I was just as excited about him winning those back-to-back amateurs as I was when won the 1991 Masters with one of my putters. I have a friend of mine here in Selma,, who has won back-to-back Alabama Senior Amateurs with the Tadpole putter that is now being produced by Orlimar. And to me, whether it's an amateur or professional, seeing the person improve their game is very, very exciting. Then as I started to do more work for professionals and better amateurs it really became rewarding. I would get a response to it and that was great. When I was first designing putters, it was for friends or professionals that I knew. MOORE: I think this is one of the things that is the most enjoyable part of designing a golf club and, in particular, designing a putter. Q.: Can you describe the satisfaction of seeing your designs in the hands of players, especially when those clubs are helping their game? I also got to know the principal of the company, John Runyon, and so I thought "Well, this would be something great to try and do." And that was an interesting challenge to me. And how the company had kind of gone by the wayside and now these gentlemen have an interest in revitalizing and making it a viable product once again. I remember very well, the great Orlimar tri-metal fairway woods and the drivers that became a kind of cult thing. When I went to work for Maxfli in 1989, they didn't have any golf clubs in play, so it was a matter of resurrecting that worldwide brand, particularly here in the United States. ![]() MOORE: I had never stopped designing and I was doing other work for companies. Q.: What intrigued you most about designing a new putter series for Orlimar? MOORE: Somewhere around 1994 or '95 up to around 2000 everything went to that direction. It's really changed the making of golf clubs. So things were done by hand, and those very same things are now being done on a computer with the utilization of a wax machine or one that would make a resin image replica of what you have designed. If it was an iron, I would get a rough forging, and I would grind it to shape, I would weld on added material that I would then grind and shape. In my case, if it was a putter, I would actually go to the milling machine and lathe and make it. It has changed how golf clubs are made forever, because before that we were basically drawing the item on a drawing board or on a pad of paper and then we would go and make the item. I think Dick Helmstetter and Callaway may have been the first to really revolutionize and use that. They would modify them for their use and design, and very easily transfer that into a machine that would create a wax mold that they could then cast a golf club head from. I think Callaway may have been the first, in that they were able to take a computer design that was generated through digitizing of other golf clubs. MOORE: I think the biggest change, and it took place in a matter of few years, was the use of computers in the designing of golf clubs. Q.: We could talk for hours about the changes in club designing over the past 50 years, but in your opinion what has or have been the biggest? I was very mechanically inclined and very curious about how things were made. ![]() So the idea of taking and making a better golf club came from that. ![]() As I got older, my dad had an appliance business and he would bring home the latest, greatest radio or something and I would be the guy who would take it apart to see how it worked. And back then, in the '20s, '30s and '40s, that guy was also the builder of clubs and he did repairs of clubs for people who played there. When I was up and walking and someone could look after me, I ended up pretty much in the care of the person who took care of the clubroom where the bags were stored. īack then there weren't swimming pools and all these different activities for kids to do. ![]() She was a very good player, and when I was born in 1941, she was already 35 years of age and was not about to give up her golf. MOORE: What got me interested in it was my mother. Briefly, how did you get started and what was the appeal? Q.: You have been designing clubs dating back to 1963, more than a half century. Limiting Moore, 73, who has more than 50 years of experience, to just 10 minutes on the topic of clubmaking was leaving too many questions on the table, to today's interview is the first of two parts with The Golf Wire's Stuart Hall. In August, Moore signed with Orlimar to design a Signature Series of putters. Tad Moore is a name synonymous with clubmaking. My friend Tad Moore did an interview with golfwire.
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