Colorado New Home for Golf Visionary

The Spirit of Adams Golf is Alive in Colorado Springs

By Jim Bebbington

The founder of one of the most iconic golf manufacturing names of the 1990s and 2000s—Adams Golf—is alive and well and living in Colorado Springs. Barney Adams, 86, moved from Texas to Colorado Springs during retirement and now spends much of the year there in the community surrounding Kissing Camels Golf Course. He divides his time between Colorado and Indian Wells, California, enjoying both places while continuing to stay active in golf equipment innovation. “We really like this area, it has a great feeling to it, people are nice,” he said. “We’re never going to leave Indian Wells (entirely), but this place just rates so well.”

Adams is widely considered the original serial entrepreneur of the golf manufacturing world. He began his career as a field engineer for Corning Glass, a role that shaped his approach to product design. Working directly with customers and seeing how Corning’s products were used taught him to focus on results rather than the item itself. “What that does is get you focused on results; I wasn’t focused on the product,” he explained. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, even as he built his engineering career, Adams was never far from the golf course.

In the 1980s, Adams joined Dave Pelz Golf, and when the company went bankrupt in 1988, he purchased its assets and launched his own company under the Adams name in 1991. The timing could not have been better. Persimmon woods had just been replaced by metal drivers and fairway woods, and golfers everywhere were upgrading their equipment. Adams Golf seized the moment by releasing the Tight Lies fairway wood, which became one of the most recognizable clubs in golf. Backed by heavy marketing, television infomercials, and celebrity endorsements, the brand exploded in popularity. By 1998, Adams Golf had gone public. “People think golf equipment is the products; it’s not,” Adams said. “It’s about marketing.”

Tight Lies fairway woods remain iconic today, with some golfers still posting online about the performance of their 30-year-old clubs. Adams stayed on as chairman until TaylorMade purchased the company in 2012. While the brand has since shifted in and out of the TaylorMade lineup, it reemerged in 2023 with a new line of irons and woods.

Even in his mid-eighties, Adams continues to innovate. He advises his daughter in running a new family business focused on marketing golf club shafts designed to help players keep the clubface square. Though the Adams Golf brand has moved beyond his family’s ownership, he continues to contribute to equipment advancement through Breakthrough Golf Technology (BGT), which he founded in 2015. BGT sells irons, wedges, and woods and recently unveiled the Paradox putter built around their carbon-fiber “Stability” shaft.