It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Jared Doerfler set out on his journey to become a putter manufacturer. Was it when he signed the legal documents establishing his company, Hanna Golf? Drew up his first spreadsheet of expenses? Designed and sold his first club?
Whenever the time was, he just knew the future was a scary prospect.
Doerfler, a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa and a former vice president of a local Mason City, Iowa, metal-printing firm, was comfortable and doing very nicely. The question, though, of whether or not he was right to resign his position and enter an industry about which he knew next to nothing, especially with a third child on the way, was firmly lodged inside his head.

“There are still times I wonder if it was the wisest thing to do,” he says. The apprehension will likely linger for a while yet and misgivings over his judgment may reappear at some future moment, but Doerfler wouldn’t change a thing. “I’ve never been more terrified yet happy at the same time,” he says with a laugh.
Clearly the type of person who enjoys a challenge and who would never forgive himself for not at least trying to meet it, Doerfler is understandably uneasy about the situation but, deep down, relishes the uncertainty of it all.
“The most important thing for me is that I’m giving it a go,” he wrote in an X post dated Sept. 6, 2024. “Making that jump was a bit frightening, but I’m glad I did it.”
Doerfler’s aha moment regarding a change of career direction came at 2023 Masters.
“Being there for the first time made me sort of emotional,” he says. “It made me reflect on where I was and where I was going, and I remember thinking life’s too short to get stuck in something you don’t necessarily enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I had a good time in my previous job and got on great with my colleagues. I was just eager to try something for myself.”
But why a putter company, specifically? Why not an office furniture showroom, restaurant or coffee wholesale business? “I had two non-negotiables,” Doerfler says. “It had to be in the golf space and it had to be something I made. So I wrote a handful of items down and putters was one of them. I remembered how much fun I’d had designing a putter 18 months before, so I started to research the industry to see if it was viable.”
After deciding he was going it alone and identifying what his new business would be, Doerfler faced further essential questions — What would the putters look like? How many models should he offer? What would the price point be? What tools would he need? How do you even make a putter?

Today, Doerfler is currently manufacturing three models — Denver, El Reno, and Amarillo named after places his grandfather Harry Doerfler lived at some point — that each retail for $295.
To be the small, boutique manufacturer with an emphasis on quality that he envisioned, Doerfler’s products would need to be milled — the mark of a high-end putter. So he went online to find a couple of affordable CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines and, after having acquired them, began learning how to use them.
Doerfler spent countless hours reading user manuals and watching YouTube videos to get the basics. And he found the incredibly useful Titans of CNC, which describes itself as a “platform for educating and connecting a global network of skilled machinists.” “Listening to them was like going back to college,” Doerfler says. “I felt I was majoring in CNC.”
The one part of the whole process Doerfler found easy was giving his company a name. Because he and his wife both have some German heritage, they named their daughters Johanna and Harriet. Combining the two names, Hanna Golf was born. It remains to be seen if the company name will be changed after the birth of the girls’ brother, Alder, in August 2024.
Before he began selling his product online, Doerfler exhibited the putters, expecting a few polite inquiries, but very little genuine interest. He actually sold 65 putters and had countless conversations with people who tried the putters and said they loved them. Doerfler also had productive conversations with several club pros, and sought feedback from his former Northern Iowa golf teammates — all of whom were impressed and said he could make a go of the new venture.
In May 2024, HannaGolf.com went live and Doerfler told his almost 37,000 X followers that, as well as publishing the popular Perfect Putt Substack newsletter, he had left his day job to become a putter-maker.
There’s no such thing as a typical day for someone less than a year into a new business venture with two young girls and a baby boy in the house, but Doerfler will usually drop his daughters at kindergarten and daycare before heading to his 1,500-square-foot workshop.
There, he’ll spend the next 12 hours milling, shafting, gripping, boxing, labeling and shipping putters doing all the necessary paperwork, and responding to emails. If he’s lucky, he might find an hour to spend on social media where he can ‘talk’ with friends and followers, and market his putters.

To that end, he knew his putters should come with covers so, in September, he bought an industrial sewing machine which his wife will use to make them. “Can you believe her?” Doerfler says.“She gave birth in August and was in the shop with me just a few weeks later talking about putter cover designs. She’s absolutely incredible.”
It's taken a lot of 70- to 80-hour weeks to get to this point and Doerfler has yet to pay himself. In fact, the 20-year-old assistant Doerfler was able to bring on in July is earning a good deal more than he is right now. Who knows how much longer that will be the case because, even though business is picking up, CNC machines, shop space, raw materials, assistants, and every other expense it takes to run a business take a lot of paying off.
As Doerfler says, though, the grind is worth the effort. Elsewhere on X, Doerfler said that having a bias for action was hugely important.
“There’s never a right time for a life-changing moment,” he wrote. “We’ll always come up with excuses — not enough time, money, etc. and say we’ll wait until the next promotion or until we have more money in the bank. Where does it end? It doesn’t. Have a bias for action. There is no time better than the present.”
That is a powerful message and suggests that, even if times do get a little lean in the putter department, Doerfler could try his hand as a motivational speaker. There is a sense that matters will not reach that point, though, because it displays the sort of resolve and conviction that Doerfler has for this endeavor.