It has been estimated that around 25 million people in the United States play golf. As seen in Table 1, golf participation rates took a dip after the early 90"s, however, the rates now show a positive growth trend (Golf Perspectives).

             TABLE 1- Golf Participation.

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             While Table one shows that women"s participation rates have declined, Standard and Poor"s have reported that there is a positive trend and that more women are golfing (7). Due to the large success and media exposure of Tiger Woods, who is a young African-American, it can be assumed that more youths and minorities might also start playing golf.

             While the industry is growing, so is the competition. The article by Brandweek, "Big Time Wars in Golf Balls Drive Still-Thriving Industry", claims that there are more ball manufactures than ever that are making a mark( 30). While this may be true, there are four companies which dominate and control a large portion of the market share. Figure 1 shows the sales of the leading golf manufactures in 1996(Golf Perspectives). Four of the top seven are golf ball producers, and they the rank in corresponding order for golf ball sales. This does not give an true ratio of the golf ball market share, however, it does give a general representation. .

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             The yellow shaded areas in Figure 1 represent the golf ball producing companies, whereas, the blue shaded areas represent other types of golf equipment produces. The red shaded area represents the many other companies which hold less than 2% of the market share, which shows that about one third of the market is divided by many different companies. It also shows that Titleist, Spalding (Top Flite), Wilson, and Maxifli/Dunlop are the four major golf ball producers. .

             Titleist is the leading manufacturer in the golf ball market. Their claim to fame is being the "golf ball of choice by PGA and LPGA club professionals"(Titleist). As seen on Figure 2, PGA tour professionals overwhelmingly used Titleist balls in the 1998 U.