Kim Braly Bio
Kim Braly was born in Opelika, Alabama (1955) the son of an avid golfer, engineer and club tinkerer, Dr. Joe Braly. Kim grew up sharing many of the same passions as his father displaying an early fondness for the game of golf and soon taking up work alongside Dr. Joe Braly. During his career, Kim has made a number of significant contributions to the game of golf and that spirit continues today with KBS. Kim currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona and is an avid golfer and fisherman.
Early in his childhood, Kim quickly displayed a fondness of golf becoming an instant fan of the professional tour and an accomplished amateur player. Kim followed in his father’s footsteps, who was a scratch player as well as an accomplished golf club designer. Some of his father’s popular designs were the Console Sand wedge and the DynaPhase golf clubs (the first mass produced clubs made with titanium).
After taking college courses at Wake Forest University, Kim retuned home to work in the family business at Console Golf. There, Kim worked alongside his father began tinkering with golf club design and shaft technology. After a number of engineering classes, Kim and his father sought out the best golfers in the world to validate their designs and continue developing new product. Together, Kim and Dr. Joe Braly formed one of the first-ever TOUR Vans on the PGA TOUR. During this time, the Braly’s engineered all-new golf shaft technologies co-authoring patents on Frequency Matching® and designing new products for manufacturers and touring professionals.
In the 1980s, Kim and his father formed a new company Precision Shaft Corporation. Serving as Vice President and Production Manager, Kim was responsible for developing and running production for proprietary steel shafts supplied to several of the major club head manufacturers at the time. Through a series of buyouts in the 1990s, Precision would eventually become Royal Precision where Kim continued to work patenting a series of lightweight steel shafts and Frequency Matching for graphite.
At Royal Precision, Kim embarked on two revolutionary stepless steel shaft designs including the RIFLE ® Golf Shaft and Project X ® Golf Shaft which remain very popular today among club builders and Tour pros. Today those products are owned and produced by True Temper Corporation which acquired Royal Precision Corp in the early 2000s.
In 2007 FST co-founders Rob Cheng and David Chuang approached Kim about starting a premier, high-performance line of steel golf shafts. In early 2008, Kim Braly Signature (KBS) TOUR Shafts was formed where Kim enjoys serving as the Director of R&D and TOUR Operations. Since 2008, the KBS has quickly become the single most impactful steel shaft brand ever in such a short span of time widely adopted by top PGA TOUR professionals and by the custom department of every major manufacturer. Combining FST’s state-of-the-art manufacturing with Kim’s empirical knowledge, the KBS TOUR Series offers an all-new performance options proven in independent robot testing, on the PGA TOUR, and by our avid community of fans.
