Carl Paul, Golfsmith co-founder, died at 82

AUSTIN, Texas — Earlier than cell telephones turned a necessary a part of every day life, of us making an attempt to trace down Carl Paul on a Sunday knew precisely how you can do it.

“It was simple — you simply needed to name his work telephone,” mentioned Barry Rinke, Paul’s son-in-law. “He was all the time at his desk, even on Sunday. He beloved what he did. It was by no means about cash for him. It was about loving what he did.”

What Paul did was take an avocation — a knack for custom-producing golf golf equipment — and create one of many largest forces on the planet of golf, Golfsmith. Co-founded along with his spouse, Barbara, Golfsmith began within the household’s two-bedroom condo, forcing the couple’s daughters to maneuver in with them. However by the point it was offered in 2002, Golfsmith grew from that bed room to 35 brick-and-mortar retail shops throughout the nation, using 1,200 folks and boasting a catalog distribution of 30 million per yr, making it the most important golf retail and part catalog on the planet.

However to know Paul, who died on January 12 on the age of 83, was to grasp that his ardour was all the time round constructing a group. Household was important to Paul, and so was his prolonged household of clubmakers that stretched out over the globe. When Carl and Barbara began the Golfsmith clubmaker’s faculty in Austin, Texas, they usually invited these taking the weeklong seminar into their residence.

“Years later, we began internet hosting a convention, and we’d have 500 prospects from everywhere in the world in Austin,” mentioned Rinke, who labored for the household enterprise for 17 years. “An enormous proportion would say, ‘Yeah, I bear in mind staying with Carl and Barbara of their home.’ It really was a household. He touched so many lives.”

Extremely, Paul used S&H inexperienced stamps — a rewards program from a bygone period — to buy the drill that received the method began within the couple’s New York Metropolis-area residence. On the time, Paul labored for the Federal Energy Fee and was moonlighting within the club-making enterprise.

Carl Paul moved to Austin in 1973. The co-founder of Golfsmith died on the age of 83 on Jan. 12. (Photograph: contributed by Paul household)

Paul provided his brother Frank a one-third stake within the enterprise, and shortly after, he determined to give up his job, transfer the household to Austin and switch his interest right into a profession. The transfer paid large dividends.

“Carl was an advocate of taking calculated dangers. That’s what he did with the transfer,” Rinke mentioned. “And as issues began to develop, he stored this a household enterprise. He had unimaginable instincts, took calculated dangers and employed the perfect folks he may discover.

“He was only a man who lived by his intestine emotions. And when he began fixing and constructing golf equipment, he would see how different folks had the identical want to repair and construct their golf equipment, and the way it may turn out to be a small enterprise for a lot of of those folks.”

Rinke turned a part of the household by marrying Beth Paul, a golfer who starred at Westwood Excessive College in Austin earlier than taking part in for the College of Texas. In 1985, Rinke recollects speaking with Carl Paul concerning the firm’s 108 staff after which booming $8 million in gross sales.

“We thought, ‘Oh gosh, this simply can’t get any larger’,” Rinke mentioned.

However when the household offered the enterprise in 2002, gross sales have been closing in on $300 million per yr.

Paul is survived by Barbara, with whom he was married for 58 years, and daughters Beth, Kelly and Marnie.

In September 2016, Golfsmith filed for chapter. A month later, Dick’s Sporting Items acquired Golfsmith for about $70 million at a chapter public sale, in response to a Reuters report.