1999Mass-marketed hybrid club
Innovator: TaylorMade

With its popular Rescue hybrid club, TaylorMade took and old concept and made it better, in this case Spalding's XE model (1986-88), a full set of clubs defined by their low-profile, wide-sole design to help get the ball airborne, and even out of the rough -- attributes that would come to define the hybrid/utility club. William Mills, of Stanford Golf, predated both TaylorMade and Spalding with an aluminum-headed model with features of both irons and woods in the early 1900s.