Category: Balls

Callaway Sues Titleist Over Pro V1 Patents

Callaway has sued Acushnet over four patents pertaining to the Pro V1 golf balls. How big is this?

CallawayIt’s been a little while since a major heavyweight legal battle has taken place in the golf biz. Well, time to lace up the gloves and ring the bell. Callaway Golf has sued Acushnet, parent company of Titleist. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Callaway filed suit on Thursday alleging that the Titleist Pro V1 ball uses technology covered by four patents that Callaway acquired when it purchased Top-Flite Golf out of bankruptcy in 2003.

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Get Your Balls Imprinted – Free

Titleist offers free imprinting until December 10, so order now!

The holidays mean one thing to Titleist fans: stocking up on custom-imprinted Pro V1s! Just about every year, Titleist offers free personalization on golf balls. We’ve been remiss in not posting something until now, however, because you only have until December 10 to order your balls. The imprinting is free, but the balls will still go for normal pricing.

Place your order with your local Titleist-licensed retail outlet – pro shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, etc. and get yourself in the holiday spirit. For more information, visit “The Ultimate Holiday Gift” at Titleist.com.

Titleist Holiday Imprinting

PGA Championship Club Counts

Club (and shoe, ball, and glove) counts from the last major of 2005 are out. Any surprises? You betcha.

pgachampionship_baltusrol_logo.jpgThe PGA Championship has been over for awhile, but club geeks are still talking about the fact that Phil Mickelson used both a TaylorMade r7 TP 3-wood and a Titleist 980F 4-wood in his victory (see SirShanksAlot for more).

Late last week, GolfWeek published the official club counts, and geeks dove right in. Can you guess who the five players using the Titleist hybrid woods were? How about the three lonely souls playing Maxfli golf balls?

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A Quick Nine With ‘The Ball Jack Wants You To Play’

How does today’s state-of-the-art golf ball stack up against a comparable ball from the mid-1980s? Let’s just say there’s a great distance between the two.

There’s a rumor that’s been going around the equipment biz that a major golf ball manufacturer has crafted a unique response to Jack Nicklaus’ continued complaints about how far today’s balls travel. The company – which hasn’t been positively identified, but I’m 99.9 percent sure it starts with a “T” and ends with “itleist” – made a limited run of golf balls manufactured to mid-1980s specs. The balls are stamped “RIP Distance” on one side, with the inscription “This is the ball Jack wants you to hit” on the other.

In the name of due diligence, Lawrence Donegan of The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. came across some of these rare old-school golf balls and had PGA European Tour player Gary Orr try one side-by-side with the new Pro V1. Read on to find out what happened.

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Titleist Sues Several for Counterfeit Balls

Titleist is suing both retailers and distributors for selling illegal, counterfeit Pro V1 golf balls.

TitleistThe Acushnet Company, parent company of Titleist, has sued Cam Golf, Inc., City Sports, Inc., Faber Brothers, Inc., GI Joe’s, Inc., and Kings of Golf, Inc. for selling counterfeit Titleist Pro V1 golf balls, the world’s best-selling golf ball and the preferred ball of professional players worldwide.

Said Titleist in a press release, “These suits are the result of each of these entities either distributing allegedly counterfeit Titleist Pro V1 golf balls at wholesale or selling allegedly counterfeit Pro V1 golf balls in retail locations.”

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First Look at the Callaway HX Tour 56 Golf Ball

The HX Tour golf ball — also known as the Callaway Black — has been one of the top balls on tour for more than a year. Now it has a new sibling: the HX Tour 56.

HX56 SideOne of the worst-kept secrets in golf equipment this year is that Callaway Golf has a new ball being tested on the pro tours. While the HX Tour ball has been a staple on tour for more than a year, Phil Mickelson has been very public in his praise of this new prototype ball, code-named HX Tour 56.

While the HX Tour 56 ball is generating a lot of buzz, not many details about the ball have come out. But The Sand Trap was fortunate enough to score a few sleeves of the new ball for some testing prior to the HX Tour’s scheduled mid-summer retail release. Did it live up to the HX Tour reputation?

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Acushnet Sues Retailer for Counterfeit Balls

Academy Sports is found to be selling counterfeit Pro V1s.

TitleistThe Acushnet Company (proud parent of Titleist, Cobra, FootJoy, and Pinnacle) filed suit today in Federal District Court in Dallas against golf retailer Academy Sports. The charge? Counterfeiting Pro V1 golf balls.

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Tiger’s “Secret” Ball: The Platinum

Tiger’s been tricking the Darrell Survey and playing a new ball: the Nike One Platinum.

Nike PlatinumBogeyLounge points us to the Detroit Free Press and a story about Tiger’s “secret” ball: the Nike One Platinum.

We’ve known about the Nike One Platinum for awhile now, or suspected it, but now it’s in the news. Good enough for us, eh? Tiger’s “Platinum” ball has been stamped “Gold” for as long as six to nine months. The “Gold” stamp “hides” the new ball from the Darrell Survey – and industry insiders and competitors.

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Els Playing the Old V1x? No.

Ernie Els is quoted as saying he’s going to stick with the “old” Pro V1x, but it turns out that dead-tree publishers are, once again, using outdated information.

New Pro V1x“Secret sources” sent us an early copy of the April 2005 issue of Golf Magazine. Specifically, they sent page 47, which talks about Titleist’s new Pro V1 and contains a quote from Ernie Els, saying:

I’ll stick with the old ‘x’. I’ve tried the new one and with the irons it feels like the ball is flying differently, like it’s dropping out of the sky.

Dead-tree publishers like Golf Magazine and Golf Digest often come up against deadlines – April issues of magazines are often written in December and January. Our sources confirm that Ernie was playing the previous generation V1x at the Mercedes Championship, but switched to the new, improved Pro V1x at the Buick Invitational. Ernie finished T3 at the Mercedes and has continued to play exceptionally well with the new, improved Pro V1x, with a T6 at the Buick, a 5th-place finish at the Heineken Classic, and a victory in Dubai.

Here’s an image of page 47 of the April, 2005 Golf Magazine.