Last week we spoke about the ball and did a “shallow dive” into our product line. This week, let’s do a deeper dive into HOW a golf ball is made, and then chat about some interesting fitting things that came up this week.

Let’s first look at the WHAT

Golf balls range from 1 to 5 pieces, and we offer all except a 5 piece ball. 1 piece balls are essentially a range ball. This is usually a round Surlyn ball where the dimples are simply molded in. A 2 piece ball is a SuperSoft. This has a Rubber core and a synthetic Surlyn cover. These cost less to make, are associated with distance balls, and tend to have lower performance characteristics that a better player will surely notice. A 3 piece ball has a large rubber core, an outer mantle (or core), and a Surlyn or Urethane cover. Urethane is softer than Surlyn, will cost more, will feel better, and will spin more. The addition of the second internal layer allows the manufacturer to control spin and distance in parts (i.e. – one core for distance with the driver, one for mid-iron spin) – these will be optimized based on intended club head speeds and launch angles. A 4 or 5 piece ball has a core, inner mantle, outer mantle and cover (generally made of Urethane). The different mantle layers can be adapted further to also include spin with more lofted clubs (wedges). The more “pieces”, the less forgiving a ball will tend to be, but the more it will be able to react to certain launch conditions (known as High Performance) as the design team intends. More pieces makes for a very complex manufacturing process, and a more expensive finished product. 

You may have wondered, how can this ball be longer off the tee (perhaps with less spin), but mid – high spinning with a mid launch with the irons, and high spinning with the wedges for pitching and chipping. Must be Hocus-Pocus, right? Not exactly!! Each piece serves a specific function and together, they work as a system to create the ball profile I hypothetically laid out above.

Along with that, at Callaway, we have found that the thicker the cover, the less the performance of these other layers will be seen. As such, our covers are the thinnest in the industry. With this comes new challenges – make a cut-proof/ shred proof cover with the ultimate in performance. Young guys are saying “wait, what? cut proof covers??” Days gone by… Global shortages in Urethane have caused ball prices to increase, and many manufacturers are tinkering with other materials and hybrid designs that will outperform Urethane and a cheaper cost. 

Now, the HOW

How is a golf ball made? A preface… When I got in the business, I worked for Mizuno (no ball), and Adams (also, no ball). I said, like everyone else who doesn’t know better, that the only people making money on golf balls are the ball manufacturers. In 2015, I toured the Callaway Ball plant and said I can not comprehend HOW they can make a nickel selling a ball at $3.50 to a dealer. The process is off the charts. If you haven’t been on a tour of a ball plant, you should!! We offer tours every day. I’ll go with you, or set it up for you. It will make you seriously appreciate all that goes in to helping you shoot lower scores. Really. Call me to set up your tour of the ball plant. Or… Watch here:

Videos you may find cool and interesting:

Callaway Ball Plant

The Ball that Changed a Town

To start understanding this, understand what we are tying to do here. If you roll a tennis ball, it rolls straight, right? Why? because it is filled with air. the faster you roll it, the more the imperfections will come out. Add a solid center and the likelihood of having imperfections gets greater and greater. The more layers you add, the more difficult it is to manufacturer to a perfect standard. We can deal with an imperfect golf ball though, right? Uh… No!! Consider this – a 6 foot putt will miss the hole completely if the face and stroke are 4* open or closed. 4* at 6 feet… If you hit a driver with the face 4* open at 105 MPH Club Head speed, you are causing a car accident or breaking windows. Golf balls have to be exceptionally precise. If the center of a golf ball is off by 1/16″, the ball won’t roll straight for a foot. We measure our tolerances to the thousands of an inch. That’s .001″ – a 1/16″ in decimal form is .0625″. That’s what it takes to make a ball perform the same way every time.

Ever think about HOW a golf ball is actually made? How do you add a perfectly balanced layer to a rubber core and have the center core remain perfectly centered inside it? Then add another layer and have they other two be perfectly centered?? And finally add a cover that is a uniform thickness and leaves the other three layers centered and balanced… crazy when you think about it.

It’s all dove with injection molding. We make everything in house. The rubber for the cores? We start with powders, mix them and make our own rubber. The molds for each layer? We have a machine shop and we make those in house. Consider this… We make a rubber billet that is about the size of your thumb. That gets reheated and compressed to a round ball. I said compressed – it’s here where we give the different balls different compression for the final product. The raw rubber cores are sanded to ensure they are a perfect size, x-rayed to be sure they are solid, and moved along. The cores then move into a mold where a series of pins come inside the mold and hold the core suspended in the center. The next layer is injected into the mold as the pins are retracted at the same time. More sanding. X Rays on 3 different planes, and each ball is digitally measured to check for imperfections. Repeat for the next layer and for the cover. Then paint, finish, box and ship. We take 400,000+ X-rays per day. Every day.

This process fixed a problem. Imagine how difficult it is to keep an inner core centered when you inject a liquid around it as you retract the pins that keep it centered – and maintain a tolerance to within .001″ – every time. Short answer, it was not possible. Imperfections were inevitable. Advances in manufacturing have made it possible to be better, but not perfect – quality control in this environment is purely reactive. You have to wait until AFTER the product is finished to see how it was made. Three dimensional X-Rays with digital measuring is the ONLY way to ensure that every finished product is perfect and up to a standard we want. We do this for every ball that leaves our plant – not just the ones for tour players. We are the only company that does so. You can play and sell our golf balls knowing that they are made better than any other in the world. 

One Quick fitting note. As you move outdoors, a good launch monitor will play tricks on you. Ask yourself this… Does a ball fly shorter when it’s cold outside. We all know the answer is yes. Some of it is due to weather pressure, air density, etc, but some of it is also due to a cold golf ball. We all know that when you play in the cold, you should keep the ball as warm as you can. A cold ball won’t compress anywhere near as much as a warm one. Duh, right? Well, when you hit ice cold range balls that have been stored outside or in a ball dispenser that is outside, they are the temperature that it is outside. They too, will not compress. Your fancy launch monitor will not pick that up (unless you change the settings). You asked the launch monitor to give you the actual ball speed – not an adjusted reading for cold days (unless you set it differently). Otherwise, it will give you a reading of a 45* golf ball on a 45* day. With a driver at 105 MPH club speed, this could be 5-6 MPH less ball speed. Plan accordingly!!

I hope this helps!! Happy Fitting.