The big OEMs of the time like Wilson, MacGregor and others made forged clubs. Meanwhile, Lynx continued making noise as investment casting was starting to take over the golf business. He went on to found Pinseeker Golf and later the John Riley Company and would create a metal-faced wooden driver and later patented the very first fully metal driver. While details are sketchy, Riley either left or was forced out of the partnership within a year. It also brought custom spec builds to the masses and it revolutionized off-course distribution.Īll was not well with the Riley-Ross partnership, however. It was the first investment-cast iron that sold in mass quantities, Hoeflich told us. In a MyGolfSpy article from 2011, former Tommy Armour, TaylorMade and Nickent executive John Hoeflich cited the Master Model as one of the most important golf innovations of the modern era. Remember that first truly successful investment-cast iron we mentioned? That would be the first iron Lynx produced, the 1972 Master Model. That’s an awful lot of English Rileys connected to the Lynx name. While we don’t know for sure of a familial connection, we do know history hates coincidences. We can find no direct, uhh, links between John Riley, the Riley Car Company, the Lynx Car Company and Bob Riley on the worldwide web. Those two Ford employees were John Mills and … wait for it … Bob Riley. By 1969, British Leyland stopped making Rileys.Īlso in the late 1960s, two Ford employees started their own open-wheeled race car company called the Lynx Car Company. By the late ‘40s, Riley merged with British sports car maker MG and that group eventually became part of the British Leyland Motor Corporation. Riley made everything from little sports cars to Rolls Royce wannabees. The Riley Car Companyįrom 1926 to 1938, the Coventry, England-based Riley Car Company made and sold a slick little British roadster called the Riley Lynx. While it might be easy to say the name “Lynx” is a play on words with “links,” the real story might be a tad more interesting. with partner Carl Ross, a former sales manager for the Arnold Palmer Golf Company. In 1961, Riley emigrated to the United States to take an engineering job as a tooling specialist with PING.īy the end of the decade, Riley had designs on striking out on his own. John Riley was one of the U.K.’s top amateur golfers in the 1950s, playing out of the Accrington Club in northern England. The internet is a little hazy when it comes to the birth of Lynx but the story actually starts where the brand currently sits, in England. Just how did Lynx start and how did it get its name? But would it surprise you to know that the first truly successful investment-cast club was designed and sold by Lynx?īut before we go there, let’s start at the beginning. Today it’s pretty much accepted in golf canon that Karsten Solheim is the man who made investment-cast irons a thing. History, it’s said, is written by the victors. History’s Mysteries: The First Life of Lynx Golf So let’s jump in the time machine, buckle up and take a trip back in time. The company’s journey from disruptive early ‘70s innovator to corporate cog to mothballed store brand to European niche is a fascinating one. By our count, the current iteration of Lynx is its eighth. The lynx, of course, is a feline and we all know cats have their allotted nine lives. Today’s look back should be an adventure. It’s our effort to look back at some of golf’s bygone brands and find out what happened to them and why. Welcome to another edition of History’s Mysteries.
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