“And in the past five to ten years, one of the changes to the process is how broadly we test with golfers. We’ve always tested a lot with golfers and with our Tour staff, but we’ve got to the point now that in the years leading up to a Pro V1 launch we have tested product with everyone in our Tour staff. We’ve been testing with literally everyone who’s played the Pro V1 or the Pro V1x. Beyond that, just in the US, we supply more than 40,000 golfers with prototype products to get feedback as we’re finalising the next generation of Titleist balls. We’ve done projects over several years where we’ve captured launch condition data throughout Asia, because we wanted to identify if there was anything different about an Asian golfer, or a Japanese golfer or a Korean golfer versus a European golfer, or an American golfer. That’s a big competitive advantage.”

Titleist is dominant in balls, but Mahoney knows the only way to stay at the top is to keep innovating. “It’s hard in the sense that we feel the balls are so good, the process to improve them gets a little bit harder every two years. But, the great thing about having such a large Tour staff, and having so many people play our golf ball, is that we get great feedback as soon as we launch a new product. As much as we can deliver a product that does what we want it to do, we really start finding out about the products after players put them into play and hitting shots when it really matters – that’s when we get great feedback from them. In 80 years the technology has changed dramatically, and our size and scale has changed dramatically, but our values haven’t. We remain very committed to the processes, to quality and to innovation.”

Titleist by numbers

24 - The number of men’s major championships won by Pro V1 or Pro V1x players since 2000.

65  - Including 2013, the number of consecutive years Titleist has been the No.1 ball at the US Open – the longest running equipment success story in golf.

750,000 - The approximate number of balls made per day at the company’s three wholly owned and operated manufacturing sites.

190 - The number of global Tour wins for Titleist’s Pro V1 and Pro V1x in 2012 – compared to 25 for the nearest rival.

352 - The number of spherically tiled tetrahedral dimples on the urethane cover of a Pro V1.

1,900 - The number of wins on worldwide tours with a Pro V1 since its introduction.  A prototype version of the ball has been seeded on the world’s tours since last November.

How Tour players’ feedback helps - Michael Mahoney explains what happens.

“We get different types of feedback from different players. We would hesitate to say one is better than another because all golfers are different and we need to meet the demands of all of those types of golfer. A guy like Jason Dufner, who is really knowledgeable about the technology inside the product, will give us a lot of very specific feedback related to feel and spin characteristics. Adam Scott is another guy who is a feel-sensitive player. But then you go to a player like Rickie Fowler – he’s very flight-sensitive. He really has a great sense of trajectory, so he’s going to give you feedback related to the flight, as he’s not as feel sensitive. Zach Johnson is a guy we test with from an all-round standpoint – he’s got such a terrific

short game, but really knows what his expectations are related to flight.”