We’re all cheap folks right here so I’m positive there are some things we are able to all agree on.
The very first thing is an indisputable fact: Titleist sells an terrible lot of golf balls.
I imply an terrible lot. Relying on the way you do your depend, it’s very near extra golf balls than everybody else put collectively.
One other indisputable fact is that, in keeping with MyGolfSpy’s past Ball Lab tests, Titleist makes persistently high-quality golf balls. 9 of the highest 15 balls examined since Ball Lab began are Titleists, together with three of the highest 4. The remainder of the highest 15 consists of two from MaxFli, two from Wilson Employees and one every from TaylorMade and Callaway.
I don’t care who you might be, that’s fairly friggin’ spectacular.
We aren’t right here to debate value or whether or not golfers who aren’t pretty much as good as you might be ought to play a Pro V1. Slightly, we’re right here immediately to dive deeper into why Titleist’s golf ball high quality has the status it does and whether or not it’s deserved.
Ball Lab outcomes recommend it’s. We need to discover out why.
Titleist’s golf ball high quality: It began on the golf course
Phillip Younger was an MIT graduate who, together with two faculty associates, based the Acushnet Course of Firm in Massachusetts in 1910. The important thing phrase, as we’ll quickly study, was course of.
Younger’s first course of was to recycle waste rubber right into a workable materials, and Acushnet quickly grew to become the world’s largest provider of reclaimed rubber. In the course of the Roaring ‘20s, a world drop in rubber costs compelled Acushnet to refocus on manufacturing rubber objects equivalent to scorching water bottles and bathing caps.
In 1932, Younger was taking part in a match with a physician pal and was having a type of days.
“My dad was usually a reasonably a reasonably good golfer, however he was hooking and slicing the ball in all places,” mentioned Younger’s son Dick in an interview featured on Titleist’s On the Tee podcast. “He started to complain that there was one thing improper with that rattling golf ball.”
Turns on the market was.
The putt that missed
On 18, Younger swore he hit an ideal putt to win the match. The ball, nonetheless, had different concepts because it wobbled and veered away from the cup.
“They get into the professional store and he stored complaining there was one thing improper with that golf ball,” mentioned Dick Younger. “He talked his accomplice into taking place to St. Luke’s Hospital and opening the X-ray division and so they put the golf ball beneath the X-ray machine. Certain sufficient, it was cockeyed.”
Inside three years, Younger and his crew arrange the Acushnet Golf Division and, being a course of man, developed equipment and high quality checks to verify nobody would have a spherical like he did that day. Simply to make certain, Younger insisted each golf ball be X-rayed earlier than leaving the manufacturing unit. That follow continues to be utilized by Titleist immediately.
High quality additionally prolonged to the distinctive Titleist emblem that’s nonetheless in use. By employees decree, it was determined that Acushnet secretary Helen Robinson had the very best penmanship within the firm. Younger requested her to write down out “Titleist” in cursive and she or he nailed it in a single take.
Quick ahead to immediately …
This little journey into the previous tells us just a few issues. First, 2025 represents Titleist’s ninetieth anniversary. Second, you don’t make golf balls for 90 years with out understanding that course of and tradition are inseparable within the pursuit of excellence.
“The folks I first labored with had already been right here for 30, 40 years,” says Titleist High quality Director Pat Elliott, who began in 1991 as a summer season rent. “That they had a whole lot of the tradition instilled in them about how essential the Titleist model is. I had no concept. I simply knew I used to be going to a spot that made golf balls.”
Elliott began at Titleist’s Ball Plant II making two-piece ionomer-covered balls. “That uncovered me to a day-in and day-out manufacturing course of. We’d obtain new merchandise from R&D. Their job was to make one golf ball. Our job was to make hundreds of thousands of golf balls identical to that one.”
Equipment, patents and protecting all of it “in-house”
Surprisingly, Titleist’s first patent wasn’t for a golf ball. It was for a machine to hit golf balls.
Whereas not technically a “robotic,” Phil Younger’s “equipment for testing golf balls” was a dual-pendulum machine that would permit for constant and repeatable testing. Younger, being one-part salesman to his two-parts engineer, additionally created the Acushnet Golf Ball Demonstration Machine. They put the “equipment” on a trailer and dropped at golf programs across the nation to point out how Titleist golf balls flew in comparison with the competitors.
At this time, because it was in 1935, Titleist designs and builds all of its personal equipment, instruments, molds and check gear.
“We nonetheless construct our personal robots,” says Richard Daprato, Titleist’s Director of Testing, Engineering and Analytics. “We like having full management over how our instruments work. That method, our engineers can shortly reply to any points and we are able to frequently enhance them.”
“We had been Trackman earlier than Trackman,” provides Elliott. “We constructed the primary radar know-how system for monitoring golf balls in flight. This was again within the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. It was an 80-pound machine the scale of a desk. We referred to as it ‘moveable’ however you wanted a van to maneuver it.”
Transfer over, Rover
The corporate’s newest growth is one thing referred to as “The Rover,” designed to review how balls are delivered to the inexperienced.
“We all know how golf balls fly,” says Daprato. “We’re studying extra about how they behave after they land.”
To create the Rover, Daprato’s crew modified a JUGS machine (a tool used to throw baseballs and footballs) to launch golf balls onto a inexperienced. It’s on wheels and appears oddly just like the previous Apollo Lunar Rover, therefore the identify.
“Preliminary launch is measured by a robotic,” Daprato explains. “We all know how far and how briskly, the launch angle and the spin at affect. We then extrapolate the pace, angle and spin because it lands on the inexperienced so we are able to perceive what occurs when it hits.”
The testing crew could make the inexperienced firmer or softer and even alter the grain. The Rover begins capturing balls at it.
“We measure hundreds of impacts at hundreds of various spin charges and speeds on three completely different iterations of inexperienced firmness,” says Daprato. “All of that information is used within the again finish of our ball becoming app.”
Evolving know-how
Again in 1935, Younger and his crew discovered that by altering the composition and sample of the rubber windings across the core, they may make a extra solid-feeling golf ball. Moreover, by various the stress of that thread, they may make golf balls of various compression.
Whereas the corporate stopped making wound golf balls not lengthy after the Pro V1 came into existence, it’s nonetheless trying to enhance the way in which it makes and checks golf balls.
“We used to manage temperature and strain with a dial once we had been molding product,” says Elliott. “At this time, it’s way more subtle. We’ve a computerized system in place to watch temperatures and pressures constantly. If we see a slight deviation, we are able to modify.”
“After I first acquired right here, we’d hand-measure the balls in R&D,” provides Daprato. “At this time, we do it three-dimensionally utilizing picture know-how. That system was utterly constructed in-house.”
Elliott says though Ball Plant II makes lower-cost ionomer balls, the in-process qc are nearly an identical to these of the Pro V1 sequence.
“We take high quality very significantly at Ball Plant II. There are subtleties to creating a two-piece golf ball. We don’t have the casting course of however the buffing gear is identical, the press method is identical.”
Whereas two-piece balls gained’t have as many in-process checkpoints because the Professional V1 sequence (90 for the three-piece Pro V1, 120 for the four-piece Pro V1x), it’s solely as a result of they don’t have as many layers.
“It’s the identical consideration to high quality, although, and we’ve the identical know-how to help the method,” says Elliott. “We would as nicely be producing Tour-level balls at Ball Plant II.”
So, is Titleist’s golf ball high quality all it’s cracked as much as be?
MyGolfSpy’s Ball Lab and our biennial efficiency testing give us yet another indisputable fact: there are a whole lot of actually good golf balls on the market. Some OEMs are extra constant box-to-box and ball-to-ball than others however, for customers, there are only some “pink flags.”
Nevertheless, when almost two-thirds of the highest 15 balls examined function Helen Robinson’s handwriting, that claims Titleist’s golf ball high quality is all it’s cracked as much as be.
That, associates, may be very completely different from saying everybody ought to play a Pro V1. There are many nice choices so how do you resolve?
The reply is the course of.
Sensible customers base most shopping for choices, golf or in any other case, on efficiency, value and, to not be underrated, belief.
Belief, or reasonably the dearth of it following that missed putt, is what acquired Phil Younger so as to add a golf division to his Acushnet Course of Firm. And if there’s one factor any producer of something is aware of in his or her core, belief is constructed on constant, dependable high quality.
Constant and dependable high quality, if we observe the road logically, comes from the method.
“We make 360,000 Pro V1 golf balls every single day,” says Elliot. “It’s at all times about constructing high quality into the product as we produce it. We’ve applied programs to test the product as we go alongside. These programs permit us to test each single core and ball that’s being produced.”
Relaxation assured the legacy of Phillip Younger and his contempt for a wobbly golf ball continues to thrive 90 years later.
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