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Titleist is a brand name that is owned by the Acushnet Company. Titleist makes golf balls, golf clubs, and other golf accessories. Other primary brands of the Acushnet Company include Footjoy and Cobra, and two sub-brands are Pinnacle and Scotty Cameron.

The Acushnet Company was founded in 1910 by Philip E. "Skipper" Young, along with two college friends. And in the early days this company focused on supplying rubber to industries that needed it, but later on focused it's attention to golf. In 1932, a golf division was created and it gave birth to the Titleist golf ball, which down to this day is it's most successful golf product. It includes the popular Pro V1 ball.

The Pro V1 golf ball made it's first appearance on the PGA Tour October 11, 2000, and was made available to you and I, in December of 2000. The Titleist Pro V1 and the Pro V1x, are still among the most popular balls used on the golf tours, which include the PGA Tour, European Tour, Japanese Tour, LPGA Tour, Asian Tour, and Nationwide Tour.

The headquarters for Acushnet is in Fairhaven, Massachussetts. But they had originally started in Acushnet, Massachussetts. What I found to be of interest is Fairhaven was first settled in 1670 as "Acushnea," and the Acushnet River flows past the city of Fairhaven. The name "Acushnet" comes from the Wampanoag word "Cushnea," meaning "as far as the waters." This term was used to establish the fact that the tribe, who sold the land to the Puritans, originally inhabitated the land leading up to the river. There is also a town called Acushnet. This helps us to understand how they came up with the name for the Acushnet Company.

The evolution of the golf ball is quite remarkable as well. It started in the 15th century with a ball that was made of wood. This ball could only travel about 100 yards or so. Then came the leather balls that were filled with cow hair. A breakthrough in golf ball technology came in 1618 with the "feathery." Next came the Gutta Percha ball, which was made of rubber, easier to produce than the feathery, and much more affordable, but had a tendency to break into pieces in the air. In 1898, a man named Coburn Haskell introduced a ball that had a solid rubber core, which was then  wrapped with rubber thread, and then enclosed with a Gutta Percha covering. Until the early 1900's this ball came to be the standard ball used by most players. But Mr. Young noticed a problem with the manufacturing of these golf balls.They were not precise. The problem was with the way the ball was wound. If wound wrong, the core could end up slightly off-center and would cause the ball to not fly or putt accurately.

In 1930, Young built and patented a machine that could wind string around a rubber core in a uniform manner, which became a "dead center" golf ball that he named Titleist, and the rest is history. Today the company is widely known and carries several mottos, which includes, "The #1 ball in golf", and "Serious clubs for serious golfers"!