For years, Mike Fox has been trying to change the way golfers look at their golf balls. As the senior director of product creation for TaylorMade’s golf ball category, Fox has been at the forefront of a major cosmetic shift in the ball industry over the last few years.
“For golf balls, the saying used to be it’s white, round and sits on the ground,” Fox told GOLF.com. “That’s just not a thing anymore.”
Take a look at the golf ball options on TaylorMade’s website and it becomes clear pretty quickly that white golf balls are starting to lose their luster. Sure, TaylorMade’s white TP5 and TP5x remain the most popular option in the professional ranks, but even Tommy Fleetwood and Rickie Fowler have started to embrace the Pix’s visual technology in competition.
On the recreational side, more than 50 percent of TaylorMade’s golf ball business is projected to be a “non-stock white product” by next year. With the rise in popularity of Pix’s Clear Path Alignment and Stripe — which debuted last year — white golf balls are no longer the first thing golfers spring for on the retail shelf.
TaylorMade has since doubled down on customization with balls featuring, for example, a Pix pattern of Azaleas for the Masters and collegiate logos to support your alma mater. Now the equipment manufacturer is ready to take customization and personalization to another level with MySymbol — a new golf ball program that will allow golfers to make their own TP5 and TP5x with a myriad of logos, symbols and colors that have never been offered at the retail level.
“Personalization and customization is on the rise, and it’s not just in golf,” said Fox. “We not only wanted to meet than demand but exceed the expectations as well. That doesn’t come with just adding different logos on a golf ball. It comes with years of machinery development to put logos in places where they haven’t been before. It’s a fully designed product where you can choose the color of your TaylorMade logo, the logo underneath it, as well as where it goes. MySymbol is truly allowing you to take your ball customization somewhere it’s never been before.”
Before MySymbol was introduced, TaylorMade had a program called MyNumber which allowed for one or two custom play numbers to be added to the ball. It was a simple, straightforward idea that required TaylorMade to build up a supply of each number and keep them in stock at its ball facility in Liberty, S.C.
“Where our golf ball business was at the time, it was easy to stop the machines and run a small batch of 77 or 23 numbered balls and go back to production,” Fox recalled. “Then TP5 and TP5x came along in 2017 and we saw our golf ball business grow exponentially. When you’re making millions of golf balls per year, you can’t take down mass-production equipment to make six dozen double zeroes.”
At the same time, TaylorMade saw golfers clamoring for custom ball offerings — almost 77 percent of golfers in TaylorMade’s database confirmed they wanted more custom numbers — and needed to find a way to meet demand. Over the last five years, TaylorMade has been building MySymbol behind the scenes with the help of new digital machinery — built entirely from scratch — that allows the entire ball to be designed all at once, without the need to slow down production for a custom offering.
“When designed on our website, you can customize the TaylorMade stamp, logo and side stamp,” said Fox. “It gives flexibility that’s never happened before. The products will continue to perform incredibly well. But if we can use personalization, customization and alignment aids to improve your performance as well, it changes the way the golf landscape looks. It changes the way people design golf balls.”
To get MySymbol up to speed, the equipment manufacturer had to submit every TaylorMade logo color — 12 in total between TP5 and TP5x — to the USGA for approval. Even when the ball construction doesn’t change, a different color requires a separate submission. While the process is tedious, it made TaylorMade look closely at a part of the ball that doesn’t require USGA approval: the play number.
Instead of simply offering different custom numbers, TaylorMade will give golfers the ability to choose from four characters or different logos that can be used in lieu of the tried and true play number found below the TaylorMade logo. With more than 100 options to choose from, even the pros have started to embrace the idea of using something different, including Collin Morikawa, who recently asked TaylorMade to make a ball with an image of his Goldendoodle, Koa, in the play number location.
“A big part of golf is being in a great mental state and when I see the picture of my dog Koa, I immediately am calm and confident,” Morikawa said. “Being able to put a custom logo on my ball in a way that I enjoy and isn’t distracting is something I never could have envisioned.”
TaylorMade’s MySymbol golf ball program is available on TP5 and TP5x through the company’s official site for $54.99 per dozen (minimum three dozen per purchase).
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