Golf has become a popular sport in recent years rather than an expensive activity in the past. This becomes obvious as a great number of golf courses have been set up in a wide scope of areas. While the golf has become more popular and widespread nowadays, golf clubs and golf balls also become fashionable products on the market, and competition is fierce. How to develop products with distinguished features is vital to increase market share.
A conventional white golf ball A (referring to FIG. 1) has a ball body A1 with an opaque white layer A2 to facilitate view of the flight position. But the white layer A2 is deficient in reflection and becomes darker after subject to frequent hit of the golf clubs. This makes recognizing the distance and location of the white golf ball A after strike more difficult.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,949,595 B2 (referring to FIG. 2) discloses a multilayer golf ball B that has a core B1, a colored intermediate cover B2 outside the core B1, and a transparent cover B3 outside the intermediate cover B2. The colored intermediate cover B2 can be seen through the transparent cover B3. Moreover, the intermediate cover B2 can be formed in different colors during production to become more distinguishing and appealing. However, the color added to the golf ball B merely enhances the appeal, but does not help to view the flight location after being hitting. It fares even worse than the conventional while golf ball A in the second concern. Although luster-enhancing agent can be added to the intermediate cover B2 to make the color of the intermediate cover B2 brighter, it cannot help to improve reflection or view of the flight location.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 5,427,378 (referring to FIG. 3A) also discloses a golf ball C which mainly has an outer cover C1 randomly or fully embedded with reflective particles C2 to provide reflection (also referring to FIGS. 3B and 3C). While more reflective particles C2 distributed in the outer cover C1 can increase light reflective effect, more structural damages also incur to the outer cover C1. As a result, after the golf ball C is hit, the outer cover C1 is prone to crack, and the reflective particles C2 easily drop to result in diminishing the reflective effect and shortening the lifespan. Moreover, the reflective particles C2 are blended inside the outer cover C1 during production, thus the structure might like that depicted in FIG. 3C, i.e., some of the reflective particles C2 are tilted and overlapped, so that the reflective surfaces C21 of the reflective particles C2 could not parallel with the ball surface C11, such as the first reflective particle C2 and second reflective particle C22, or could generate gaps when being overlapped, such as the first reflective particle C2 and third reflective particle C23. In the second situation, when light d projects to the third reflective particle C23, it is refracted and blocked by the bottom of the first reflective particle C2, therefore the reflective effect is severely affected.
FIG. 3D illustrates another situation in which the light d enters to the reflective particle C2 non-vertically through the arched ball surface C11 at a first distance H and forms a non-vertical angle θ, and then another light d1 is reflected. As the light d1 is reflected through the ball surface C11 at a second distance H1 which is greater than the first distance H, the intensity of the light d1 is weaker, namely the vertical light d2 has better reflective effect than the non-vertical light d1. Thus, although the reflective particles C2 are proximate to the ball surface C11, as they are not parallel with the ball surface C11 at all, light reflection is adversely affected.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds