Driving Reign

By James Willwerth/Carlsbad, with reporting by Jane Van Tassel/New York

BINK! WHEN THE CALLAWAY GOLF CO.'S ULTRA-ENGINEERED Big Bertha driver connects with a common golf ball, the space-age sound is no auditory accident. Forget thwack or clink -- think of a high-performance computer firing up. The low- tech ball, meanwhile, has landed 20 to 30 yds. farther down the fairway than you expected. "I've played for 61 years," says 12-handicapper Thomas Dight, 76, a retired Long Island, New York, school superintendent who prowls the links all summer long in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. "I've never seen anything like it."

Nor has the golf industry. Two years after joining a market cluttered by ; clubs of every description, Big Bertha has become the world's best-selling driver. Named for the legendary World War I megacannon, the hollow, oversize "metalwood" has found almost universal acceptance. Bill Clinton and George Bush use it, as do many golf-tour professionals -- even those without endorsement contracts. Bertha's manufacturer, meanwhile, has doubled sales of all its products four years running, topping $132 million last year, with profits tripling to $19.3 million. FORTUNE now rates Callaway as the 14th fastest-growing company in the U.S.

Behind the bink is Ely (pronounced E-lee) Callaway, 74, a Georgia-born supersalesman with L.B.J.-style hound-dog ears and aggressive charm. Already wealthy and successful at 54, he left the presidency of Burlington Industries to buy a 150-acre vineyard in Temecula, California. Rather than sit around and watch his grapes grow, Callaway developed top-grade wines and promoted them by traveling and offering low-cost oenophile seminars to hotel and restaurant employees. By 1982 Callaway was selling 73,000 cases annually.

Time for another fantasy retirement. Callaway sold his vineyard at a handsome profit to Hiram Walker & Sons, then bought a tiny golf-club company that made classic hickory-shafted wedges and putters. Under his tutelage, sales soon boomed. That was merely the tee-off. After introducing a popular line of neckless irons, he hit upon the idea of Big Bertha. Callaway replaced an existing graphite club head with a hollow stainless-steel design weighted most heavily around the edges. "Perimeter weighting" gave Bertha a sweet spot like that of an oversize tennis racquet. Since hollow clubs already on the market were cracking too easily, Callaway improved the casting molds and added spines on the inner striking wall to diffuse shock waves. A onetime club champion who still hits a respectable drive, Callaway took Bertha out for testing and found he could loft the ball, straight and true, from a fairway lie. "I figured if I can do that," he explains, "it would please a lot of people."

Including some future stockholders. Callaway took his company public in February 1992. The stock market hasn't seen anything quite like it since. He offered 3 million shares at $20 a share. Twenty-seven minutes later, the stock hit a stunning $36 a share. It has since split 2 for 1, and was selling last week at $57. "In a lousy economy, we've been quite an impressive little company," boasts Callaway. Bink!