Local Golf Club Designer Jesse Ortiz
by Ed Attansasio
I always enjoy hearing great success stories about local people who've made it. Jesse Ortiz is a good example?a Galileo High School and University of San Francisco graduate who's made it big in the sport of golf as one of the world's premier golf club designers. Ortiz began his club designing career as a teenager in 1968 with guidance from his father Lou, founder of Orlimar Golf. Together, Jesse and Lou hand-crafted golf clubs for many of golf's greatest, from Ken Venturi to Johnnie Miller. The Ortiz' became personal craftsmen for Northern California's finest golf professionals. While at Orlimar, he designed and developed many successful products introduced by the company, including the TriMetal? fairway metal line, widely considered to be among the most lucrative and innovative ever introduced.
It was consistently ranked among the top fairway metals by professional PGA Tour and senior PGA Tour players in Darrell Surveys. Before leaving Orlimar, Jesse introduced the critically acclaimed TriMetal? HipTi Driver, which featured not only the thinnest conforming face in golf, but also the strongest and most rigid. Jesse's metal wood innovations propelled sales from $1.5 million to $100 million in the late 1990s. Since 1998, over 700 PGA professional players have used Ortiz clubs in tournament play. During this period, Ortiz's name has become synonymous with high-quality woods and fairway metals design. In 2004, the Jesse Ortiz Design Studio partnered with the upstart Bobby Jones Golf Company, and resounding success has followed. Driven by the commercial and critical triumph of the Bobby Jones Hybrid by Jesse Ortiz, the Bobby Jones Players Series by Jesse Ortiz continues to benefit from heavy media acclaim and increasing sales. In 2008 after nearly four years in the workshop, Jesse launched a revolutionary new 460cc driver and a collection of technology-shaping wedges for Bobby Jones Golf. In 1999, Jesse received the International Network of Golf Business Achievement Award and was recognized as the Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California by Ernst & Young.
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