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Spike on Golf: Sad day for Orlimar as Ortiz is out of the family business
In Hollywood, movie monsters often turn on their creators. Likewise the Tri-Metal monster turned on Orlimar Golf.

By Steve Pike, PGA.com Senior Writer
05.01.2003 03:41 pm (EST)

In a couple of months, Jesse Ortiz will take his first vacation in three years -- a trip to Mexico to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary. And while the trip promises to be relaxing and therapeutic, chances are Ortiz++s Basque blood will still boil for the golf industry. In fact, I guarantee it.

Jesse Ortiz, understand, has spent virtually his life in the golf industry. His early years were spent at the feet and side of his father, Lou, a San Francisco-area clubmaker who fashioned clubs for the likes of Arnold Palmer, Ken Venturi and Johnny Miller.

More than 40 years ago, Lou Ortiz and his partners Pedro Liendo and Emelio Martinez founded the company now known as Orlimar Golf. The company carved a nice niche for itself among better players, especially with its Diamond sole persimmon fairway woods.

A nice family business. But in 1997, things changed dramatically. Jesse Ortiz, by then a well-respected club designer in his own right, created a monster. It was called Tri-Metal. This multi-material line of fairway woods helped spark a revolution in the fairway woods market that was felt from Fairhaven, Mass., to Carlsbad, Calif.

In 1996, the year before the Tri-Metal revolution, Orlimar Golf had seven employees and sales of around $1.2 million. Three years later, Tri-Metal metal woods (drivers and fairway woods) brought Orlimar Golf to approximately $80 million in sales. The monster had been born. Orlimar and Tri-Metal fairway woods were the toast of the equipment industry. Even equipment tycoon and master marketer Ely Callaway grumbled about the business the one-time small company from Hayward, Calif., was taking from his behemoth Callaway Golf Co.

In Hollywood, movie monsters often turn on their creators. Likewise the Tri-Metal monster turned on Orlimar. The company, despite its huge jump in sales, simply didn++t have the infrastructure to support such quick growth and didn++t have the financial resources to afford a big-time sales and marketing campaign.

In other words, no matter how hard it tried, Orlimar could not afford to feed the monster it created. Ortiz readily admits mistakes were made in that quest. Orlimar tried to get into the iron business. It tried infusions of money from men who became directors. It tried a golf ball. Remember the Orlimar golf ball in a can?

When you don++t have the capital to advertise and market correctly, you++re always swimming upstream,++++ Ortiz told PGA.com in one of the few interviews he has given since his resignation last week.

Ortiz certainly paddled as hard as he could to keep the company++s head above water. But in the end, nothing he could do was going to be enough. As Orlimar++s secured creditor, La Salle Bank of Chicago last week essentially took ownership of Orlimar Golf. Ortiz resigned rather than watch the bank shop around the company his father started.

The company has been struggling for a long time (sales in 2002 reportedly fell to only $15 million) so the board of directors thought the best thing was to put it up for sale,++++ Ortiz said.

Orlimar Golf Company is continuing to operate. It recently began shipping the new Tri-Metal II line of fairway woods, which not surprisingly, Ortiz calls superior to the originals. But now the man whose design sold more than two million units over the past five years is gone from the only company he has ever known.

The business is my life,++++ Ortiz said. The industry is in my blood. It supported us for 40 years. It++s a sad day.++++

Indeed. But don++t wave good-bye to Jesse Ortiz yet. He++s down but not out. As good a club designer as he is, Jesse Ortiz is a better human being, a man able to find some sunshine even in the darkest hours.

I can stop commuting,++++ from Orlimar headquarters in Vista, Calif., to his home in the Bay Area. It was beating me up. United Airlines isn++t going to be too happy with me, though.++++

That trip to Mexico? That++s as far out as Ortiz is planning these days.

I++m going to chill out for a couple of months, re-charge my batteries,++++ Ortiz said.

That Basque blood, however, won++t ever chill.