US-based golf ball brand OnCore Golf has announced that the legendary golf ball designer John Calabria has been named the firm’s Senior Technical Advisor and has taken on an expanded leadership role in the company’s development, design, and manufacture of golf balls.
Calabria has been working with OnCore Golf for several years and was instrumental in the development of the AVANT, AVANT 55, and ELIXR balls.
Calabria, who is a named inventor on over 12 golf ball and golf club patents, is looking forward to continuing his pattern of innovation. He was responsible for the design and manufacture of the Titleist Professional, which was the predecessor of the Pro V1. At Maxfli Golf, he led the development team for the Maxfli Revolution, HT and Noodle as well as numerous balls for the Slazenger and Dunlop brands. In addition, over the last 16 years, he worked on the implementation of many new products for TaylorMade, including the current TP5x, TP5 and Project A.
During his career, he was a member of the Golf Digest Panel and received the Maxfli Award of Inspiration. He also worked closely with many professional golfers such as Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Fred Couples, Robert Allenby, Ernie Els, Se Ri Pak and others to custom fit golf balls.
“John is an incredible talent whose decades of golf ball design and manufacturing experience at Spalding, Acushnet, Maxfli, Slazenger, Dunlop, and TaylorMade has given him an unmatched understanding of the complex interactions involved between core, mantle, cover, material properties, and mass distribution in achieving the desired performance outcomes,” said Keith Blakely, OnCore’s CEO and chairman. “The ELIXR tour ball, which has been described by golf icon Gary Player as “the best feeling ball I have played in 65 years,” is one example of John’s unique design capability.”
Calabria said: “One of the things that attracted me originally to OnCore Golf was their completely unique and patented approach to developing high-performance golf balls. Their focus on increasing the moment of inertia of a golf ball through novel perimeter weighting techniques capable of delivering greater accuracy and control off the tee without sacrificing distance, spin, or feel was, in my view, going to contribute to the next generation of high-performance golf balls. By building on some of those concepts, we were able to bring that vision to life in the ELIXR tour ball. Our team continues to focus on that foundation, and we’re very excited about what is coming next.”