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The Masters kicks off this week, and with it so does the unofficial start of the golf season.
Fittingly, Ely Callaway’s posthumous book, “The Unconquerable Game: My Life in Golf and Business,” was released this week. It tells the story of the Callaway Golf founder, who died at age 82 in 2001 and left behind an unfinished memoir that has been completed by his son Nicholas and editor Andrew Moorhead.
Brian Minbiole, a lifelong Detroiter who recently retired after 32 years as Callaway’s southeast Michigan territory manager, knew Ely (pronounced EE-lee) Callaway personally. Minbiole answers some questions about the hardcover book, which sells for $40 currently at select golf courses and on April 29 at Amazon and other retailers.
Minbiole also will give a presentation about Callaway’s life and business with a Q&A from 6-8 p.m. on May 12 at the Older Person’s Commission Social and Activity Center in Rochester. There will be an ice cream social afterward in honor of Callaway’s love of ice cream. The cost is $5 and books will be available to purchase.
Questions are in bold with Minbiole's answers below.
"Mr. Callaway had a deep and intense belief that every product could be improved upon if given enough attention by those inclined towards the effort of enhancement. In every facet of his career, he strove to either improve existing products and services (very clearly represented in his exploits in textiles and wine production) or create products that proved to be uncharted and completely unexpected.
"The golf industry provided a sea of sameness when Mr. Callaway entered that arena in 1982 and he committed his efforts to change the golf equipment business despite the industry competitors and the governing body striving to limit ingenuity. Both the club itself as well as the name "Big Bertha" signaled a massive change in design, sound, playability and identity for his company. He was willing to take what would be viewed by others as significant risks but his confidence in performance was based on his trust in his people, their design ingenuity and his self-assuredness as a marketer and salesperson.
MORE MONARREZ: Detroit Tigers' expectations are high this year; they look like they might live up to them
"The book is incredibly authentic as it is composed almost completely in Mr. Callaway’s own words. He was a fantastic storyteller who could easily impress any audience he could gather to not only hear him speak but be motivated to action by his words. This book illustrates fully his business beliefs and maxims and paints the picture of how others with similar drive, commitment and desire can succeed in their chosen business or life itself.
"Those, like me, who were fortunate to work for and alongside Mr. Callaway heard him speak frequently and he built upon his ideals to forge our success. "Good Ethics is Good Business" was a stalwart mantra we were not only taught but witnessed from our leader. He urged us to tell the truth, be direct and thoughtful with our customers and to act responsibly and we had his example to follow."
"Mr. Callaway was born in LaGrange, Georgia, and his accent and dialect, while clearly emerging from the South, was specifically his. There are some amazing videos on YouTube of Mr. Callaway starring in some of the commercials we ran for the company. His voice, his cadence and his manner of speaking were all his own and were immediately recognizable to all of us who worked for him and certainly to those who knew him well.
"When I first heard the AI representation of Mr. Callaway I was shocked, bewildered, freaked out and then thrilled. While AI has created some level of discomfort in some of its applications, I am proud to say that the segments I have heard that were AI-produced are impossible to discern as different from the voice I knew so well. Nicholas Callaway vowed he would not proceed forward with the AI–created audio book (the first of its kind) if he could sense the voice was not authentic. I may prove at first to be a little unnerved when I hear the entire book in Mr. Callaway’s voice but I am sure the memories will prove overpowering and I will be brought back to my years working for him."
"I remain always proud of the ingenuity behind everything Mr. Callaway did with his golf company. Celebrity endorsements were a powerful tool for Callaway Golf and Mr. Callaway strove to reach any potential golfer in the audience. There exists some discrepancy over the initial idea for the Alice Cooper commercial featuring Johnny Miller, The Tuttle II putter and Coop’s snake. Regardless of the original author, having Alice Cooper, a proud native of East Detroit and the Father of Shock Rock, endorsing Callaway Golf equipment was completely authentic as the former Vincent Furnier long ago traded in his substance addiction for golf.
"I have had the good fortune to play more than 20 rounds of golf with Alice as his partnership with Callaway is only slightly shorter than my own, which reinforces the partnership between Mr. Callaway and Coop. I can assure all golfers that he can play, he has a low single-digit handicap, he plays nearly 300 rounds a year and is a “real golfer” whose product selection was worthy of displaying and generating consumer buy-in."
Contact Carlos Monarrez: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Callaway book details Alice Cooper's snake ad and birth of Big Bertha
Continue reading...
Fittingly, Ely Callaway’s posthumous book, “The Unconquerable Game: My Life in Golf and Business,” was released this week. It tells the story of the Callaway Golf founder, who died at age 82 in 2001 and left behind an unfinished memoir that has been completed by his son Nicholas and editor Andrew Moorhead.
Brian Minbiole, a lifelong Detroiter who recently retired after 32 years as Callaway’s southeast Michigan territory manager, knew Ely (pronounced EE-lee) Callaway personally. Minbiole answers some questions about the hardcover book, which sells for $40 currently at select golf courses and on April 29 at Amazon and other retailers.
Minbiole also will give a presentation about Callaway’s life and business with a Q&A from 6-8 p.m. on May 12 at the Older Person’s Commission Social and Activity Center in Rochester. There will be an ice cream social afterward in honor of Callaway’s love of ice cream. The cost is $5 and books will be available to purchase.
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Questions are in bold with Minbiole's answers below.
Chapter 7 details the fascinating creation of the groundbreaking but unconventional Big Bertha driver. Ely Callaway swam against the current in his own company on this project, with others pushing back on the name and sound. What does this tell us about the man’s vision and boldness?
"Mr. Callaway had a deep and intense belief that every product could be improved upon if given enough attention by those inclined towards the effort of enhancement. In every facet of his career, he strove to either improve existing products and services (very clearly represented in his exploits in textiles and wine production) or create products that proved to be uncharted and completely unexpected.
"The golf industry provided a sea of sameness when Mr. Callaway entered that arena in 1982 and he committed his efforts to change the golf equipment business despite the industry competitors and the governing body striving to limit ingenuity. Both the club itself as well as the name "Big Bertha" signaled a massive change in design, sound, playability and identity for his company. He was willing to take what would be viewed by others as significant risks but his confidence in performance was based on his trust in his people, their design ingenuity and his self-assuredness as a marketer and salesperson.
MORE MONARREZ: Detroit Tigers' expectations are high this year; they look like they might live up to them
You were interviewed by Ely Callaway and got to know him over the years. How does this book best capture his personality?
"The book is incredibly authentic as it is composed almost completely in Mr. Callaway’s own words. He was a fantastic storyteller who could easily impress any audience he could gather to not only hear him speak but be motivated to action by his words. This book illustrates fully his business beliefs and maxims and paints the picture of how others with similar drive, commitment and desire can succeed in their chosen business or life itself.
"Those, like me, who were fortunate to work for and alongside Mr. Callaway heard him speak frequently and he built upon his ideals to forge our success. "Good Ethics is Good Business" was a stalwart mantra we were not only taught but witnessed from our leader. He urged us to tell the truth, be direct and thoughtful with our customers and to act responsibly and we had his example to follow."
Speaking of capturing his personality, the audiobook uses artificial intelligence to replace Ely Callaway’s own voice to narrate the book. How close does A.I. Ely come to the real thing?
"Mr. Callaway was born in LaGrange, Georgia, and his accent and dialect, while clearly emerging from the South, was specifically his. There are some amazing videos on YouTube of Mr. Callaway starring in some of the commercials we ran for the company. His voice, his cadence and his manner of speaking were all his own and were immediately recognizable to all of us who worked for him and certainly to those who knew him well.
"When I first heard the AI representation of Mr. Callaway I was shocked, bewildered, freaked out and then thrilled. While AI has created some level of discomfort in some of its applications, I am proud to say that the segments I have heard that were AI-produced are impossible to discern as different from the voice I knew so well. Nicholas Callaway vowed he would not proceed forward with the AI–created audio book (the first of its kind) if he could sense the voice was not authentic. I may prove at first to be a little unnerved when I hear the entire book in Mr. Callaway’s voice but I am sure the memories will prove overpowering and I will be brought back to my years working for him."
There aren’t a ton of Michigan connections in the book, but I got a kick out of the passage detailing the Callaway commercial with Detroit rock legend Alice Cooper and a snake. Did they become friends and was there no boundary the man wouldn’t cross to sell product?
"I remain always proud of the ingenuity behind everything Mr. Callaway did with his golf company. Celebrity endorsements were a powerful tool for Callaway Golf and Mr. Callaway strove to reach any potential golfer in the audience. There exists some discrepancy over the initial idea for the Alice Cooper commercial featuring Johnny Miller, The Tuttle II putter and Coop’s snake. Regardless of the original author, having Alice Cooper, a proud native of East Detroit and the Father of Shock Rock, endorsing Callaway Golf equipment was completely authentic as the former Vincent Furnier long ago traded in his substance addiction for golf.
"I have had the good fortune to play more than 20 rounds of golf with Alice as his partnership with Callaway is only slightly shorter than my own, which reinforces the partnership between Mr. Callaway and Coop. I can assure all golfers that he can play, he has a low single-digit handicap, he plays nearly 300 rounds a year and is a “real golfer” whose product selection was worthy of displaying and generating consumer buy-in."
Contact Carlos Monarrez: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Callaway book details Alice Cooper's snake ad and birth of Big Bertha
Continue reading...
