Karsten
Solheim was born in Bergin, Norway,
on 15th September, 1911. The family emigrated to the United States
and settled in Seattle. He worked with his father as a shoemaker but
had ambitions of becoming a mechanical aeronautical engineer.
In 1945 he became a research engineer at the Ryan Aeronautical Corporation
where he worked on Fireball jet fighter plane. Later he joined Convair
as a project engineer for the Atlas missile's first ground guidance
system. He then moved to General Electric, where he had a hand in
the design of the company's early portable televisions. In 1956 he
joined a team of engineers working on the production of the first
banking computer system.
Solheim took a keen interest in golf and in the garage at his home
in Phoenix began working on his ideas for a new kind of putter. He
made a number of playable prototypes, and eventually designed the
world's first heel-toe balanced putter. It was named ping because
of the sound it made at ball contact.
In 1959 Solheim founded the Karsten Manufacturing Corporation. However,
the clubs that Solheim was making took a while to gain acceptance
from golf shops and professional players and he remained with General
Electric until 1961.
The breakthrough came when Julius Boros won the PGA Tour's Phoenix
Open using Solheim's Anser putter. Boros remarked afterwards: "The
putter looks like a bunch of nuts and bolts welded together but the
ball goes in the hole." Within a few years Solheim's putters
were being used by professional golfers all over the world.
After the success of his putter, Solheim began working on improving
the design of other golf clubs. He was the first to use investment
casting in order to improve the consistency of irons. He also developed
the concept of perimeter weighting, which distributes the weight of
the iron to the outer edges to increase the sweet spot and allow more
room for error. By the 1980s Solheim's Ping Eye model irons became
the No. 1 seller in the history of golf.
A great supporter of women's golf, Solheim sponsored LPGA tournaments
in Oregon, Arizona and Massachusetts. In 1990 he founded the Solheim
Cup, a biennial transatlantic team competition between the women of
America and Europe.
Solheim developed Parkinson's disease and in 1995 John Solheim replaced
his father as president of company that now employed over 800 people.
Karsten Solheim died in Phoenix, Arizona on 16th February, 2000.
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