Ellis started collecting in 1974 when he purchased 70 hickory shafted golf clubs at a Goodwill Store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  They were marked $3 each, but the manager was willing to give him a deal if he bought the whole lot.  Ellis purchased all 70 clubs for $70. 

A professional at a local golf club recommended that Ellis contact a man named John Mross, if he wanted to learn more about clubs.  Ellis met with Mross, who asked where he purchased the clubs and for what price.  After listening to Ellis’s response, Mross explained that the clubs were “commons” and worth exactly what he paid for them – a dollar each.  Mross then told Ellis that the Goodwill Store let him look at their clubs each Monday – before they put them out for sale!

Ellis recalls that the best part of his meeting with John Mross was that he brought along some older and more unusual antique clubs which he showed to him.  This was a valuable learning experience for Ellis and one that shaped the course of his collecting over the next 30 years. 

In 1987, Ellis began writing “The Clubmaker’s Art:  Antique Golf Clubs and Their History.”  The volume took ten years to complete and was published in 1997.  “The Clubmaker’s Art: Antique Golf Clubs and Their History” received widespread critical acclaim.  In 1999 “Golf World” named it to its list of the top 10 golf books of the twentieth century.  In 2003, “Travel and Leisure Golf” named it to its list of the top 25 golf books ever written.  Ellis’s second book, “The Golf Club:  400 Years of the Good, The Beautiful & The Creative” was published in 2003.  This volume takes readers on a fascinating pictorial journal beginning with clubs made in the 1600s and culminates with clubs made as recently as 2003.  It was recently translated and printed in German.  Earlier this year, “The Clubmaker’s Art: Second Edition Revised and Expanded in Two Volumes” was released.  This work, weighing over 15 pounds, includes everything in the first edition of “The Clubmakers Art” and 220 additional clubs, some of which are also found in “The Golf Club."

Ellis’s collection consists of all the 850 antique clubs in “The Clubmaker’s Art Second Edition” (with the exception of the Troon Clubs) and then some.  Each club in the collection is included because it either possesses an important design feature not found in other clubs, or it was created by a clubmaker working prior to 1890.

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