I started Upright Golf shortly after I developed a very unique product - Joe's Original Backtee – for a great person, an incredible Dad & 'Grandpa Joe', a friend to all that ever met him, a successful business man, community leader, and an avid golfer...my late father, C. Joe Egli, from the small town of Manson, IA. In his late-70's Dad was really having problems with his artificial hip joints (of 25-26 years), and then, at age 79, he also had to have a couple vertebrae in his lower back fused together. The net result of the back surgery was that physically he could no longer bend or stoop and to him the most devastating thing was that he could no longer bend down to 'tee his golf ball up'.
I started doing some brainstorming, I visited with a couple of really-creative friends, I experimented with a couple of wooden prototypes, and I made a couple of drawings of a simple 'teeing device' that could be clipped on/off of the golf grip on whatever club Dad was using to tee off with. I got a small block of milk-colored plastic from a local company and I took everything to a local CNC machine shop - about 2-1/2 hours later, this incredibly talented machine operator had created what would ultimately become the original teeing device for my Dad.
I invested in a plastic injection mold, we started manufacturing the teeing device, and when it was time for the teeing device to get its name I figured that since I'd made the device for my Dad ‘Joe’, gave him the 'original' one, for his ‘bad back' issues, and because it could be used to 'tee' a golf ball up without having to bend or stoop and call it Joe's Original Backtee. Today, we sell our products to golfers all over the world (in 45 foreign countries to date)! It's crazy how a little plastic device that was originally made for a 78 year old golfer from Iowa would become one of the most incredible playing aids in the world!
WE'RE ENDING THE BENDING!