Video Transcriptions
Making of a Tour IX Golf Ball
Making of a Tour IX Golf Ball Most shots are hit with the golf balls. Every good shot is certainly hit with the golf ball. My name is Steve Ogg, and I’m the Vice President of Golf Ball Research and Development at Calloway Golf. Golf balls affect everything. They affect the accuracy, the dispersion, the distance, the feel, the control. Regardless of whether they’re just out to have fun and want a good ball that gives them good value, good distance, keeps the ball in play, we’ve got those products. Starting with the two piece golf balls, the key there is balancing the cover with the core. Bit Bertha is a really good example of that. It’s a very soft feeling golf ball with really good distance characteristics. As you move on to the three piece golf balls, there’s a lot more variables and there’s a lot more product variety that you can provide to the golfer with a three piece construction. But here, you can adjust the mantle and cover individually to give distance and control. Now if you do want the ultimate in performance and the ultimate in combination of feel, control, distance, and durability, that’s when you move up to our four piece golf balls. You have a dual core that’s the foundation for these two i-Series golf balls, so you have two different concepts there that are embodied into a core, differential compression and inertia, and we utilize both of those to create, I think, the best golf balls on the market. I like to think the technology is the key differentiator when it comes to Calloway versus the competition. The golf ball starts with the core. The core is the engine of the golf ball. The core is made up of synthetic rubber, and it starts out with cutting and mixing these materials. All these materials are very accurately weighed, and they’re mixed in an internal mixer. We have two different styles of mixers that we use. Once this material is thoroughly mixed, it’s sheeted on a two-roll mill. A two-roll mill, imagine two rotating cylinders that have a gap. It continues to mix the material, but it also gets it into a form that allows it to be extruded in an extruder. An extruder is designed to take a large mass of material and make plugs. Here’s an example of an extruded piece of polybutyldiene rubber, the core formulation. After extrusion, we take the plugs and we load them into a compression bowl, and they’re molded into heated, compression molds, cooled, and they’re made into a round core. That spherical core, depending on the product, is then ground in a [xx] center with grinding to be very concentric. When it’s a four piece golf ball, we actually do two series of compression molding. We’ll mold the inner core, then we’ll make two smaller plugs, they look like this but they’re smaller, that we use to mold the hemispherical shells of our dual core golf balls. Once you have the core, you move on to the injection molding of either the cover or the mantle, depending on whether it is a two-piece, three-piece, or four-piece golf ball. Injection molding involves insert molding this core, so you have pins that support the core, you have a mold that closes around that core, and then you have plastic that’s heated and is injected and flows around the core. As the plastic flows around the core, the pins are retracted to be flush with the outside of the cavity. In the case of our rim golf balls, you actually use a process called reaction injection molding, or RIM, to injection mold a cover around the injection molded insert. The cavities that we use are machined to have the surface geometry that gives us the aerodynamic performance. Regardless of whether you have injection molded cover or a thermal plastic ionymer or whether it’s a RIM cover, you then degate the ball so that the material is removed, leaving a small amount of flash. Those balls are then moved to what we call a seam buffer, other people call it a milling machine, where you remove the flash around the equator of the golf ball. Once you’ve done that, typically the golf balls go through a prep process where they’re tumbled to remove any debris that’s on the golf ball and prepare the balls for finishing. Once the ball’s moved to the finish room, they are preheated prior to being sprayed with, once again, a two component urethane finish system. In the case of our premium golf balls like the Tour I or the Tour IX, there are actually two coats of tinted urethane that go on top of the golf ball. And then the balls have a logo stamped on them and they go to packaging, and they go the distribution warehouse and they’re shipped out to our consumers.
Tour IX Golf Ball - About
Tour IX Golf Ball – About: Introducing the new Tour I and Tour IX inertia technology, our most technologically advanced golf balls ever. The Tour I series is powered by four piece inertia technology for breakthrough tour distance. The engine of these breakthrough golf balls is their tungsten loaded outer core that pushes weight away from the center for lower driver spin and longer, straighter shots. Featuring tour proven hex aerodynamics for exceptional distance and stability and an improved seamless urethane cover provides greater accuracy and shot to shot consistency. The Tour I has a softer urethane cover that delivers exceptional short-game control and feel while the Tour IX has a firmer urethane cover that delivers exceptional distance and control. Take your game to the next level with tour proven performance that shortens every hole. Tour I and Tour IX golf balls. Calloway Golf – A Better Game by Design.
Tour IX Golf Ball - Morgan Pressel
Tour IX Golf Ball - Morgan Pressel: Mostly for me, I’m looking for distance. And I tested, I was actually given this ball, a blank ball with no logos on it at Samsung this year, two different kinds, the I and IX, but we didn’t know which one it was. And they said, “Here – hit these.” And we compared them, and they went quite a bit further. You’re probably going to pick up five to ten yards off this new golf ball, and I think it’s actually going to make a big difference. But it’s still just as soft around the greens, and that’s important, too. You don’t want to play the hardest ball you can find just to give up your feel around the greens. I feel like I have a pretty good feel around the green, so I feel like this ball is going to help. It’s going to help me get more distance.
Tour IX Golf Ball - Steve Ogg
Tour IX Golf Ball - Steve Ogg: The Tour I series golf balls are built on our dual core high moment inertia platform. For those golfers looking for the ultimate in greenside control and feel, we have the Tour I golf ball. For that player who’s looking for the best distance, the flattest trajectory and still have good greenside characteristics, you have the Tour IX golf ball.
Tour IX Golf Ball - Technology
Tour IX Golf Ball – Technology: The new Calloway Tour IX golf ball is a new four piece golf ball that provides an excellent combination of distance, control, and feel. We have four technologies that are key to achieving this performance. We have our hex aerodynamics, our thin durable urethane RIM cover technology, and we have high moment inertia, which is really two separate technologies. You have the core compression differential that provides spin separation. What I mean by that is that the spin around the green is high, the spin off the driver is low, giving you more distance. The other technology that’s embedded in our dual core is high moment inertia technology. We’ve moved mass from the inner core to the outer core which increases the moment of inertia and reduces the driver spin. This gives you lower dispersion and greater distance off the driver. Tour IX Golf Ball Technology - Olin Browne Golf ball technology – when Calloway came out with its golf ball, it was Rule 35. It was the first golf ball that they made, and I think it brought about a revolution in golf ball technology. It was not a wound ball. It was a three piece ball with a hard core, and it had performance characteristics unlike any other that I had every played. In fact, I was under contract with another company, and this ball impressed me so much that I approached them and said, “You know what? Calloway’s got a product. I think I need to play that. I think it’s better for me and my career,” and it has been. The evolution of that golf ball technology has gotten us to the point where Calloway now builds the X tour ball with a hexagonal dimple feature. It’s not really a dimple. It started as a tubular lattice network with the hex balls, and it’s a revolutionary and innovative idea, and I think it’s the most solid ball in golf.
Tour IX Golf Ball Technology - Olin Browne
Tour IX Golf Ball Technology - Olin Browne: When Calloway came out with its golf ball, it was Rule 35. It was the first golf ball that they made, and I think it brought about a revolution in golf ball technology. It was not a wound ball. It was a three piece ball with a hard core, and it had performance characteristics unlike any other that I had every played. In fact, I was under contract with another company, and this ball impressed me so much that I approached them and said, “You know what? Calloway’s got a product. I think I need to play that. I think it’s better for me and my career,” and it has been. The evolution of that golf ball technology has gotten us to the point where Calloway now builds the X tour ball with a hexagonal dimple feature. It’s not really a dimple. It started as a tubular lattice network with the hex balls, and it’s a revolutionary and innovative idea, and I think it’s the most solid ball in golf.
