Do you know which is the best -selling golf ball in Europe and how much it costs?

The best selling golf ball in europe takes place in Lille (France). Six hundred thousand units are sold each year in the Old Continent, of which 250,000 are sold in Spain. A group of 40 people were dedicated to developing this material and six exclusively on the ball. Its name refers to the ‘movement’ in Greek and aims to democratize golf.

Inesis 100. That’s the name of a golf ball model that is causing havoc in the market. It comes from the Greek word ‘kinesis’, which means ‘movement’, and one of its aims is to make popular a sport that for many is reserved for the elite. So far, it’s on the right track: it’s the best seller in Europe. No brand ships so many units per year.

Developed by Decathlon, the Inesis 100 ball, focuses on golf beginnershas been able to achieve an unparalleled quality-price ratio that has been able to capture the large portion of fans who want to practice a sport whose one of its instruments, the ball, generates a high percentage of total expenditure.

Defended by the French company bring golf to as many people as possible and he got it. Above all, by the ball, the best selling technical product in specialized stores. If in tennis the racket is important and in football the ball, in golf the ball is one of the main tools. If there is no ball, there is no golf.

And, unlike rackets or balls, balls are missing. Sometimes they have a single use. In one blow, they can disappear forever into lakes or among trees on a golf course. For this reason, with prices dominating the market until recently, some fans were unwilling to enter the circuit of buy-lose-buy balls that could cost 4 euros per unit.

Decathlon made a ball that cost 50 cents a unit and that now around 70-80 euro cents. In total, a dozen costs exactly 6.99 euros, while a high-end dozen can exceed 20 euros.

Hard ball- Soft ball, a key to the final price

How have you been able to develop a similar product that meets the requirements for sport training with minimum guaranteed quality? Very easy. They bet focus all efforts on the needs of athletes beginning to practice golf, which requires a tough ball. Quite the opposite of the professional, who uses soft balls.

“To a player, if you put a soft ball in the beginning, he won’t make as much flying, he’ll make mistakes because the ball is too soft and it will get out of control. The Inesis 100 allows you to have that kind of hardness ., the initiation player the ball comes out and makes the distance, which is what he is looking for, ”Ángel Blazquez, commercial director of golf for Decathlon Spain, told EFE.

On this premise, the French company sought to create a hard ball at an affordable price. From theory to action, the technique is found: First, the soft balls used by professional golfers have more layers. In total, they can number up to five. Two are sufficient for Inesis 100 to achieve the required hardness.

“Golf balls depend on their composition. A high-end ball is made of three, four and even five layers. You add them according to different needs and each of the spheres is can give you more rigidity, less or something else that limits the rotation of the ball which further increases it.Ours has only two layers.There is an inner core and the outer layer made of one material called surlyn, which is a derivative of petroleum that is very hard and relatively resistant. ball that does not break and lasts a long time “, explained Blazquez.

Surlyn is inexpensive and easy to inject into the ball, while high-end balls aimed at professionals require urethane, a class of compounds needed to create a softer product from which high -end ball, and at a lower value. highest.

To create beautiful, beautiful and inexpensive balls for novice athletes, Decathlon has a team in Lille with 40 people dedicated to golf and another of six exclusively dedicated to the ball. There are engineers and product managers, a market manager, a test engineer and another person who manages adding value to the product.

Divers, lakes and ecology

They create together a ball that also has ecological sensitivity. In addition, in two aspects. One of them is very curious. The first, because of the material used: “One percent of the inside of the ball is made with recycled product. For us it’s very important,” Blázquez said.

And, on the other hand, they work Replay Golf, a leading company from Soriana in Europe in the manufacture and recycling of golf balls. One of its peculiarities is collecting balls lost in the lakes of golf courses to give them a second life.

“They have their own divers. They recover balls that fall into lakes and disappear and recycle them in two ways: one, they destroy them and with the remaining material they make a new product again. “and, another, cleaning, re-making a new ball from the old one. They stripped it down and repainted it. It’s a world where we move around 15-20 percent of the balls we sell are recovered,” he said. by Blazquez.

And, also thanks to the recovery of these used balls, Decathlon can weigh in on the number of sales of its balls. About, 20 percent of golf balls recovered from lakes respond to Inesis 100. Exactly, this corresponds to the percentage of sales of new balls.

The Inesis 100 is the best -selling model in Europe. It is only resistant in the United Kingdom, where the brand is not as strong as other countries on the continent. But where it lands, the athlete who wants to start in the world of golf can’t resist buying a great, beautiful and inexpensive product to start on the right foot. And, ultimately, those are the keys to a product that contributes to the democratization of golf.