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In 2012, Jared Doerfler’s father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. That moment, he says, was pivotal to what he finds himself doing now.
Doerfler, a former VP of sales, calls me from his new workplace in rural Iowa. As he speaks, his voice is interrupted by the whirr of machines blasting away at blocks of stainless steel. Doerfler is in his small workshop space, around five minutes from his house.
In there, he has CNC mills where he prepares bespoke putters, ready for them to be shipped out around the USA.
“It’s been a lot of trial and error and to be honest, I’m probably still doing some things wrong,” he says. “There are certainly some things I could do better, but I’ll keep learning and make it more efficient.”
Hanna Golf, Doerfler’s new business, hasn’t been trading long but, in reality, it’s been years in the making. When his father was diagnosed with MS, it set off a chain of events that resulted in him giving up his desk job, emptying his bank account and putting everything into his dream.
“The MS diagnosis, it didn’t really affect my dad too much in the first five or six years,” Doerfler explains. “But he ended up getting progressively worse and he retired last year. It just hit me, like, ‘Wow, that was quick.’
“I remember growing up and playing in the backyard with my parents, doing a lot of things with them. It has profoundly affected me in the sense that he doesn’t get to do the things he wants to do in retirement.
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“I’ve been wanting to start a business for around ten years. I never really had the guts or the courage to do it until now.
“We all say it, ‘life is short’. But, I don’t know, this affected me enough that I knew I should take the risk.
“It sucks. My dad does well mentally but, physically, he’s not good. Life’s short, dude. We’re only on this Earth once. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.”
So, why putters? It goes back to Doerfler’s college days, where he was on the golf team. On the first day of practice, his coach took a look at his putter and told him he needed to change.
The pair went digging in the coach’s office and pulled out a putter that had been sitting for around 15 years. It suited Doerfler’s putting style better and he ended up using it throughout his college years. When the time came to graduate, however, he had to hand it back.
“Every year since, I’ve tried to find that putter,” he says. “eBay, Facebook Marketplace, whatever – I could never find it.”
Faced with no alternative, he decided to rebuild it. Doerfler sketched out the club from memory and sent the drawings to his brother-in-law, who designed the shape in CAD. Those were then sent to a friend in a machine shop. Behold! Doerfler’s first putter design was a reality.
“It was so ugly,” he laughs. “There is no way I could get people to buy that or play it. I would have to pay people to play it. But the point is, I freaking loved that.”
That was then. This is now. As he speaks to bunkered, Doerfler’s brainchild – Hanna Golf – has been trading for three weeks.
“I’m honestly blown away by the support. It’s been amazing and very humbling. There’s a lot of different emotions. Happy, but also overwhelmed. I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to get these all out?’
“My dad’s a business guy and he just looked at me and he said, ‘You’ll figure it out.’ So far, I’ve been figuring it out.”
You might think there’s a manual you need to follow to start building putters but there really isn’t.
Doerfler says he’s self-taught, having spent hours watching YouTube tutorials and trawling forums, where other putter creators discuss the best methods for concocting their products.
“When I got into machining, I thought it was a black and white process,” he says.
“I thought it was going to be straightforward. Machining is a lot like golf. There’s a million different ways to do something well. If you look at all the different swings in pro golf, none are identical but they can all be successful.
“I was probably the worst person to try and come into this kind of job and start this type of business. Before this, I was a VP of sales. I sat behind a desk and if you know anything about sales people, they’re not super technical.”
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Currently, Hanna Golf offers three different kinds of putter, with two of the shapes being familiar to most golfers. Both the mid-mallet, El Reno, and the double wide blade, Amarillo, are common among other manufacturers.
Why then, do golfers go to a bespoke putter company like Hanna, to get a shape that isn’t different from what the big boys offer? It all comes down to the milling process, which creates a ‘buttery’ feel in a putter. It’s a luxury but, for purists, it’s worth the extra cost.
And since Doerfler makes all his putters by hand, he’s had plenty of special requests from friends and golfers on social media. One name however, caught his eye.
After playing in his club’s member-guest event, Doerfler and some friends, who had consumed a few ‘soda-pops,’ found a PGA Tour player’s name in the outgoing putter list.
“I had to get a hold of his agent, just to see what was going on,” Doerfler said of the player, who he’s keeping anonymous.
“There’s probably little chance that he plays it, but you never know.”
While getting the putters in hands of top players is all well and good, that’s not the main objective for Hanna Golf.
“I would love to be able to replace the income from my previous job. That would be the goal of mine,” Doerfler says.
“It’s not like it’s a ton of money, it’s not. I would love to have a dozen CNC mills, a really good team of people, be able to tweak the designs.
“Around the world, there’s two-and-a-half million putters sold every year. I want to cater to more of those golfers.”
• This feature first appeared in issue 215 of bunkered. For more like this, take out a subscription. International subscriptions also available.
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