A Solid Success

As just about every golfer not in the P.G.A. class soon learns, golf balls are deceptively fragile items. They are prone to chipping, cracking or denting when not stroked properly. Keeping an adequate supply on hand makes the game an expensive pastime. Now modern manufacturing techniques are taking away much of the strain. At least four firms, including the Faultless Rubber Co. of Ashland, Ohio, and the Chemold Corp. of Jamaica, N.Y., are making "solid-state" balls that are all but indestructible.

Unlike conventional balls, which have gelatinous centers encased in hard rubber, various layers of rubber windings and dimpled hides of balata rubber, the new balls are uniform in structure. Molded from a mixture of plastic and rubber, they are immune to the kind of slice that can cut ordinary balls to the core. Priced from $6 to $15 a dozen, about the same as standard balls, they are sold at sporting-goods counters, in department stores and at driving ranges. Golf-course professionals, however, rarely include them in their inventories; they threaten a lucrative replacement trade.

Frankly designed for the three out of four golfers who never quite manage to break 100 for 18 holes, the solid balls have already captured 10% of a market that this year will sell 9,600,000 dozen balls for $61 million.

Though some of the solid balls have not yet been accepted for tournament play by the U.S. Golf Association, the players who use them are not complaining. Tournaments are not for the over-par golfer anyway. The only real trouble with the solid-state balls is that --just like the old ones--they are embarrassingly easy to lose.

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