Ball Makers Put New Spin On Products But Quest For Success Doesn’t Always Pan Out

Tony Pisacano, an eye surgeon, looked up from the small constellation of golf balls that gleamed at him like vexing patients from a practice putting green at the Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y.

“Golf is like an obsession,” Pisacano, who has an 18 handicap, said one recent Sunday tapping a milky Slazenger toward a nearby hole. “It would be hard to pick a number big enough that some of us wouldn’t spend if it would make us that much better.”

The proof was barely a wedge shot away, at the club’s pro shop. The industry that made the $300 titanium driver commonplace is now trying to glamorize the once lowly golf ball, waging a war for the $1 billion market with grandiose claims of advanced technology, big-name endorsements and blatant appeals to golfers’ chronic frustration.

A recent magazine advertisement perhaps put it best. “In an effort to hit the ball longer and straighter, you’ve changed your grip, your stance, your swing, your clubs, your shoes, and for all we know, your socks,” it read. “Hmmm. Anything you left out?”

But for all their marketing, the companies neglect to mention that for most golfers, it matters little what ball they play.

Peter McDonald, a golf instructor here, smiled a bit and shrugged as he tried to explain why the club’s best-selling ball is a Titleist that is covered with a soft, rubberlike substance called balata - and costs about twice as much as an average ball.

“Ego has a lot to do with it, that and marketing,” he said. “Some guys are really bad golfers but think they’re Greg Norman so they buy balata. Our best-selling ball should be a cheap rock.”

But cheap rocks are not very stylish in the golf world these days, especially as the game’s popularity is soaring. The number of golfers nationwide has increased about 24 percent since 1986, to roughly 25 million, according to the National Golf Foundation, in Jupiter, Fla.

And as golfers the world over try to buy a better game, spending on golf equipment has risen even faster, roughly doubling since 1986 to around $5.5 billion.

Until recently, the money flocked mostly to bigger clubs. Much as tennis rackets have come to resemble fly swatters for giants, woods and irons - and their prices - have grown steadily as manufacturers have turned to steel, titanium, tungsten, copper, beryllium and nickel (and even iron and wood) as they try to create an ever-larger “sweet spot” on the face of the club.

Now it is the ball’s turn for a makeover. Companies are introducing new balls almost as often as Tiger Woods wins tournaments. While balls costing $18 a dozen might do just fine, many golfers are being cajoled into paying as much as $50.

“What is allowing marketing people to sell more equipment if it’s not really making any difference?” asked Frank Thomas, technical director of the U.S. Golf Association in Far Hills, N.J., which tests and sometimes approves new golf balls for tournament play. “The problem is, we want to play better without the effort. We believe in magic.”

Golf ball companies concede the importance of marketing, but they do not talk about magic. They talk about innovation.

From the turn of the century until the late 1960s, almost all golf balls were made of a core of wound rubber thread surrounded by a soft balata cover. In 1968, Spalding Sports Worldwide, which sells more golf balls than any other company, introduced the first “two-piece” ball to gain wide popularity, the Executive, which had a solid rubber core and a rubber-and-polyurethane cover.

Balls with wound insides and balata covers can be manipulated more deftly by good players but are not as durable and do not travel as far. In recent years only about a quarter of the roughly 850 million golf balls sold around the world annually have used a wound core. Most wound balls are made by Titleist, a Fairhaven, Mass., unit of Fortune Brands Inc. which dominates the market for “high-end” balls, those that sell in pro shops for roughly $25 or more a dozen.

Titleist, one of the first companies to sign Woods to an endorsement contract, has trademarked the word Elastomer to refer to the cover material for its Professional ball, the ball Woods uses.

“A lot of times chemical words or technical words are talked about in marketing and nobody really knows what they’re talking about,” said Bill Morgan, Titleist’s vice president for golf ball research. “But it sounds high-tech. There is a little deception there, really.”

The rapid growth in sales of costly golf balls is luring the other big ball makers - Spalding, based in Chicopee, Mass., which is controlled by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and sells most of its balls under the Top-Flite brand; the Dunlop-Slazenger group of Britain, which also makes Maxfli balls; and Wilson, a Chicago unit of the Amer Group Ltd. of Finland.

Each company tries to convince golfers that its latest model combines the distance and durability of two-piece balls with the feel of wound balata balls.

“What you’re seeing now is more emphasis on technology” in advertising, said Thomas Brown, publisher of Golf Digest magazine.

“They will have actual photographs of what the core of a golf ball looks like, whereas years ago maybe the golfer wasn’t interested in that.”

For many golf pros, the explosion of options in golf equipment has been a boon.

The Professional Golf Association of America, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., is independent of the PGA Tour and represents 23,000 people who make their living mostly at pro shops, practic ranges and country clubs. The group’s annual merchandise show in Orlando, Fla., has roughly tripled in size since 1987; it featured 1,343 exhibitors in January.

“Golf is a wonderful sport because whenever anyone sees a new product, they say, ‘Maybe that will make me a better player,”’ said Jim Awtrey, the PGA of America’s chief executive.

But employees of the Westchester Country Club said that until golfers can shoot less than 90 consistently - as few golfers can - it makes little difference which of the 1,709 USGA-approved golf balls they use.

“Most people come in and have no idea what to buy, and for them it doesn’t really matter very much,” said Max Goree, who works behind the counter. “So we’ll sell them something we’re overstocked with.”

Joseph Teklits, an analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann & Co., put it this way: “Better golfers buy what they need. High handicappers buy what’s best promoted.”

For most golfers, the experts say a few more hours on the range might do more good than a few more dollars on the credit card.

“I’ve frequently told people,” Thomas said, “they would be much better off spending $200 on lessons than they would spending $1,000 on equipment.”