…and it’s great to be back.

This column marks the return of “The Wedge Guy” to the golf landscape. Many of you might know I wrote a bi-weekly column under this moniker from 2003 until 2010, when my life got much too busy with the introduction of SCOR Golf, and then compounded by leading the effort to resurrect the Ben Hogan brand to the golf equipment space. With the demands of those two start-ups, there just wasn’t enough bandwidth to give my best to the writing that I like so much.

But after two-plus years of “semi-retirement,” I am excited to be resuming my pontifications on the game of golf and all it embraces. This will now be a weekly column on GolfWRX, a site I respect as a leader with meaningful and enlightening reporting on our great game.

My singular goal for this column is to engage each other with thoughtful dives into any aspect of the game that interests us, as well as those topics and questions that confuse or confound us. Nothing is off limits, and I invite all of you to submit questions or topics for me to address in future columns, as well as to join the dialog after each column. You can direct those questions and suggestions to me at [email protected].

As you would expect, I am always drawn to the nuances of scoring – chipping, pitching, putting and overall wedge play. I love the strategic and tactical side of the game and have always been a student of the game, from history to architecture to instruction, with the latter being a favorite topic. I will gladly and freely offer the insight and objectivity that a lifetime in the game and over 40 years in the industry have provided me.

For those of you who don’t know me very well, let me give you a brief tour of my lifetime in the game and this industry.

In all honesty, I don’t remember life before golf. I feel blessed to have been raised on a little 9-hole golf course in south Texas, by a father who loved the game and was good at it. We also had a wonderful golf professional, Carl Gustafson, who gave a whole generation of us a sturdy foundation in the game.

I should also add that I was that inquisitive kid who usually took his toys apart to see how they worked. It helped that I was at my father’s side when he built custom rifles, reloaded ammunition, refinished gun stocks, and took our fishing reels apart each season to thoroughly clean them. Regripping golf clubs and taking care of our persimmon woods was regular duty.

A few years after college (BBA Marketing, 1974, Texas A&M), I joined an advertising agency and called on the Ray Cook putter company in San Antonio. That set me off on this 40-year journey in the equipment industry. I had the thrill and honor to work with some great craftsmen who willingly shared their knowledge; I was a sponge for learning all about golf clubs and their function. I designed my first putter in the mid-1980s and dove into wedge design a few years later. I patented a sole with two bounce angles in 1993 and have incorporated that design into wedges for Merit Golf, Reid Lockhart, EIDOLON, SCOR, and Ben Hogan. History will show that I was pushing the CG in wedges higher before anyone else and that I pioneered progressive weighting in wedges with the SCOR line in 2010 and the TK wedges by Ben Hogan in 2014.

At SCOR, we were the first to put huge emphasis on wedge-fitting and how important the shaft was to that process. We built “scoring clubs” in every loft from 41 to 61 degrees to allow infinite precision in gap management and fitting. At Ben Hogan, I expanded that every-loft concept to two sets of irons – the FT. Worth blades and PTx models (though that company later abandoned that concept) as well as the VKTR hybrids.

These days, in semi-retirement, I fish much more, but am still exploring how I might make an impact on the industry by pushing the envelope. I am very excited about this new gig and interacting with you all regularly.

So, welcome to “The Wedge Guy.” Let’s get started sharing information that I hope will help you hit better golf shots more often and put lower numbers up on your scorecards.

Next Tuesday, I plan to write about wedge shafts and why they are so important. Hope you tune in and sound off.

Until then…