Titleist had yet another big year on Tour, including wins at the US Open (McIlroy), Tour Championship (Haas). But while they may dwarf everybody else on tour, other brands picked up some big wins as well. In particular I hadn’t realized that Taylormade snagged 5 wins with the Penta this year. Can anybody make a dent in Titleist’s numbers for 2012?
Bidding began on Friday to purchase Acushnet, the maker of Titleist and Footjoy, from Fortune Brands. Over 2 dozen potential buyers examined the business, which is being auctioned off by Morgan Stanley. Among the expected bidders are Nike, Adidas, and Cleveland Golf.
We’ve known about the Nike 20XI golf balls for months, and months, and months. We’ve seen players on tour sporting the logo on their hats and (presumably) playing the new ball.
But so far Nike has been pretty mum about the new balls publicly. The Nike reps I played golf with a few weeks ago weren’t interested in discussing it at all and claimed that they didn’t have any with them (they did).
However Nike is finally officially unveiling the 20XI and beginning their marketing push with a video showing player impressions of the new ball.
The 20XI will come in 2 flavors, X and S (Distance and Spin, respectively) and will have a street price of $45.99. The release date is April 29th. The resin technology looks promising and I’m definitely going to try a sleeve as soon as I can get my hands on one.
MyGolfSpy.com is reporting that Scotty Cameron was seen today at The Oven, Nike’s R&D facility in Fort Worth, TX (aka Cowtown). The implication of this is that Scotty Cameron may be in the middle of leaving Titleist and heading to Nike. A thread on GolfWRX suggested that the move may be effective as of Jan 2011.
Rumors have been swirling for a while that David Duval would be moving on from Nike when his contract expires this year. Today at the Viking Classic he was using a non-logo bag and a Taylormade R9 Superdeep Driver. Duval is still listed on the Nike website, but since he is no longer gaming any Nike equipment or logos, the relationship seems to have ended.
A poster over at Golfwrx has spilled the beans on Nike’s new upcoming tour-level golf ball. It’s currently codenamed RZN (pronounced resin) and is the first solid core golf ball that has a core made of a material other than rubber. The core is made from a resin that Nike and DuPont have allegedly been working on for the past 4 years (I believe I read this in the golfwrx thread but I can’t find the post anymore – maybe it was deleted?).
The general idea is that the resin material is lighter than traditional rubber cores. This allows them to move more weight to the outside of the golf ball. Think of it as the golf ball version of perimeter weighted clubs. The benefits are reported to be less spin off the driver, more spin on wedge shots, higher ball speeds, and the highest MOI ever for a golf ball.
