Retiree filling niche with custom clubs> Golf business on upswing for Osborne

MILLINOCKET — At an age when most people’s careers are winding down, Charles Osborne of Millinocket is getting into the swing of his.

The retired paper maker is one of a growing number of people from across the country who are building custom golf clubs.

“Its a supplement to my retirement and that is all I really wanted out of it,” said Osborne, who in 1993 opened a shop in his basement.

The 60-year-old Millinocket man has never advertised his business, but he has enough work to keep him busy. “It’s kind of nice to be free at my age,” said Osborne, who will be especially busy building and repairing clubs for the next two months before the holidays and again in the spring.

“You could make a good living from this. There are a lot of people who want these services,” said Osborne.

The Millinocket man isn’t the only one buying club heads, shafts and grips and turning them into sets of customized golf clubs.

The association Osborne belongs to has seen its membership skyrocket from 6,000 to nearly 30,000 members today. The Golf Clubmakers Association is directed and managed by the largest distributor of golf equipment parts in the world, Golfsmith International, Inc., based in Austin, Texas.

Scott Redding, a Golfsmith spokesman, expects sales of golf components will reach $125 million this year.

The GCA isn’t the only golf makers group enjoying a rapid rise in membership. The Professional Clubmakers Society (PCS) based in Louisville, Ky. has grown from 700 members three years ago to 1,600 today.

“It is the fastest growing segment of the golf industry,” said Diane L. Ogie, the executive director of the PCS.

For Osborne, like hundreds of other custom club makers, the business started as a hobby.

“I couldn’t afford the clubs I wanted so I started building my own,” said the avid golfer. That was 10 years ago. Soon family and friends were asking Osborne to fix their clubs. He bought and studied about every available repair and design book. He retired from Great Northern Paper Company’s Millinocket paper mill in 1990 and opened Katahdin Kustom Klubs three years later. He is an accredited GCA club builder.

The hobby has taken over Osborne’s basement. It’s no plush pro shop with racks and racks of ready made clubs. His shelves are filled with boxes and boxes of grips, shafts and club heads. A long narrow strip of carpeting serves as a putting green. Screens cover light fixtures and pads cover a few pipes he has been known to hit while practicing a full swing. The walls are lined with many different kinds of tools and measuring gages he uses to build and repair clubs.

People who buy clubs from Osborne quickly learn there is a lot more to it than just selecting a club off a rack. He measures everything from swing speed, shaft length, the angle of the club and grip size. Osborne says custom made clubs can really help older players by making adjustments to compensate for bad habits.

A golfer has a lot of choices. There are many types of shafts and there are hundreds of types of club heads and grips. Using the many different measurements and selected pieces, Osborne goes to work. Assembling a set of clubs is a labor of love for the 60-year old man.

The executive director of the Professional Clubmakers Society says custom built golf clubs are like a tailor-made suit. “It’s it tailored to you,” Ogie said. The big difference is you pay a lot more for a tailored suit, but less for custom made clubs. “A person is not paying for all of the heavy advertising and to endorse pros,” Ogie said.

Redding says more an more golfers are buying clubs from custom builders like Osborne because they save money and get a set of clubs enabling them to perform better.

Both Ogie and Redding say the custom made club business has grown so much its giving pro and speciality shops a lot of competition, to the point that in the past few years many pro line companies are offering custom fitting.

When Osborne makes a set of clubs, he likes to feel that the golfer has something to help them reach their full game potential. But, he is quick to point out that clubs “will never make you a good golfer, they just help.”