Bob Vokey is one of the game’s great characters. He’s been around for a while but is still as enthusiastic as ever about helping people get the best out of their short games.
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He has made wedges for and fitted some of the greatest-ever players including Lee Trevino, Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy. He also fitted me for some wedges at Bearwood Lakes in 2015. A highlight of both of our careers, I’m sure…
I caught up with the great man at the PGA Show in Orlando…
Where did you grow up?
Montreal, Canada.
How did you first get into golf?
My dad. He was a very good golfer. But when I was growing up and was about 10 or 11, I mainly was playing little league baseball, football and hockey.
My dad wanted me to play but I didn’t find golf a competitive sort of sport at that particular time.
But little did I know, it would evolve to where it is now.
What was your first job in golf?
I opened up a little golf club shop in Fallbrook California then I moved to Vista and Gary Adams came into my golf shop in the early 1980s and wanted me to do the repair work for TaylorMade.
They had just moved to the west coast. I remember Gary walking into my shop saying to me can you have a look at these. They were metalwoods.
I said ‘these aren’t golf clubs they are driving range clubs – they will never, ever replace persimmon woods’. There’s no way that’ll ever, ever happen, I said.
That was one of my many predictions that went wrong.
A couple of years later Gary asked me to come over and work for TaylorMade, so I went – that was 1985.
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At that time I was fortunate to be able to go out on tour and work with the metalwoods and irons and I had a brand of wedges I was trying to push at the time but I wasn’t specialising in wedges – I was a driver type of guy.
