My last encounter with Ely Callaway came last April, a chance encounter beneath the oak tree behind the clubhouse at Augusta National. Our conversation lasted but a few minutes. At the time neither of us had any reason to suspect we'd never see each other again.

Two weeks later, during surgery to remove his gall bladder, it was discovered that the grand old man was suffering from inoperable pancreatic cancer. Although no public announcement was made, word spread like wildfire throughout the golfing community, and when he "resigned" as president and CEO of Callaway Golf on May 15th, it was assumed, probably correctly, that the move was made to ameliorate the panic his inevitable end might otherwise have triggered with respect to the company's publicly-traded stock. A warm and generous man, he died at 82 a week ago this morning. Although I didn't know him well - our personal relationship, in fact, covered just the last five years of his life - I considered him a friend, but then, so did virtually everyone who ever met him.

When a few of us were looking to play golf the day before Super Bowl XXXI in San Diego, my friend Dave Anderson, the New York Times sports columnist, rang up his former colleague Larry Dorman, who had resigned his position as the Times' golf correspondent to become a vice president of Callaway Golf.

Arrangements were duly made for us to play a club called The Farms in Rancho Santa Fe, but Dorman advised that we would be required to play with a member. When we arrived at the course we learned that the member assigned to our fourball was Ely Callaway himself, and by the time first-tee negotiations had concluded, it had been determined that Mr C would be my partner and cart-mate.

He spoke in the courtly accent of his native Georgia and was a distant cousin of Bobby Jones, but Ely Reeves Callaway had come to golf fairly late in life - far too late to develop much of a game of his own.

We met at a friendly game the day before the Super Bowl when, by chance, he was my partner and cart-mate. He had brought along that day two dozen balls imprinted with the Callaway logo. He explained that while Callaway Golf had engaged 200 people for the previous two years doing 'R&D' R&D (research and development) on a proposed Callaway ball, the results had yet to meet with the company's standards and "we haven't made a single golf ball."

The balls we were playing that day had been made by another manufacturer and stamped with the Callaway name. He kept the first dozen for his own use, and presented me with the other box, but before the round was complete, he was borrowing the gift balls back from me.

"Now," he said with a laugh after the latest errant missile had disappeared into the jungle, "you can see why I'm going into the golf ball business." During the course of the round he suggested that I try out his driver, the then- evolutionary Biggest Big Bertha. I did, was pleased with the results, and at the end of the day he handed it over as a present. A few days later, on a tour of his plant he ordered that another be specially-made for me.

On Monday, the day after the football game, at Mr C's invitation, we inspected the Callaway plant in Carlsbad and when, during the course of the tour I was measured for specifications, which revealed that I should be using a driver with two degrees more loft, Ely ordered that one be made for me on the spot. I did give back the other one, after a little wrestling with my conscience!

When, less than an hour later, the still-warm weapon, shrouded in bubble-wrap, was presented, I momentarily wrestled with piggish sportswriter thoughts of being the only guy on the block to own two Biggest Big Berthas, but in the end reminded Callaway that I already had one - his own - in the boot of my rental car, and offered to return that one.

"All right," he said with a smile. "You can just throw it in the back seat of my car, the blue BMW out there."

During World War II, Callaway, owing to his experience in the clothing business, served as an officer in the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army, overseeing the purchase of materials and the manufacture of uniforms,and emerged from the conflict a 25-year-old Major.

For the next quarter century quarter of a century he worked at Burlington Industries, one of the US's most prominent clothing manufacturers in the United States, eventually becoming the company's president. He left Burlington in 1973 following a dispute over control, walking away with a generous settlement.

With that money as a stake He purchased a small California vineyard, and built it into another hugely successful operation, selling it for $14million eight years later. He then purchased, for $400,000, Hickory Stick, another small boutique company, which produced replica antique putters. He changed its name to Callaway Golf, and by 1988 was doing $5million worth of business annually.

Ten years later Callaway's annual sales had increased to $800million per year. The company he leaves as his legacy is now the largest clubmaker in the world. Callaway Golf might have created the most popular driver on the planet and, eventually, a premium golf ball, but ironically (considering that his initial foray into the business had come as a manufacturer of putters) the company was never able to produce a decent putter. Ely Callaway was shrewd enough to recognise this shortcoming, and corrected it by acquiring the Odyssey line of putters.

The Midas touch he displayed with his business acumen did not extend to his love life. During our round in San Diego I had mentioned that at Scotland's Skibo Castle the previous summer I had met and played behind his wife. Callaway's reply was a noncommittal grunt, indicating that he was not particularly interested in pursuing the topic.

When we were invited over to his house for drinks after that day's golf the reason became apparent. Apart from the fact that it had been meticulously tidied up by a maid, there was no sign of a female presence in the home, and it was clear that the latest companion had run off to join her predecessors in the ever-swelling legion of former Mrs Callaways. He was a Georgian by birth, a North Carolinian by upbringing, and a business tycoon by trade. The politics of such men are usually predictable, but once again Ely Callaway ran against the grain. The visit to his home revealed no photos of himself with Nixon, no personal letters from Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Instead the memorabilia in his study made it apparent that his political heroes and friends had been John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

While cynics might have rated his highly public attempt to rehabilitate John Daly as a misbegotten publicity stunt, for Callaway it was a gesture from the heart. Daly, the 1991 PGA and 1995 British Open champion, had lost his sponsorship deal with Wilson and had been suspended from the Tour (in the wake of bizarre episodes on the golf course, busted-up hotel rooms, and threatened present and former his past and current wives regularly dialing up 911) when Callaway rode to the rescue.

Callaway paid off Daly 's huge gambling debts, said to total be in the millions, restructured his finances to put him on a living allowance while seeing to the distribution of his alimony and child-support payments, and paid him handsomely - all on the provision that the golfer refrain from gambling and drinking.

When Daly resumed both vices last year, Callaway made good on his own promise and dropped him like a hot rock, but he made no attempt to recover the money he had paid out on Daly 's behalf. Mr C would not, in fact, have even rated the doomed episode a mistake at all, any more than he would have conceded that he was dead wrong on the ERC issue.

After rigorous testing, the United States Golf Association dovetailed with the R&A and banned the new driver (on the grounds that the springboard clubface provided extra distance by creating an excessive "trampoline-like" effect), Callaway elected to keep making and marketing the club, in the United States anyway, hoping no doubt to reach a settlement like Ping did with their Ping Eye2 irons, which they stopped making after a court case with the USGA.

The USGA took no position on the club's legality, and while no money changed hands, the remaining stock of Ping Eye2s waswere Eye2s was were instantly transformed into collector 's items.

It is unfortunate that it a similar deal wasn't achieved in his Ely Callaway's lifetime. He might have relished being described as a golfing "maverick," "maverick", but "outlaw" was a term he found it difficult to abide.