Where are golf balls made?
This is a question that comes up a lot, and while I’m sure guys leaving comments are doing so in good faith, the evidence suggests there’s a lot of confusion.
Hopefully we can clear some of them up.
For now, we’ll focus on urethane models. There are fewer factories making them and, in general, while some take steps to obscure their sources (and some say their contracts prohibit them from revealing their factories), they are easier to track down .
That said, we’ve included some notes on ionomer models at the end.
It should be understood that it is impossible to cover every ball on the market, but this should provide an overview of where the most popular balls on the market are manufactured.
Top 5
Of the top 5 urethane ball manufacturers, three manufacture their golf balls from core to cover in the USA. TaylorMade does some of its manufacturing in the US, while Srixon makes 100% of its products in its overseas factories.
Here are some additional details.
Titleist
of Titleist Pro V1 AND Pro V1x (including custom performance options like Left Dot and Left Dash) are manufactured at Ball Plant 3 in Fairhaven, MA. Titleist’s other urethane ball, the AVX, is currently manufactured on the road at Ball Plant 2 in North Dartmouth, MA.
Titleist also manufactures urethane balls at its factory in Thailand. Typically, that factory supplies the other side of the world, but when Titleist struggles to meet the demands of the North American market (as it sometimes has during COVID), balls made in Thailand sometimes make it to the shelves in the US.
When we tested the Pro V1x 2021, a dozen of the balls we bought were made in Thailand. They were completely indisputable from balls made in Massachusetts.
Callaway
Like Titleist, Callaway makes its own urethane models (Soft chrome, Tour in ChromeAND Chrome X tour) in Massachusetts. The Chicopee factory is the only location where Callaway’s flagship franchise balls are manufactured.
TaylorMade
The manufacture of TaylorMade’s urethane offerings – TP5, TP5xAND The tournament answer – is split between its factories in Korea, Taiwan and the US.
With TaylorMade taking ownership of two overseas factories over the past few years, the supply chain and manufacturing process is a bit of a moving target.
Looking at TaylorMade’s latest urethane product boxes, you’ll likely find one of two descriptions for the place of manufacture.
- MADE IN KOREA
- U.S. AND 2. MOUNTED URETHANE COVERN.D THROUGH 4TH LAYERS MADE IN TAIWAN.
In the case where the covers are assembled in the US, the work is done at TaylorMade’s factory in Liberty, SC.
Bridgestone
Series B TOUR Bridgestone (TOUR BX, TOUR B XS, TOUR B RXAND TOUR B RXS) is manufactured at the Bridgestone factory in Covington, GA. Bridgestone also has a factory in Japan that also manufactures the TOUR B.
Like Titleist, the overseas factory doesn’t typically offer inventory for the US market, but when capacity is pushed, some Japanese-made products may find their way onto shelves here in the US.
Srixon
The production of Srixon’s Z-Star Series is split between its factories in Japan and Indonesia. Most of what we tested came from Indonesia, with the exception of the Z-Star Diamond where our samples were manufactured in Japan. The data we have collected from Ball Lab suggests that the durability of the product is slightly better from the Japanese factory
Smaller OEMs
Perhaps the cleanest line between the Top 5 and everyone else is that while the bigger brands own their own factories, the smaller brands rely entirely on the 3.st parties to provide production. This is not to say that there is no research and development behind these products. To varying degrees, these smaller brands have some in-house research and development, but lack the facilities to mass-produce a core-to-cover ball.
Mizuno
Mizuno’s RB Tour AND RB Tour X are made in Vietnam by Feng Tay. Notably, Feng Tay also produces balls under its RZN brand. As you can extrapolate from the name, RZN is a continuation of Nike’s intellectual property, which Feng Tay bought from Nike when the company exited the golf industry.
PXG
PXG is a newcomer to the golf ball market. Less than two years later, the company just released the second iteration of its Xtreme Tour along with a new Xtreme Tour X.
PXG balls are manufactured by SM Parker in Vietnam (formerly in China). Notably, SM Parker has also produced every iteration of the Kirkland Signature 3-piece ball.
FYI, the original 4-piece ball was manufactured by Nassau, which is now TaylorMade Korea.
Wilson
Wilson’s Staff Model AND Model X staff urethane balls are, in my opinion, among the most underrated and overlooked in the game. Both are manufactured by Foremost in Taiwan, which Ball Lab data and robot testing suggests is the best of the non-OEM owned factories.
Most importantly it is also the only known non-OEM owned factory that produces balls with cast urethane covers. If you’re wondering, both Titleist and TaylorMade use molded urethane covers while most competitors use an injection molding process.
DTC Brands
First, let’s start with a disclaimer to admit that the line that separates direct-to-consumer brands from traditional golf ball brands is blurry at best. There isn’t a single brand on this list that doesn’t sell golf balls through their website, so in that regard, every golf ball brand is a DTC brand.
That being said, while I suppose we could be reclassified as traditional vs. new, my sense is that most golfers understand the distinction we are trying to make.
Another point of separation, I think, is that for our DTC companies, it’s not uncommon for dimple patterns to be split between models and brands. For example, you’ll find the same Foremost 308 dimple pattern on the Maxfli Tour, Vice Pro, and OnCore ELIXR.
Foremost’s other favorite pattern – a 336 dimple design – is often found on 4-piece and higher compression golf balls and is common to the Maxfli Tour X, Vice Pro Plus and SEED SD-01 and SD-02 among others .
To some extent, the cover split is an understandable compromise given that creating a viable hole design is one of the most complex challenges in golf, and the reality is that the brands on this part of our list lack the research power and development to do it. And even if they could, manufacturing the molds along with the added factory effort required to integrate them into the manufacturing process would be cost-prohibitive.
Finally, Foremost is notable for being the 3 onlyst party factory that Ball Lab results suggest meets or exceeds the quality of some of the top 5 manufacturers.
With that out of the way…
Vice
While the data is unclear, Vice believed to be the largest of the DTC brands. His current line of urethane balls (Vice Pro, Vice Pro Plus and Vice Pro Air) are all manufactured by Foremost. This has been the case with every Vice urethane ball except the Vice Pro Zero which was produced by Feng Tay.
Maxfli
Like Vice’s offerings, Maxfli is highly regarded TOURNAMENTS, The X tournamentAND Tour S are all manufactured by Foremost.
Snell
The first two generations of Snell MTB the offers were great. With the exception of the short-lived MTB Red, they were all produced by Nassau in Korea. When TaylorMade bought Nassau, Snell had little choice but to take his business elsewhere.
We are still tracking down which factory makes the current Prime series. We’ve narrowed it down to a more likely candidate, but until we can confirm, we’ll just say it’s not one of the biggest factories on this list.
Volvik
On inspection, the model with 336 dimples in the new one Volvik Condor, Condor XAND XT Soft seems to match that of Vice Pro Plus. Combined with the country of origin (Taiwan), this strongly suggests that Volvik’s newest models are also manufactured by Foremost.
OnCore
Deciphering where OnCore’s urethane models are made takes some effort. Vero series (both X1 AND X2) are produced by Foremost. Of the two ELIXR models currently listed on its website, the ELIXR 2020 is manufactured by Foremost.
350 pits others ELIXR was produced by Launch Technologies. A fire destroyed that one a year ago (they’re in the process of rebuilding), which likely explains the lack of inventory for that model.
And speaking of Launch Technologies
Launch Technologies (AKA: “LT”) is definitely the best of the rest on the list of 3st party makers. It is definitely the biggest.
While a good portion of what comes out of Launch Technologies are 2-piece ionomer offerings, LT’s manufactured urethane offerings include the LA Golf ball, Odin X1, and Sugar Pure.
The dimple numbering is extremely helpful in identifying the factory that produced the ball. With that in mind, if you’re looking at a 350 dimpled ball with a urethane cover, there’s a better than good chance it’s made by Launch Technologies.
The other guys…
This effectively covers the largest factories. This does not mean that they are the only factories. The list is wider than you might think, but in the urethane space, Kerichem (Trust), NEXEN (SaintNine) and Scana (Inesis) stand out from the rest.
What about two-part offers and other non-number offers?
As you’ve probably noticed, the volume of two- and three-part ionomer offerings is significantly higher than urethane.
Tracking each of them borders on the impossible, and while it may be worth a deeper dive later, for now, we’ll share some thoughts written with a very large brush.
- Titleist/Acushnet is the only manufacturer that manufactures 100% of its golf balls, including 2-piece offerings and Pinnacle range balls in its own factories – primarily Ball Plant 2. All others outsource some, if not all all, from their cheapest things.
- Bridgestone manufactures some of its 2-piece products in-house, but also outsources a fair amount to multiple overseas factories.
- Callaway has historically manufactured its lower priced offerings at a number of factories including Launch Tech, GTS and Qingdao Oudun. Most notably, its best-selling Supersoft was produced in LT (as were TopGolf balls). Since not making Supersoft was not an option, production has since moved to other factories.
- Launch Technologies also produced lower priced models for Mizuno and MG. They also produce a fair amount of balls for the brands you know.
- In addition to Callaway, GTS has produced balls for TaylorMade, Cut and DICK’S Sporting Goods.
Painting again with broad strokes, as the cost of a golf ball decreases, so does the quality. So while ionomer balls are often significantly cheaper than urethane, in most cases you get what you pay for.
Post Where are golf balls made? appeared first on MyGolfSpy.
