Colorado Company
Banks on New Concept in Golf Ball Design

By Terry Ostmeyer
Rockies Golf Daily Staff Writer

DENVER – Being bald is good for a golf ball. In fact, it’s so good that it could prevent many a golfer from tearing out his hair.

A Colorado company is banking on a revolutionary concept in golf ball design and construction in its efforts to carve out a significant niche in the golf equipment marketplace.

SP Golf Company of Denver makes and markets the Bald Eagle golf ball, which is a bold venture into arguably the toughest segment of the sport’s highly competitive world of research, development and sales. The USGA-approved Bald Eagle is the brainchild of company president John Sellar, who created its unique design to provide greater putting accuracy while still producing the maximum in distance and control off the tee.

That’s a combination that SP Golf officials say no other golf ball that conforms to USGA rules can claim. The Bald Eagle’s secret is a design that features six symmetrically placed bald spots amid an array of 432 dimples of various sizes and depth.

Sellar’s theory is that the same dimples that give a golf ball its aerodynamics also give it an uneven face of ridges that play havoc with putting. He figures that when the putter strikes a dimple ridge the line of the putt can be affected by five degrees or more. Thus, Sellar’s bald spots are to provide a smooth point of contact between putter and ball for true accuracy on the greens.

SP Golf believes it has accomplished this without sacrificing the ball’s distance, feel or spin.

“The Bald Eagle is the first truly different golf ball design since the introduction of the two-piece ball almost 30 years ago,” says Larry Phillips, SP Golf’s vice president of operations. “There have been innovations in cover and core compositions and in the number and shape of dimple configurations, but until this ball, no one has tackled the challenge of creating a ball that delivers both distance off the tee and increases putting accuracy.”

SP Golf has been in business producing the Bald Eagle since 1996, but the company made its key move early this year when it employed renowned golf ball scientist Larry Cadorniga to refine its product.

Cadorniga, the research-and-development genius whose creations include the Titleist Tour Balata, the MaxFli HT Tour Balata and the Pinnacle Gold, retained the original Bald Eagle’s one-of-a-kind design characteristics and rebuilt its elements of composition.

The result was a new Bald Eagle that was introduced five months ago – a high-performance, high-spin, two-piece, 90-compression ball. Its heart is a polybutadiene core and a soft, zinc-sodium polyonomer cover. It’s a product that Cadorniga and SP Golf believe can compete with the big boys in the industry.

“Together, John Sellar and Larry Cadorniga have produced a ball that – from tee to green – outperforms other top-selling, high performance balls, delivering exceptional distance and spin,” says Phillips. “But their true gift to golfers is the way this ball performs on the putting surface. We believe that we are revolutionizing the way players will think about golf balls in the future.”

The new Bald Eagle has certainly made Matt Mapes’ job at SP Golf easier. “It gives us instant credibility,” says the company’s manager of marketing and sales who recently launched an off-course marketing campaign in Denver-area retail stores.

SP Golf’s relationship with Cadorniga includes having the Bald Eagle made in his state-of-the-art golf ball manufacturing plant in Taiwan, as well as a financial commitment to the facility.

“It’s definitely a testimony to Larry Cadorniga and the quality control he has over his production operation,” Mapes says of SP Golf’s investment in manufacturing process.

The marketing campaign features built-in margin incentives and cash sales rebates for the retailers. The early returns have been very encouraging, Mapes adds. The Denver stores carrying the Bald Eagle include Mulligan Golf, the Golf Ball Warehouse and D’Lance Golf, along with USA Golf in Longmont.

For now, Mapes says, SP Golf is limiting itself to the Colorado retail marketplace. The key, he notes, is to make a strong showing here and then assess expanding nationwide.

Getting the Bald Eagle in the hands of the better players is vital, too. Several tour professionals have shown interest. One, Mike Gordon, a former long-drive champion and world-record holder, has signed on as a spokesman.

Already an even newer Bald Eagle is in the works, a balata model that will probably be introduced by the first of next year. Also, the company plans to release an infomercial sometime this fall.

“There are like two dozen golf ball manufacturers out there, but the industry is dominated by just a few who control maybe 90 percent of the market right now,” Mapes says. “But there’s still room for a good product. You have to set yourself apart. We think we done that.”