It’s a picture-perfect morning as you and your buddies are getting ready to tee off on the first hole.

Everyone excitedly peels open a fresh sleeve of their favorite ball, hoping this pack makes the difference with ego, self-confidence, bragging rights and potentially some money at stake.

Whether you’re new to the game or an experienced golfer, you’ve done your research—maybe even consulting MyGolfSpy’s Best Golf Balls of 2023—and picked a ball that best suits your game, whether it’s based on rigorous testing and data or brand loyalty and familiarity.

Suddenly, one buddy withdraws an orange ball.

“Did you find that thing in the woods?”

“I can lend you some balls if you don’t have any.”

“Wanna run to the pro shop to buy some real balls?”

While the rest of the foursome is critical of the lone non-white ball and potentially begins questioning more of your playing partner’s choices on the course (and in life), don’t be so quick to judge a book by its cover.

Your buddy also did his due diligence in selecting equipment that best suits him, and maybe orange is his favorite color. Maybe it’s easier for him to see on the course. Maybe he likes standing out in a crowd. The stigma and misconceptions around non-white golf balls mainly as cheaper, novelty products still exist in today’s game, but as golf continues to grow and evolve, so does the equipment players prefer to use.

That’s where Volvik plans to differentiate itself from the other golf ball brands and manufacturers all riding the post-pandemic wave as an estimated 45 million Americans played on-course or off-course golf in 2023.

Not all golf balls are the same and Volvik is proud that their products deviate so much from the norm.

“As we continue to engineer for golf’s participation growth and future, we embrace the new culture and will continue to place emphasis on performance and fun,” says Pete Kinney, PGA, President of Volvik USA.

Making Golf Fun Again

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re more than familiar with golf’s changing landscape.

Driven by the sport’s popularity at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased accessibility to off-course action at driving ranges, simulators and golf-entertainment venues, and more opportunities for underserved communities, the face of golf is getting younger and more diverse.

Young adults (18-34 years old) represent the game’s largest customer age segment in the U.S. with 6.3 million on-course participants and another 5.8 million off-course-only participants, according to the National Golf Foundation.

While young adults are golf’s largest customer age segment, the game is growing by leaps and bounds at the junior level. Witnessing 40 percent growth since 2019—the largest of any age group—approximately 3.5 million juniors played on a golf course in 2023. Within that segment, more than one-third (37 percent) of today’s junior golfers are girls, compared to 15 percent in 2000, and more than one-quarter of juniors are non-white, compared to just 6 percent just over 20 years ago.

These growing segments also represent an opportunity to further evolve golf’s outdated norms and expectations with less preconceived notions of how to dress or what equipment to use. The most obvious example is how people are engaging with sport, whether it’s at golf-entertainment venues offering technology-backed gamified experiences or the streetwear-inspired fashion worn on and off the course.

In a game highlighted by personalization, golf balls seemed to be the last frontier—until Volvik introduced the Vivid, the first-ever matte finish golf ball. Available in a variety of colors including blue, green, yellow, orange and pink, the 322-dimple, 85-compression Vivid hopes to quash any preconceived notions of what a non-white ball can be.

Giving golfers the opportunity to further inject some personality in their equipment, the brand has taken it one step further while engaging two of golf’s largest-growing segments through various licenses and partnerships, including The Walt Disney Company/Marvel, Women on Course and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

After launching popular Marvel superhero-themed balls featuring Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk, Volvik and Disney furthered their relationship in February 2024. In celebration of Disney’s 100th anniversary, the Disney x Volvik Collection features Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and other iconic Disney characters on a range of limited-edition packaged sets including Volvik golf balls and collectible ball markers.

“Marvel—and now Disney—has been a great partnership for our brand as it furthers the visual style and dynamic energy we want to provide golfers on course,” Kinney says. “We provide a new level of fun and expression without sacrificing multilayer performance, and with the recent boom in golf participation, this has further allowed us to be at the forefront of new players entering the game.”

Engineered For The Pros

While making the game more fun and expressive with superheroes, cartoon characters and a bounty of colorful options is one of Volvik’s priorities, the 44-year-old brand also continues to prioritize manufacturing high-quality products, debunking any “novelty” misconceptions that sometimes come with non-white golf balls.

Founded in 1980, the name Volvik is an amalgamation of volare (“to fly” in Italian), “vi” for victory and “k” for Korea, where the brand is headquartered. Older than Callaway (1982) and manufacturing golf balls longer than TaylorMade (1999), Volvik is one of six golf ball manufacturers on the planet, which also includes Titleist, Bridgestone and Srixon, and the only one not founded in the United States or Japan.

Boasting 58 worldwide patents, Volvik does not want their golf balls to be considered cheap, 2-piece novelty items. Their slogan says: “Engineered for the pros. Made for the culture.”

The brand’s bread and butter is with its patented soft feel (SF) matte technology, which provides a very fine surface coverage for consistent coating resulting in improved elasticity, durability and friction for spin. Hitting a 52-degree wedge, the spin rate with a Volvik ball featuring SF matte technology is 9,486 rpm compared to 8,960 rpm with your standard gloss coating.

The Vivid, the brand’s most known product, features 3-piece multilayer construction with a patented Nano-Bismuth core blend, ionomer mid-layer and their patented SF matte surface finish.

With two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and a research and development center in South Korea, Volvik exports its 4-piece, 3-piece and 2-piece golf balls to 55 countries worldwide; they’re currently the No. 2 ball in Korea behind Titleist, whose parent company Acushnet was acquired by Korean-based Fila Holdings in 2011.

“We have a portfolio of worldwide patents, and the depth of R&D and technology that is within our golf balls may surprise some,” Kinney says. “While most companies only offer their broadest visibility color options in basic 2-piece constructions, we have been and continue to be focused on enhancing performance with multilayer technology.”

U.S. Expansion

Volvik rose to global prominence after it entered a joint venture with Don Shin to distribute the ball in the United States starting in 2012. A fan of the brand, Shin had a vision to shake up the American golf marketplace and make it more fun by offering high-quality, non-white balls.

As president of Volvik USA, Shin helped expand the brand, particularly on the women’s side as title sponsor of the LPGA Volvik Championship, an event played at Travis Pointe Country Club in Michigan from 2016-18, as well as through player endorsements. Volvik also served as the title sponsor of the World Drive Long Drive Championship and supplied its official competition ball, the Volvik VIVID XT.

The brand even signed two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson to a multi-year contract in 2017 because it seemed fitting that a PGA Tour player who used a pink driver would use a similarly colored ball, though the deal lasted just one year before the two parted ways.

Regardless of the Watson hiccup, Volvik had carved out its niche in the U.S. market as a specialty color performance product. But after Shin died in 2022, the brand faced questions, particularly as golf skyrocketed in popularity in the U.S. at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to grow. More than 24.8 million people played golf in the United States in 2020, according to the NGF.

Poised to hit the ground running in 2024 and engage with the 45 million Americans who played golf the prior year, Volvik bought out the joint venture to launch its U.S. division and announced industry veterans Pete Kinney as president and John Holst as vice president of sales at Volvik USA late last year.

Whether it’s a 4-piece or 3-piece, matte or gloss finish, pink or Captain America and with or without alignment lines, Volvik’s golf ball lineup certainly stands out from the crowd.

“Volvik has a long history of performance innovation, and with recently adding a second state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, our foundation has never been stronger to continue a pipeline of high-performance products in the future,” Kinney says.

Don’t be surprised to see more non-white golf balls on a course near you.

At least that’s what Volvik hopes.

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