Big-Selling Golf Ball Is a Surprise

Wednesday, December 27th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

What surprised Bridgestone Sports about its top-selling Precept golf ball was not that players professed to get as much as 20 extra yards off the tee or that top amateurs were using it to win state tournaments.

It was that four-letter word stamped on the ball â€” Lady.

The Precept MC Lady has been like a secret weapon, a bizarre twist in the year of the golf ball wars.

Already this season, Callaway opened its new $170 million ball plant, Nike got Tiger Woods to switch to the swoosh, Titleist answered with a non-wound premium ball that opened to rave reviews in Las Vegas ... and the one ball some retailers can barely keep on the store shelves is a product designed for women.

``It blew my mind,'' said Chad Hall, senior marketing planner for golf balls and clubs at Bridgestone Sports. ``It surprised all of our engineers. We just fell into it.''

The phenomenon most likely began in Alabama, where a well-known amateur named Sam Farlow was introduced to the Lady by a friend in New Orleans, then used it to win the state Senior Amateur.

Word spread quickly.

An Edwin Watts store in Birmingham held its annual two-day tent sale and sold 14,424 of the balls. Curious about the demand, Hall sent employees to observe the buying tendencies in one store and was amused by what he saw.

``It was hilarious,'' he said. ``Guys who had heard about it would walk around, pick up and read the box, put it down and walk around some more, go back and pick it up. Other guys would pick up three or five boxes at a time.''

The Lady has a softer core, and Bridgestone says its technology allows for a greater launch angle and less spin without losing much initial velocity when it flies off the clubface. That's the technobabble.

Perhaps its biggest selling point is the price â€” $18.99 a dozen, or less than half the price of premium balls.

``People will try it one time and if they didn't like it, they wouldn't buy it,'' Farlow said. ``It's funny. If they haven't heard of it, by the fourth or fifth hole they're saying, 'Where can I get it?' An incredible number of people are using it.''

The Lady was launched rather unceremoniously in 1998, and went undetected for about two years. Bridgestone admits it had no idea that men would find this Lady so attractive.

``It was designed for someone with lower clubhead speed,'' Hall said. ``It was designed for a woman.''

The core is made of Bridgestone's patented muscle fiber, which transforms the rubber into a more dense form. Hall said that leads to a greater transfer of energy at impact.

``The key is, the ball has a soft core, and at impact with the driver the ball deforms quite a bit,'' he said. ``When deformation ends, it comes out at a high launch angle with a low spin rate, and it has a high trajectory dimple design.''

When Hall saw booming sales and realized a majority of the buyers were men, he tried it out himself and said he occasionally got 20 more yards than with a premium Precept brand, the MC Spin Control.

``We realized that one of the advantages to our core technology was we can soften the core without seeing a decrease in initial velocity rates,'' Hall said.

The bottom line? Hall said the Lady is Precept's No. 1 selling ball.

``It's probably as long as any ball out there, is fairly soft around the green and is reasonably priced,'' he said.

The only hang-up was getting men to ignore the fact they were hitting a ball designed for women, and seeing ``L-A-D-Y'' on the side of the ball.

One option was simply to cross it out with a pen, as a way of marking the ball. Or pronouncing it ``laddie'' instead of ``lady.''

After a summer of stunning sales, however, ``Lady'' has attracted somewhat of a cult following in some parts. And Precept is starting to take advantage, launching advertising campaigns in major newspapers with the slogan, ``Are you man enough for the MC Lady?''

While Alabama generated the initial boom, Edwin Watts reports big sales in various parts of the country.

``We heard guys were hitting it longer and that good amateur players were using the ball,'' said Kerry Kabase, sales director for Florida-based golf retailer. ``We decided to try it out in the company, and we all came back and said, 'Gee, they were right.'''

Kabase said he plays a regular Saturday game in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., with 30 players, none of whom were using â€” heaven forbid â€” a women's ball a year ago.

``Now, we've probably got 20 guys using the Lady,'' he said.

Hall said the Lady will probably never find its way on the PGA Tour. Precept's top players, like Nick Price and Stuart Appleby, get a more complete performance out of the MC Tour Premium. The Lady may go a long way, but it doesn't spin as much as Precept's premium balls.

For those men whose machismo gets in the way, Bridgestone is thinking about taking the qualities of its Precent MC Lady and putting it into a ball more men are likely to try.

Then again, there's something about a Lady.

``When the ball first caught on, I think there were several guys who didn't know if they wanted to play with a lady's ball,'' Hall said. ``Now, I think part of the mystique is that it IS a lady's ball. They used to cross out the Lady when they first started. Now, they're starting to circle it.''