Are You Playing a Ball with the Appropriate Overlap Saturation (OS) for Your Game?
Don’t worry if you have never heard of “overlap saturation.” Marketers have not latched onto it as the hot marketing buzzword. Just ask yourself… five years ago did the average golfer know what MOI stood for?
Acushnet penned the term “overlap saturation,” abbreviated OS, which is the ratio of the number of overlap instances on a ball to the maximum possible number for an ideal hypothetical ball with the same number of dimples. Overlap instances are tallied by summing the number of overlapping neighbor dimples for every dimple.
So what does all this mean? Acushnet states that golf balls with overlapping dimples offer increased total yardage compared to an equivalent ball without overlapping dimples. Check out the following figure.
Why this topic? Recently Acushnet was granted USPN 7258632 titled “Golf Ball Dimple Pattern with Overlapping Dimples,” which is related to the previously issued patent USPN 6969327. If you enjoy golf technology, then you will enjoy reading the “Background of the Invention” of the ‘632 patent. The following are a few more of the figures from the patent.
Fascinating stuff!
Dave Dawsey - Dedicated to Golf Ball Patents
PS – It does appear that Acushnet created the term “overlap saturation.” A Google search, as well as a USPTO search, does not reveal any other usage of the term. Congratulations Acushnet!
Comments