Over the past few months we've gone outside the ropes and looked at individuals who have made a noticeable impact upon the game without so much as hitting a shot. We introduced our readers to the woman who used to make puppets and then took some great advice and started making golf club head covers instead. Her niche Southern California and Arizona business exploded in April of 1997 when one of her Tiger head covers made numerous camera appearances during Tiger Woods maiden major championship romp at that year's Masters. Such was the story of the ever popular Daphne's Head Covers and Jane Spicer.
John Mallinger was a journeyman golfer who turned professional after a college career at Long Beach State University. Mallinger spent a lot of time as a bubble boy who found himself on one side or the other of the top 125 exempt players. That meant he saw time on the Hooters Tour and the Nationwide Tour in an attempt to get back on the big tour, a somewhat recurring aspect of his career. Mallinger had a friend who was interested in making an investment in the business of golf. Mallinger introduced the friend to Travis Matthew Johnson, a golfing friend and a former UCLA golfer who was designing a line of high end golf clothing. All three invested heavily in the business and Mallinger talked his PGA Tour friends into wearing the shirts. Fifteen years after Tiger won his first Masters, Bubba Watson was in the hunt for his first green jacket at the 2012 Masters. Millions of viewers were introduced to the Travis Matthew apparel line as Watson won that year's Masters in overtime. The three golfing friends sold Travis Matthew for just south of $200 million to golfing giant Callaway five years ago.
While brand new golfing soft goods such as animal head covers and clothing oftentimes can find popularity with the consumer, seldom does it happen in the world of golf club manufacturing. Decade after decade, companies such as Titleist, Ping, Taylor Made, Callaway, Cobra, Spaulding, and Wilson have been able to sit at the big kids table. Yet Bob Parsons has been spending the last 10 years trying to elbow his way to the top of club-making. He is having a great deal of success in making his golf clubs and golf balls popular with the playing public.
Bob Parsons is a multi-millionaire philanthropist who might not be a household name, but has had an impact upon our world for the last 40 years. He was born in Baltimore in 1950. His father was a furniture salesman at Montgomery Ward and his mother was a homemaker. Parsons describes himself as "an awful student." He states that he flunked fifth grade but that he simply ignored the decision and showed up the following autumn in a sixth grade classroom.
He didn't flunk out of high school and upon graduation Bob entered the Unites States Marine Corps. He was a Delta Company rifleman and saw active duty in Vietnam. Parsons was badly injured in 1969, spent two months at a Naval hospital, and was subsequently awarded the Purple Heart. A more motivated student after his left military service, Parsons graduated from the University of Baltimore in 1975 with a degree in accounting. He then began a career in business working in the areas of IT and software sales.
In 1984, a mere nine years after graduating magna cum laude from Baltimore, Parsons founded Parsons Technology. His company started out small as Parsons developed and sold a home accounting program called MoneyCounts. His technology offerings were popular with the buying public, he ultimately had 1,000 employees working for him, and 10 years after he founded Parsons Technology, he sold it to Intuit for $64 million.
Parsons next venture was an internet domain and web-hosting company that went by the name of GoDaddy. Parsons advertised extensively, had race car driver Danica Patrick serve as a spokes-person for the business, and once again found lightning in a bottle. Parsons sold a majority of GoDaddy to a private equity company in 2011 and finalized the entire deal in 2014. He made a fortune on the GoDaddy sale as evidenced by the fact that Forbes Magazine listed Bob Parsons among its Wealthiest 400. He was number 378. At that time he and his wife, Renee, joined Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet in the Giving Pledge Foundation, donating 50% of their earnings to charity. Although he was well into his 60s, Parsons stayed super active as he founded YAM Worldwide and got involved in the world of real estate, power sports, motorcycle dealerships, and the Scottsdale National Golf Club. He rebuilt a new clubhouse as well as another 18 holes at Scottsdale National.
Although no one would ever compare the golf game of Bob Parsons to seven time major winner Ben Hogan, Parsons claimed he decided to start a golf equipment company for the same reason that Hogan gave to the press some 65 years earlier. Parsons contended that he was a golf nut who didn't like his choices when it came to golf club purchases. He formed Parsons Xtreme Golf, or PXG Golf, and contended that he wanted to "design and develop the finest golf clubs ever made." Parsons induced long time Ping Golf Director of Engineering Brad Schweigert to jump ship and come to PXG as its Chief Product Officer. Parsons' one directive to Schweigert was that he had no time for budget restraints. With that mantra, PXG came out with beautiful looking irons in January 2015 and the clubs were endorsed by American Ryder Cupper Ryan Moore. To the buying public, they were expensive, but they also got lots of accolades for the way the ball jumped off the clubface. They were metallic black and they looked great.
Since then PXG has expanded into making other clubs like drivers, metal woods, and hybrids. They introduced upper end golf balls last summer to the buying public. As the tournament director of last summer's Lake County Amateur Golf Championship, I gave out a sleeve of the newly offered PXG golf balls as a tee prize to the contestants. I had read a lot of good things about the PXG ball. I got immediate feedback from two time Amateur champ Juan Lopez who played the ball during first round play and compared them favorable to the Titleist ProV1.
Parsons is known to golfers as the bombastic pitch man on television for PXG. He also told LIV golfers that he will no longer have endorsement deals with them because of the Saudi affiliation. And yet he's still as active as ever with a tattoo parlor, a wedding chapel, and serving his foundation with his wife. Simply put, Bob Parsons is the game's Renaissance man.
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