History & Heritage
When the 1949 British Ryder Cup team teed off against the United States at Ganton,
Yorkshire, no fewer than eight members of the team were playing John Letters clubs.
No club manufacturer - before or since - has realized anything like that dominance
in any part of the game. Scottish craftsmanship achieved a target that today’s multinationals
will never come close to reaching.
The early days
The John Letters story began in 1918 with a small works on the north bank of the
River Clyde in Glasgow. Originally Letters Logan & Company, by 1923 the Company
had become known as John Letters, the name that exists to this day.
Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, club making was largely an ancillary
activity to the more lucrative and complicated activity of ball making. However
the advent of the gutty ball gave more scope for club design and with coal and
steel in plentiful supply around the coastal regions of Scotland, professionals
of the day turned their hand to head design and manufacture. By beating raw steel
into shape by hand through the use of rudimentary moulds and presses, small
premises around the great links courses of Fife, Ayrshire, the Lothians and
Angus began to dominate the world of club production.
Being a businessman, rather than a golf professional, John Letters was unusual
in the golf trade and choosing to locate his factory in the industrial heartland
of central Scotland made it doubly so. Therefore from the beginning, there was
something very different about the John Letters business. This may be one of the
reasons why the company grew from strength to strength as the century progressed,
while other great club makers like Forgan, Tom Morris and Nicoll, began to fall
by the wayside.
John Letters made steady progress through the ‘20s and ‘30s and its proprietor
proved himself to be a shrewd businessman, always ready to try new ideas and
techniques. The Company was one of the first to experiment with steel shafts
while the rest of the British Industry lost ground to the USA by insisting on
remaining faithful to hickory. The readiness to innovate was to prove John Letters’
greatest strength. By1939, the John Letters company had become established as a
club maker of note, but real breakthroughs came in the post war era.
The Golden Years
In 1946, John Letters introduced the Golden Goose putter. It is always a matter
of dispute which came first - The Golden Goose or the Bullseye - but, whichever
way round, they were destined to dominate the game on their respective sides of
the Atlantic for the next twenty years. During the ‘40s and ‘50s in Europe, it
was very difficult to find any player of note who did not carry a Golden Goose,
even today’s great exponents of the putting game continue to use the putter to
their benefit.
Already riding high on the success of the Golden Goose, the John Letters place
in the club makers’ Hall of Fame was secured in 1947, with the launch of the
now legendary Master Model. In that same year, the great Irish Golfer Fred
Daly used the Master Model to win The Open and the British Matchplay Championship,
Europe’s two premier golfing events at the time. Immediately thereafter the Master
Model became the club that everyone wanted to play.
It wasn't just the professionals in the game that chose to play John Letters
There followed a decade of unparalleled success for the John Letters Company.
Throughout Europe, nearly every professional and leading amateur was playing 
John Letters clubs through choice. Unlike today, when players’ loyalties are
purchased for hard cash, forty years ago, players were more likely to select
the clubs they wanted to play with and then negotiate a modest retainer. More
selected John Letters than all the other brands put together.
Fred Daly, Dai Rees, Lee Trevino, Cathy Panton, Bernard Gallacher, Sam Torrance,
Gary Player and Paul Lawrie are among the great names in golf who played and won
with John Letters.
clubs,
top entertainers around the world also selected the brand because of its reputation
for quality and innovation. Ertha Kitt, Danny Kaye, Jack Lemmon, Judy Garland and
Sean Connery are amongst some of the celebrities who have played John Letters clubs
and the biggest of them all, Frank Sinatra, played John Letters clubs during most
of his golfing life.
Fred Daly
Fred Daly (11 October 1911 – 18 November 1990) was a Northern Irish Professional golfer who
was best known for winning The Open Championship of 1947 at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake.
Born in Portrush, County Antrim, he was the only Irishman from either side of the border to have
won The Open until Pádraig Harrington won it in 2007.
He won the Open in 1947 playing John Letters golf clubs while professional to the Balmoral Club
in Belfast. His winning score of 293 saw him home by a single stroke from Frank Stranahan (an amateur)
and R W Horne.
During his acceptance speech at Royal Liverpool, Daly said he was very honoured to receive the
Claret Jug and take it back to Northern Ireland. He went on to say that the trophy had never
been to Ireland and that he was hoping that the change of air would help it. There was much
applause and laughter at his humorous comments.
In addition he added the News of the World Match Play tournament which was the main British
Match Play Championship, becoming the first golfer since James Braid (1905) to win both the
Open and the Match Play title in the same year.
Daly went on to play in the Ryder Cup in 1947, 1949, 1951 and 1953.
A time for change
In 1983 Dunlop moved its club making operations to England, leaving John Letters
Scottish manufacturing facility threatened with closure and oblivion. The family
spirit which had created the company now came to its rescue and two members of the
Letters family - Jimmy and Hope - brought it back under family control - until
their retirement in the early ‘90s.
During the 80s and early 90s, time was taken to take stock of Letters position
in the modern golf industry. Craftsmanship and quality were no longer enough. So
John Letters responded in typical fashion. Heavy on craft expertise, but short on
technical input, the company rectified this by forging links with the universities
of St Andrews and Glasgow, two of Scotland’s oldest and most revered seats of
learning. A detailed programme of research and development was instigated using
the latest computer techniques and dynamic models; new materials were investigated
to anticipate future development strategies, and John Letters moved back to the
forefront of the game.
New Spirit
This new spirit produced a series of new models, which created string of notable
firsts for the company. Trilogy became the first matching set of irons to include
cavity backed long irons and bladed short irons when first launched in 1989. The
TRILOGY TXD IRONS encompassed all the best features of its predecessors and is
enhanced with oversize playability.
The innovative spirit at John Letters is was very evident with the design and
introduction of the Tri-Logic 4.25 putter, the first vertically and horizontally
balanced putter. In addition, the launch of the TRILOGY TXD Driver took the golfing
community by storm with its striking appearance and exceptional performance.
Strength to strength
Heading into the new Millennium, it was time again to take stock of John Letters’ position within the industry.
Due to mass production of clubs by other manufacturers and an increase in imports from the Asian market this exceptional
company could not compete in it’s current form any more. A successful new owner in 2005 saved the company from obscurity
and now looks forward to reproducing its golden years again. With the introduction of the T2 Square Driver and the new T7+
range, the company is pushing the limits of club design and going from strength to strength.
In May 2010 John Letters Golf signed Sam Torrance OBE, European Tour legend and Ryder Cup captain, in a multi-year
professional contract, 40 years after he signed his first professional contract with John Letters.
Sam, 42 time winner, will become John Letters Golf brand ambassador and carry John Letters on the
European and US Senior Tours.
