lucky to survive.  When you have a scare like this, you think about what is really important in life.  After I recovered, I began thinking about my life, my accomplishments throughout my golf career, and just what I believed to be the one thing that fulfilled me the most? Without a doubt, I believe that golf club design was the most rewarding of my accomplishments.  I have learned so much in my life from so many talented people at Taylor Made, Founders Club and Mizuno and I have learned from some of the best players in the world during my years competing on the PGA Tour.  So now I am launching a small batch of limited edition wedges with my best design ideas as the first series in a line of Harry Taylor Designed Wedges.  I want to deliver the most premium, precision designed product possible at a truly wholesale price by offering these wedges exclusively through our company – Harry Taylor Designs.

 -Harry Taylor