Speaker 1: This episode of Frida Egg Stories is brought to you
Speaker 1: by our friends at b Dradty. So I want to
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Speaker 2: The frid Egg requires a different technique.
Speaker 3: What you need to do is actually square the face
Speaker 3: so it'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel
Speaker 3: that ball right out onto.
Speaker 4: The green Here's the sake.
Speaker 5: Playing out of a buried lion a bunker is completely
Speaker 5: different than playing out of a nice clean lion a
Speaker 5: greenside bunker. You'd need to be aggressive on any show
Speaker 5: weather it's sitting cleanly.
Speaker 2: Well, we've all faced it to the dreaded Frida Egg.
Speaker 1: Not to bet Beard, though, it's actually a pretty easy
Speaker 1: shot to hit.
Speaker 6: What you got cash or huh.
Speaker 3: Man, I got something better than cash.
Speaker 1: This is from the movie Lords of Dogtown. It's about
Speaker 1: the invention of modern skateboarding.
Speaker 5: These are You're a thane skateboard wheel.
Speaker 4: You're a what.
Speaker 1: They're in a skate shop. One character has dumped a
Speaker 1: new set of skateboard wheels on the counter. You're a
Speaker 1: thane wheels, You're.
Speaker 5: A thane man.
Speaker 6: It comes from oil, from oil.
Speaker 1: With these, you can do the same hard turns that
Speaker 1: you do under surfboard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: You can even climb walls, man, because they grip the
Speaker 1: grip they grip. The skaters attach the new wheels to
Speaker 1: a board, climb the fence of a local school yard,
Speaker 1: and take turns surfing the asphalt. Light, graceful swerves, jumps
Speaker 1: and long carves, often embankment.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, n ripping.
Speaker 5: Yeah, insane, insane.
Speaker 1: That was nineteen seventy two, and most skateboarders agree that
Speaker 1: it was the single biggest turning point in the history
Speaker 1: of the sport. Without the euthane wheel, the forms of
Speaker 1: skateboarding we know today on vert ramps and skateparks would
Speaker 1: simply not exist. Unlike the hard clay wheels that preceded them,
Speaker 1: euthane wheels were not prone to sliding because euthane had
Speaker 1: some give to it, It formed itself to the inconsistencies
Speaker 1: in the ground and made for a smooth ride. At
Speaker 1: the same time, in spite of being relatively soft for
Speaker 1: a plastic, eurethane was extremely durable. It was one of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century's miracle plastics. Flexible and inflexible, soft and strong,
Speaker 1: a contradiction that could be created only in a lab.
Speaker 1: In twenty years after, euthane changed skateboarding forever, it did
Speaker 1: the same golf. This is Friday Egg Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison.
Speaker 1: This episode is the last of three to take a
Speaker 1: closer look at the golf ball, it's design, its history,
Speaker 1: and its impact on the game. Each installment has focused
Speaker 1: on a different revolution in golf ball technology. We've gone
Speaker 1: from the gut to Percha ball in the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: to the haskellball in the early nineteen hundreds, and now
Speaker 1: we've arrived in golf's modern era, when a new kind
Speaker 1: of ball was on the rise. The ball made of advanced,
Speaker 1: meticulously engineered plastics, the kinds of plastics that first appeared
Speaker 1: on spaceships but eventually came to surround us in our
Speaker 1: everyday lives.
Speaker 5: Like the whole world is made out of plastic now,
Speaker 5: so there is there is no application that plastic cannot
Speaker 5: be used for, except maybe to eat.
Speaker 1: That's Harry Brown. You heard from him in the first
Speaker 1: episode of this series, and in this one he's going
Speaker 1: to help me tell the story of how plastics entered
Speaker 1: golf in the nineteen sixth took it over in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and ultimately re engineered the game.
Speaker 7: Verything for very group chemistry.
Speaker 6: For the finer world.
Speaker 5: We want group carmistry.
Speaker 6: That's the bomber.
Speaker 1: DuPont was founded in eighteen oh two and became well
Speaker 1: known for manufacturing gunpowder and dynamite, but at the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, the company moved into an exciting
Speaker 1: new area, the science of plastics. In the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: DuPont invented neoprene, nylon, and teflon. During World War Two,
Speaker 1: it produced raw materials for parachutes, but it was after
Speaker 1: the war that the company truly came into its own,
Speaker 1: racking up patents for Mylar orlon lycra taivek. This was
Speaker 1: DuPont's Better Things for better living through Chemistry era, and
Speaker 1: a lot of those better things were plastics.
Speaker 7: I just want to say one word, deal, just one word, Yes, sir,
Speaker 7: I listening?
Speaker 6: Yes? So yeah, plastics.
Speaker 1: Here. The nineteen sixty seven film The Graduate pokes fun
Speaker 1: at what was a real feeling in post war America
Speaker 1: that the hard times were over, the economy was on
Speaker 1: the rise, and the future was synthetic. Exactly, how do
Speaker 1: you mean it's a great future in plastics?
Speaker 5: Think about it?
Speaker 6: What do you think of that? Yes, I will, I've
Speaker 6: set that's a deal.
Speaker 1: What did people hope that plastics would be and would
Speaker 1: bring to the world.
Speaker 5: I think it's opportunity and democracy. So it's an accessibility.
Speaker 5: If I'm starting a family and I need to buy
Speaker 5: a kitchen table, and there's a kitchen table made out
Speaker 5: of oak, right, and that kitchen table costs seven hundred dollars,
Speaker 5: And then there's a kitchen table made out of plastic,
Speaker 5: and that table costs fifty dollars. Okay, I can live
Speaker 5: the dream and buy a nice, big kitchen table for
Speaker 5: my family to have dinner at made out of plastic
Speaker 5: works in exactly the same way. It just maybe doesn't
Speaker 5: feel as nice and look as nice and smell as nice,
Speaker 5: but we can still we can still have dinner on it.
Speaker 5: And I think you can apply that to any other
Speaker 5: plastic object.
Speaker 1: Aside from cheapness and mass producibility, the main appeal of plastic,
Speaker 1: Harry Brown told me, was that it could be and
Speaker 1: do just about anything. It was free from the shackles
Speaker 1: of nature.
Speaker 5: You can engineer it on a molecular level, and then
Speaker 5: you can kind of shape it into basically anything that
Speaker 5: you want, so it's almost like magic. You can't make
Speaker 5: wood do anything that you want, you can't make metal
Speaker 5: do anything that you want, but you can make plastic
Speaker 5: do almost anything that you want, assume any shape, engineer
Speaker 5: it to have greater or lesser durability.
Speaker 1: Plastics were about the hope that science could make our
Speaker 1: lives better, and it wasn't long before that ethos made
Speaker 1: its way into golf. But before we talk about how
Speaker 1: fancy plastics took over the game, we should get into
Speaker 1: some background, because this isn't just a story about technology.
Speaker 1: It's also about two very different companies. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you had Titleist. Out of its factories near New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Titleist produced rubber wound core balls with blotta covers, basically
Speaker 1: a refined version of the Haskell ball that had dominated
Speaker 1: the trade since the beginning of the century. Titleists put
Speaker 1: out an old fashioned product, but one known for its
Speaker 1: quality and consistency for its appeal to good golfers. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you had Spalding, a sporting goods giant.
Speaker 1: The company had been making golf balls in Chickapee, Massachusetts
Speaker 1: since the late eighteen hundreds, and its style was flashier
Speaker 1: than Titleists. Through the years, Spalding had been unafraid to
Speaker 1: try new things, so by the nineteen sixties, Titleist and Spalding,
Speaker 1: a two hour drive between them, were battling for the
Speaker 1: biggest share of the golf ball market, and it was
Speaker 1: in that decade, the nineteen sixties, that the modern golf
Speaker 1: ball made its debut. The modern ball was essentially a
Speaker 1: mashup of two brand new synthetic materials. The first was
Speaker 1: developed by James BArch in nineteen sixty three, a complex elastomer.
Speaker 1: BArch discovered that this material could be molded into a
Speaker 1: solid one piece golf ball, but Barch's invention never really
Speaker 1: broke through. It was cheap to produce, but it just
Speaker 1: didn't perform very well. Around the same time, though, DuPont
Speaker 1: was developing a plastic called Serlin, which was tough but pliable.
Speaker 1: Soon a few manufacturers recognized that putting a Serlin cover
Speaker 1: on a BArch style elastomer core might be a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea. One of those manufacturers was Spalding. Spalding released
Speaker 1: its first solid core two piece ball, the Executive, in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, but four years later the company really
Speaker 1: put it all together with the top Flight, which had
Speaker 1: a lively elastomer core and a durable Serlind cover. The
Speaker 1: key to this ball was spin, or rather a lack
Speaker 1: of it. The ball that came before the Wound Ball
Speaker 1: had a lot of spin that would cause it to
Speaker 1: climb into the air and land soft, so pros often
Speaker 1: played very low lofted drivers, sometimes down around six degrees,
Speaker 1: because they were trying to keep their drives from ballooning
Speaker 1: on them and losing distance. The top Flight didn't have
Speaker 1: that problem. Less spin meant a flatter, straighter trajectory, especially
Speaker 1: in the wind, so you could loft up your driver,
Speaker 1: launch the ball high and watch it bore through the air.
Speaker 1: But there was a catch. The top flight was low
Speaker 1: spinning off of wedges too, which meant it didn't stop
Speaker 1: as fast on greens, and skilled players who could be
Speaker 1: very precise with their short approaches didn't like that loss
Speaker 1: of control. So ultimately you had two balls that excelled
Speaker 1: at two different things, the top flight off the tee
Speaker 1: and the old woundcore blot of covered ball around the greens.
Speaker 8: I remember playing en amateur events in New England in
Speaker 8: the late seventies early eight that's.
Speaker 1: Joe Henley, who has been an executive for both Titleist
Speaker 1: and Spaulding, and.
Speaker 8: The good players would have a top flight in there
Speaker 8: or two in their bag. If you had a two
Speaker 8: hundred and twenty yard part three into the wind, good
Speaker 8: players would put the titleist away for a hole and
Speaker 8: play the top flight on that hole and on the
Speaker 8: next toll that put the titleist back in play for
Speaker 8: the rest of the round.
Speaker 1: Soon the governing bodies ruled that you couldn't switch the
Speaker 1: make and model of your ball mid round, so good golfers,
Speaker 1: including almost every PGA tour player, stuck with the wound ball,
Speaker 1: whereas many amateurs, maybe not as concerned with spin on
Speaker 1: their wedges, jumped on the Elastramer and Serlin train, roughly speaking,
Speaker 1: Titleist for the pros, top Flight for the Joe's.
Speaker 8: You know there was rivalry. There was no question there
Speaker 8: was rivalry.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, Joe Henley was a director of
Speaker 1: sales at Titleist.
Speaker 8: When I was a Titleist, I'd hear the praise those
Speaker 8: folks in Chickape referring to Spalding's headquarters in Chickabe, Massachusetts.
Speaker 8: You know, Spaulding was the the giant in the room,
Speaker 8: you know, the other giant in the room.
Speaker 1: Yet the two companies had very different sales strategies, each
Speaker 1: suited to their style of product. With its premium balls,
Speaker 1: Titleist wanted to do well at premium outlets, mostly pro shops.
Speaker 1: At golf clubs.
Speaker 8: Titleists had en course market share of forty five percent,
Speaker 8: let's say, and then the off course golf specialty stores
Speaker 8: their market share was I believe around thirty percent roughly,
Speaker 8: and the sporting good stores and mass merchants their market
Speaker 8: share was much less.
Speaker 1: Spalding, with its top Flight brand, took the opposite approach.
Speaker 8: Spaulding, on the other hand, you know, had an on
Speaker 8: course market share that really was maybe high teens or
Speaker 8: possibly twenty percent at times. Golf especially store market share
Speaker 8: probably thirty to thirty five, and then they dominated the
Speaker 8: kmarts at the time or Walmarts and the sporting goods stores.
Speaker 1: So whereas Titleist was high end and high margin, top
Speaker 1: Flight was all about quantity and appeal. The same was
Speaker 1: true of their marketing approaches. Titleist wanted above all to
Speaker 1: be the number one ball on tour.
Speaker 8: Absolutely matter of fact, the phrase the Titleist used was
Speaker 8: the pyramid of influence, okay, and the pyramid of influence
Speaker 8: as a triangle that the peak of that period would
Speaker 8: be the PGA Tour, European Tour, LPGA Tour, Senior Tour,
Speaker 8: et cetera. That would filter down, you know, to the
Speaker 8: PGA Club professional they would be kind of in the
Speaker 8: next tier. Then it would be leading amateurs.
Speaker 1: Titleist was aiming, in other words, for breadth of influence
Speaker 1: among top players.
Speaker 8: Spaulding, on the other hand, didn't go for number most,
Speaker 8: use number one. They were more advertising of stars, you know,
Speaker 8: of names and of people that were could be great spokespeople.
Speaker 1: Spokespeople like Greg Norman, who had a Spaulding logo in
Speaker 1: his bag, and Lee Trevino often seen pitching top Flight
Speaker 1: on TV.
Speaker 3: Some people think the way you tell a serious goffer
Speaker 3: it's whether he pulled a certain ball out on the
Speaker 3: first tap. Me, I'm only interested in their score card,
Speaker 3: and players who want to score better are using the
Speaker 3: top Flight Tour.
Speaker 1: Trevino doesn't mention the name Titleist, but he might as well.
Speaker 1: The ad is addressing the widespread feeling that good golfers
Speaker 1: used Titleist balls.
Speaker 3: Hey, the way you really tell a good golfer is
Speaker 3: if he has to pull his wallet out on the
Speaker 3: eighteenth green.
Speaker 6: And the new tops like tour balls.
Speaker 1: But while Titleist and top Flight were in competition, they
Speaker 1: also represented a kind of balance between premium and discount,
Speaker 1: between skilled players and average ones, and this balance gave
Speaker 1: the game a sense of stability. Think about it. From
Speaker 1: the late sixties to the late nineties, the strongest golfers
Speaker 1: knowingly and willingly gave up distance off the tee in
Speaker 1: order to gain control around the greens. It was a
Speaker 1: natural sort of bifurcation. While most amateurs took advantage of
Speaker 1: the latest and longest most pros chose not to. This
Speaker 1: was because the modern golf ball was not yet all
Speaker 1: things to all people. Engineers hadn't figured out how to
Speaker 1: make a ball low spinning in some situations and high
Speaker 1: spinning in others. So the hope of better things for
Speaker 1: better living through chemistry wasn't fully realized in golf, but
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties were determined to change that.
Speaker 4: You know, I was always a titleist.
Speaker 1: Guy Marcomera had played a titleist ball for much of
Speaker 1: his career, but in nineteen ninety six his contract was up.
Speaker 2: And I was friends with Payne Stewart, and he came
Speaker 2: over one day and he said, hey, Imo, would you
Speaker 2: ever consider maybe thinking about playing this ball?
Speaker 4: And I said what ball?
Speaker 1: It was the top flight z Belata, which in spite
Speaker 1: of its name, had no blota in it. Its cover
Speaker 1: was made of a soft serlin called zenthane, and the
Speaker 1: cores was solid elastomer piece ball.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, I never thought about that
Speaker 2: pain He goes, oh, look, I'm playing it.
Speaker 4: It's a good ball.
Speaker 2: And I knew at one point I believe Greg Norman
Speaker 2: might have been playing it.
Speaker 1: If Mark was skeptical. You couldn't blame him. Although players
Speaker 1: like Lee Trevino and Jumbo Ozaki had used the two
Speaker 1: piece ball to great effect, Payne Stewart hadn't been as successful.
Speaker 1: Three years earlier, Stuart had signed a huge deal with
Speaker 1: Spaulding and he had really struggled with his top flight equipment.
Speaker 1: Some thought he had chosen money over results. PGA Tour
Speaker 1: player Scott Hoak once told a reporter, after playing a
Speaker 1: good ball, now he's got to play a range ball.
Speaker 1: So Mark had some questions for Pain about the Ziebelata.
Speaker 4: You know, how is it like out of the rough?
Speaker 2: Are you going to hit more flyers or this or
Speaker 2: that because of the solid construction, And he goes, no,
Speaker 2: not at all, absolutely not. It's not like a pinnacle
Speaker 2: or a hot dot or any of these balls that
Speaker 2: you know would go really far.
Speaker 4: And he was right. So I started trying it.
Speaker 6: I liked it.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Joe Henley was the new director of professional Relations
Speaker 1: at Spaulding and in early ninety six he had his
Speaker 1: eye on Marcomera.
Speaker 8: He won the tournament champions when it was held at
Speaker 8: La Costa, opened the Europe with a win. I remember
Speaker 8: running into the PGA show that year and he was
Speaker 8: still not under contract to the titleist, so Joe got
Speaker 8: to work.
Speaker 1: By March, Mark was playing the top flight Ziblada and
Speaker 1: by April he was signing a new contract with Spaulding.
Speaker 8: I remember we signed his endorsement agreement at a house
Speaker 8: who was running in Augusta. There were three people at
Speaker 8: the table. It was Mark and me and Mark's farther Bob,
Speaker 8: was witness on the contract. It was quite a step
Speaker 8: for him. But you know the tour players, people that
Speaker 8: have changed the equipment out there for money or quickly
Speaker 8: without really debugging stuff. The failures are some of them
Speaker 8: are pretty significant, right without naming names. So Mark was
Speaker 8: he debugged it. He was, you know, one hundred percent
Speaker 8: comfortable to product by the time he signed up.
Speaker 1: And when Mark signed, Joe had some inside news for.
Speaker 2: Him and he goes, you know, Mark, we have this
Speaker 2: other ball that's coming down the pipeline. We don't have
Speaker 2: a name for it yet, but it's going to be
Speaker 2: a prototype ball. We're getting approval right now from the USGA.
Speaker 2: And towards the end of the year they called me
Speaker 2: and they said they had the ball ready. It was approved.
Speaker 1: It was the ball that would eventually be named the
Speaker 1: Top Flight Strata. Now, for a long time manufacturers had
Speaker 1: claimed that their new ball went farther off the tee
Speaker 1: and spun more around the greens, but the Strata was
Speaker 1: one of the first to actually do both of those things.
Speaker 1: Reason being that it was a three piece ball with
Speaker 1: a core, a cover and a mantle layer between them.
Speaker 7: And it was the basis of it was to have
Speaker 7: a multi multi layer construction.
Speaker 1: Dean Snow was a plastics engineer for Titleist, and right
Speaker 1: away he saw that the Strata was starting to solve
Speaker 1: the longtime problem of spin off of different clubs.
Speaker 7: When you looked at wound golf balls, if you looked
Speaker 7: at your wedge spin, it was very high and your
Speaker 7: driver's spin was very high.
Speaker 6: Okay, so it's high and high.
Speaker 7: And when you took two piece golf balls, the driver's
Speaker 7: spin was very low, but the wedge spin was very low.
Speaker 7: So the goal was to say, how do you go
Speaker 7: from this low driver up to this high wedge.
Speaker 6: How do you make that happen.
Speaker 1: That's where the multiple layers come in. You see different
Speaker 1: parts of the golf ball determined spin for different kinds
Speaker 1: of shots.
Speaker 6: When you hit a golf ball.
Speaker 7: With a driver, you can press the ball about one
Speaker 7: third of the diameter. So that's where everything happens. It's
Speaker 7: the driver, it's the spin rate, it's the ball speed comes.
Speaker 6: In from the core.
Speaker 7: Now, when you hit with a wedge, the cover is
Speaker 7: very thin, very soft, and a firm mantle, so you're
Speaker 7: not getting into the core with a wedge.
Speaker 6: You're pinching.
Speaker 7: And what happens is the ball will have a tendency
Speaker 7: to pinch the soft cover to the firm mantle to
Speaker 7: the hard club and it rolls on the face. So
Speaker 7: when you pinch it, it rolls on the face. That
Speaker 7: creates a low launch with high spin. So the layers
Speaker 7: can troll the spin throughout the ball. The core is
Speaker 7: really your driver, and as you work out to the
Speaker 7: outside cover that your wedge and everything in the middle
Speaker 7: has a model that you can predict. So you said
Speaker 7: to me, hey, I want a golf ball and make
Speaker 7: the eight iron spin be higher. I would work on
Speaker 7: the layers with the eight iron has impact and change
Speaker 7: the spin upward down.
Speaker 1: So it's like different balls depending on how much a
Speaker 1: certain club compresses it. I guess like different different balls
Speaker 1: within the ball become active.
Speaker 7: That's correct, exactly right. You activate the layer based on
Speaker 7: the angle of your club.
Speaker 1: And the top flight strata was proof of that concept.
Speaker 1: It created what Dean calls a spin curve.
Speaker 7: Strata was you know, to credit it's a tough fight
Speaker 7: on this strata was kind of the first that change
Speaker 7: that spin curve. It showed that the multi layer was
Speaker 7: able to drop the spin but still keep the wedge
Speaker 7: spin high. So it showed that you could create a
Speaker 7: spin curve you know in there throughout the set if
Speaker 7: you plot driver through sand wedge and you go low
Speaker 7: to high on spin two, he says Low who wound
Speaker 7: ball's high high. This showed you could actually change the
Speaker 7: curve of driver spin eight I and spin wet spin.
Speaker 7: You could actually have different things based on having multiple wlayers.
Speaker 1: And Mark o'meira was a fan.
Speaker 2: The first thing I noticed was I didn't lose any distance,
Speaker 2: but I felt like the softness, the feel around the
Speaker 2: greens putting it pitch shots, chips shots, you know, still
Speaker 2: in the wind.
Speaker 4: It was very good.
Speaker 2: So the overall aspect of it I thought was better
Speaker 2: and so I felt like I was playing a more
Speaker 2: superior product.
Speaker 4: So I was, you know, in love with it right away.
Speaker 1: The next year, nineteen ninety eight, Mark won the Masters
Speaker 1: in the Open Championship. He was forty one years old
Speaker 1: and the first player to win a major with a
Speaker 1: multi layer solid core golf ball, and his competitors took notice.
Speaker 2: You know, they're like, hey, is it just you know,
Speaker 2: Mark's playing better? Or is it the ball that's helping
Speaker 2: him play better? Or is it his clubs? So I
Speaker 2: do believe guard it created a little bit of a
Speaker 2: buzz out there for sure.
Speaker 1: As all this was happening, Titleist was putting together its response.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety the company hired Dean Snell. While Snell
Speaker 1: had grown up around where Titleist was based, he was
Speaker 1: not into golf. He was a hockey player.
Speaker 6: I didn't have a set of clubs. I hated the game.
Speaker 1: One day, though, his dad got him some clubs and
Speaker 1: dragged him out to the course.
Speaker 7: We pull up in the parking lot and as we
Speaker 7: pull up, there's another group of people getting out of
Speaker 7: the car, and he's like, hurry up, we gotta beat
Speaker 7: them to the teeth.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, see already, it's not fun. You know
Speaker 6: what are we rushing for? You're here, get the day off,
Speaker 6: so we get the clubs.
Speaker 7: We go out the first tee my first round of golf,
Speaker 7: and I hit a T shot and it goes so
Speaker 7: far to the right.
Speaker 6: Didn't even go look for it.
Speaker 7: And the second hole, I hit it and it went
Speaker 7: off into the trees and the woods on the right,
Speaker 7: and he hit one down the middle, and I'm in
Speaker 7: the woods and all of a sudden trying to find it,
Speaker 7: and I see this group of people in my father's face,
Speaker 7: two guys in my father face, and he's hollering at him, and.
Speaker 6: One of them pushes him.
Speaker 7: So I came running out of the woods and I
Speaker 7: closed eyeing the guy knocked him right in his ass
Speaker 7: and we hummeled him, and everybody came over and the
Speaker 7: director came out and they threw us off.
Speaker 1: On the drive home, his dad told him what had happened.
Speaker 6: And he said, well, you were in the woods looking
Speaker 6: for your damn ball.
Speaker 7: He said, the guy up there hit it and it
Speaker 7: came down and hit my father.
Speaker 6: His T shirt.
Speaker 7: He didn't wait, so he grabbed a threewhood and he
Speaker 7: shot it back at him, and the guy didn't like it,
Speaker 7: so that's why.
Speaker 6: He came down and got in this race. So I
Speaker 6: was sitting there and driving home, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 6: I think maybe I do like golf. This could be
Speaker 6: this could be pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, it was not a burgeoning love of the game
Speaker 1: that brought Dean Snell to the golf industry. It was plastics.
Speaker 1: While he was playing hockey at UMass Lowell. He got
Speaker 1: a degree in plastics engineering and he went on to
Speaker 1: work for BF Goodrich Aerospace before moving to Titleist, R
Speaker 1: and D. At the time, Titleist made its golf ball
Speaker 1: covers with a synthetic form of ballata, but it was
Speaker 1: a finicky material, complicated and expensive to produce.
Speaker 7: And then if anybody ever played golf with a lot
Speaker 7: of golf balls, when you hit a wedge, the thing
Speaker 7: would be you'd have to shave it. You know, it
Speaker 7: have hairsticking up on it. So the durability was a
Speaker 7: big issue.
Speaker 1: Also, Blota created a lot of spin, which meant the
Speaker 1: balls didn't go very far. So Dean's task was to
Speaker 1: solve all of those problems with one sophisticated cover material.
Speaker 7: Their project that they hired me for was to develop
Speaker 7: a process to make a eurothing golf ball because it
Speaker 7: didn't exist.
Speaker 1: Eure a thane the skateboard wheel stuff.
Speaker 7: So the goal was to say, how do you work
Speaker 7: on bringing this driver's spin rate down, create a durable
Speaker 7: cover and help the golf ball be longer. So if
Speaker 7: the spin drops with your driver, you can add waft.
Speaker 7: Now they don't have to do six degrees. They can
Speaker 7: go up. And the more you can drop that spin,
Speaker 7: the higher you can go and loft, the further the
Speaker 7: ball went.
Speaker 1: And eu athane had a unique potential to do all
Speaker 1: of this at once.
Speaker 7: The uniqueness of it is the cross linking that happens
Speaker 7: during the process, So it creates bonds that are very tough,
Speaker 7: which makes the durability be very good. So it's why
Speaker 7: you'll see euthane wheels on skateboards, you know. So it
Speaker 7: gives you that durability, gives you the processing to cast
Speaker 7: it thin, you know, and it doesn't add speed, but
Speaker 7: it really it changes the whole you can You can
Speaker 7: do obviously a lot of different ratios, you can do
Speaker 7: all different hardnesses.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like part of what makes your thine
Speaker 1: special is that it's a really durable material. It's it's tough,
Speaker 1: but at the same time it allows you to manipulate
Speaker 1: its softness or hardness correct.
Speaker 7: And what's also unique about it is in your Athanes,
Speaker 7: the softer you go, the more durable you can make it,
Speaker 7: where in Serlins, the softer you go, the less durabile
Speaker 7: it is.
Speaker 1: It took a few years, but the Titleist team eventually
Speaker 1: dialed in it's euro Athane process.
Speaker 7: My first launch I started in nineteen ninety working on
Speaker 7: your earth Thane. I brought it into manufacturing in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety four with a ball called Tour Prestige, which went
Speaker 7: to Japan.
Speaker 1: The same ball came out the next year in the
Speaker 1: US under the name Titleist Professional, a liquid core with
Speaker 1: rubber threads wound around it, all enclosed and cast earth aided.
Speaker 1: It didn't change the spin curve like the Stratadad, but
Speaker 1: the earth in cover was optimized. It spun less than
Speaker 1: blada off the driver and just enough off the wedges.
Speaker 1: The Professional became the most played ball on the PGA Tour,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen ninety six a hot shot amateur came
Speaker 1: to Massachusetts to test it.
Speaker 7: Him and his dad came in and I remember two
Speaker 7: straight weeks of working out of a place called Manchester Wane,
Speaker 7: which is where the Titles Test facility is. When he
Speaker 7: left there, he could tell you what his seven iron
Speaker 7: was going to spin, on, how high it was going
Speaker 7: to go, and the difference between the bottom ball and
Speaker 7: this ball. He was very tuned in to what was
Speaker 7: going on.
Speaker 1: That was, of course a twenty year old Tights. A
Speaker 1: year later, he would strike his titleist professional ball two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy times en route to winning the Masters
Speaker 1: by twelve strokes. It's one of those coincidences of history
Speaker 1: that's almost too neat. Tiger Woods wins the ninety seven
Speaker 1: Masters with the Eurothane ball, Mark o'mera wins the ninety
Speaker 1: eight Masters with the multi layer ball, and around that
Speaker 1: time the storylines of Woods, Omeira the Professional and the
Speaker 1: Strata all converged.
Speaker 2: We would always practice at home in Orlando at Iyleworth
Speaker 2: and Tiger and I would always like play our practice
Speaker 2: rounds together to prepare for the Masters.
Speaker 4: The next week.
Speaker 1: It was either ninety eight or ninety nine. Mark was
Speaker 1: playing the Strata Tiger the Professional.
Speaker 2: I remember specifically it was like on the eleventh hole
Speaker 2: at Ileworth or the twelfth hole, and we were around
Speaker 2: the greens and we were pitching the ball, and he
Speaker 2: was like, you know, he always called me m oh,
Speaker 2: he goes, m o, he goes, I don't understand how you, like,
Speaker 2: you know, hit these little pitch shots where you get
Speaker 2: so much spin on the ball. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 2: how do you do that? And I said, you know, Tiger,
Speaker 2: over a period of time, I'll kind of show you
Speaker 2: what you.
Speaker 4: Got to do.
Speaker 2: But it's just this certain technique. I was kind of
Speaker 2: working them. I was throwing all these golf balls back
Speaker 2: to him. Next thing, you know, you hit a few
Speaker 2: with my strata and boom. He saw this thing checking
Speaker 2: in their spinning and he kind of looked at me
Speaker 2: and he said, em, oh, it's not you, it's the
Speaker 2: golf ball.
Speaker 4: That's doing this.
Speaker 2: I looked at him and I said, exactly, he goes,
Speaker 2: what you even holding out on me? I said no,
Speaker 2: I said, to be fair, I said, Tiger, I said,
Speaker 2: you're playing an archaic at golf ball. That tour professional
Speaker 2: ball is an archaic at golf ball. I said, you
Speaker 2: know these companies today, you represent Nike, they build bridgetone
Speaker 2: golf balls. They can build you a golf ball that's
Speaker 2: perfect for your game. And he goes, what. And then
Speaker 2: about three weeks later, maybe a month later, he called
Speaker 2: me and he says, you know, you need to come
Speaker 2: down to my house.
Speaker 4: I get to show you something. I'm like, what, And
Speaker 4: I drive my cart down to his house. He lived
Speaker 4: four houses down from me, and I.
Speaker 2: Come into his house and I go into his office
Speaker 2: and he's got these three white boxes of golf balls,
Speaker 2: and he goes, hey, check this out. We need to
Speaker 2: go out and play some holes. I just got these
Speaker 2: the other day.
Speaker 1: These were the prototypes of what would become the Nike
Speaker 1: Tour Accuracy, made by Bridgestone, a multi layer solid construction
Speaker 1: ball with a earth hank cover basically a blend of
Speaker 1: the strata, and the professional Tiger switched to the Tour
Speaker 1: Accuracy in May two thousand. In the next three months,
Speaker 1: he won three majors, and by the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: titleist staffers were getting restless. According to John Garretty and
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated, the likes of Justin Leonard, Davis Love and
Speaker 1: Phil Mickelson were quote frantic, convinced that their wound balls
Speaker 1: put them at a competitive disadvantage. They were right, and
Speaker 1: in October of that year, at a PGA twur event
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, Titleist debuted the pro v one, a
Speaker 1: three layer ball with the castier thing cover that Dean
Speaker 1: Snell had helped develop. Forty seven players used it that week,
Speaker 1: and two of them, Billy Andred and Phil Mickelson, went
Speaker 1: one to two.
Speaker 7: You know, that's to the manufacturers, that's a home run
Speaker 7: for them. When they bring a new product out that
Speaker 7: first weekend it wins.
Speaker 6: That's the big splash. You know.
Speaker 1: By that time, Snell was heading up Tailor Made's ball division.
Speaker 7: And then they're going to have wins the rest of
Speaker 7: the year because they have such a great staff, you know,
Speaker 7: and so they're going to continue to win, and then
Speaker 7: they can make the noise.
Speaker 1: Here's another tidbit from John Garrity. At the two thousand Masters,
Speaker 1: fifty nine of the ninety five players were using wound
Speaker 1: golf balls. At the two thousand and one Masters, for
Speaker 1: were and yet in two thousand and one, Titleists still
Speaker 1: led the ball count on the PGA Tour by a lot.
Speaker 1: So the prov one had seen the company through the
Speaker 1: final golf ball revolution and brought it into the age
Speaker 1: of plastics. Spalding, on the other hand, went bankrupt in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two in top flight golf balls. Well,
Speaker 1: if you see them today, you're probably at the driving range.
Speaker 1: So in one way, the golf ball has caught up
Speaker 1: with the promise of better things for better living through chemistry.
Speaker 1: The solid core, multi layer eurothane covered ball is an
Speaker 1: amazing object. It's a marvel of design and chemistry, and
Speaker 1: it seems capable of being and doing anything, or almost anything.
Speaker 4: Alex Weber is a free diver.
Speaker 6: She just holds her breath.
Speaker 1: That's Christopher Joyce reporting for NPR about Alex Weber, a
Speaker 1: high school student in Carmel, California. Alex was diving off
Speaker 1: the coast of Pebble Beach golf links one day when
Speaker 1: she looked down and made a startling discovery.
Speaker 7: You couldn't see the sand.
Speaker 6: It was completely white golf balls.
Speaker 5: You look down and you're like, what are.
Speaker 7: You doing here?
Speaker 1: Thousands of golf balls.
Speaker 3: It felt like a shot to the heart.
Speaker 1: So Alex and her friends started hauling them out, often
Speaker 1: dodging arrant shots from the teas and fairways above, and
Speaker 1: over the next two years, they removed more than fifty
Speaker 1: thousand golf balls from the waters around Pebble Beach. With
Speaker 1: the help of a professor, Alex published a paper on
Speaker 1: the effects of all of this. Turns out golf balls
Speaker 1: do pollute, and one of the main culprits is eurethane,
Speaker 1: which degrades in water. Now, let's not blow this out
Speaker 1: of proportion. The paper states that even fifty thousand golf
Speaker 1: balls will have a minimal impact on the ocean. Besides,
Speaker 1: the Pebble Beach Company has now started a cleanup program.
Speaker 1: In general, though plastics pollution is a big problem.
Speaker 5: None of what we've manufactured since the inception of plastics
Speaker 5: has naturally decomposed.
Speaker 1: That's Harry Brown again.
Speaker 5: The only plastics that are no longer in the environment
Speaker 5: which we brought into the environment are those which we've
Speaker 5: burned or those which we've kind of like chemically dissolved somehow.
Speaker 5: The rest of plastic still exists, and it may it
Speaker 5: may long outlive us. The thing, and this is the
Speaker 5: blessing in the curse of plastics, The thing that makes
Speaker 5: it so magical, its pliability, it's durability, is the thing
Speaker 5: that makes it an environmental hazard.
Speaker 1: So there's a great and terrible irony to the plastics era.
Speaker 1: These materials can be and do everything we want except
Speaker 1: not be a threat to us on our environment. We
Speaker 1: might have better things, but they haven't necessarily made for
Speaker 1: better living. A few years ago, Harry was playing at
Speaker 1: Old Hickory, a local course in Indiana.
Speaker 5: You know, I drive into the weeds on the fringe
Speaker 5: and it kind of it borders this pasture and the
Speaker 5: grass is high. I park the cart, I walk around
Speaker 5: about ten feet. I find ten balls except for my
Speaker 5: I don't find my ball. So I'm just thinking, if
Speaker 5: I'm exploring this little ten feet radius of weeds, there
Speaker 5: must be hundreds of balls along this fence line's They're everywhere.
Speaker 5: They're just kind of concealed beneath the surface.
Speaker 1: It reminds him of a photobook by Charles Lindsay called
Speaker 1: Lost Balls.
Speaker 5: There's photographs of like golf balls like embedded in bear poop.
Speaker 5: You know that bears eat and then kind of like
Speaker 5: cycle back. Of course they're totally intact. You could play
Speaker 5: around with that golf ball that cycle through the bear's
Speaker 5: digestive system. But then there's also balls that have been
Speaker 5: picked up by fish to build nests in streams, balls
Speaker 5: that have been kind of like picked up by birds
Speaker 5: as kind of surg eggs. You kind of eject them
Speaker 5: into the environment when you hit your hook or your slice,
Speaker 5: and it goes into the creek or goes into the weeds,
Speaker 5: and you forget about it, and it's there for five
Speaker 5: hundred years, and the environment kind of interacts around it,
Speaker 5: but it's never part of the environment.
Speaker 1: Which is sort of a symbol of how golf relates
Speaker 1: to nature these days. I mean, we play golf in nature,
Speaker 1: but also against nature, and that agonistic side of the game,
Speaker 1: battling the elements, beating the course, is where the desire
Speaker 1: for better equipment, more advanced equipment comes from. It's why
Speaker 1: we find ourselves playing with graphite, titanium, and eu athane
Speaker 1: instead of wood, cowhide and feathers. So all of those
Speaker 1: lost plastic balls, the ones that the environment refuses to absorb,
Speaker 1: they're very design and composition, are reminders of how much
Speaker 1: we want to overcome nature. Yet given that the balls
Speaker 1: are lost, they're also reminders of how often we still
Speaker 1: fall short.
Speaker 5: I love the ts Eliot palem ts Eliot says, when
Speaker 5: we're gone and turned to dust, the only thing that's
Speaker 5: going to be left is basically asphalt and golf balls,
Speaker 5: maybe not even asphalt.
Speaker 9: Were every day that we are leaving, we got lucky.
Speaker 3: Coming.
Speaker 1: This was the seventh episode of Friday Stories in the
Speaker 1: third and final installment of Our Ball series. It was
Speaker 1: produced and hosted by me Garrett Morrison, and it was
Speaker 1: edited and engineered by Jay Verick. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson. We're very grateful to our guests for this episode.
Speaker 1: Dean Snell now runs his own golf ball company, Snell Golf.
Speaker 1: Harry Brown has a book called golf Ball. Check out
Speaker 1: the link of the show notes. Joe Henley is now
Speaker 1: the CFO of Trust Engineering in Massachusetts, and Mark o'mera,
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty three, twenty ninth in the
Speaker 1: Schwab Cup standings on the Champions Tour. Thanks for listening.