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 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.

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.

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.

It wasn't just the professionals in the game that chose to play 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.