Titleist

A missed putt in 1932 sent Phil Young to a hospital x-ray room, where the ball proved to have an off-centre core. Three years of work with Fred Bommer produced a better one, and every Titleist golf ball made since 1935 has been x-rayed before it ships. Balls still anchor the company, and Pro V1 and Pro V1x are made in Massachusetts under its parent, Acushnet. Even the logo is a secretary's handwriting.

Clubs carry their own names inside the family: Vokey Design for wedges, Scotty Cameron for putters, T-Series for the irons. Bob Vokey joined in the mid-1990s and his wedges have topped the PGA Tour count since 2004. Scotty Cameron's Newport came a year or two either side of that. On the hardware side, SureFit gives sixteen combinations of loft and lie from a sleeve and a ring, and fittings run through Manchester Lane in Massachusetts and the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, which certifies coaches as well as fitting golfers. Head office is in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and Team Titleist, the company's member community, is where fittings get booked and where its Learning Lab instruction content lives. It's equipment aimed at golfers who already know what they want from it, and that's most of the appeal.