Ball game: The inside story of the golf ball that led to Tiger Woods' historic 2000 season, five-shot win at the Memorial

“If I'd have had my ball this week, I'd have won by five.”

Already a three-time winner in 2000, Tiger Woods was maniacally pursuing excellence. Nike’s Kel Devlin, the man behind the golf ball that changed the sport at the start of the 21st century, remembered that moment Woods told him on the phone that a breakthrough had been made in the development of the Nike Tour Accuracy golf ball. It was May 2000, and Woods had called after falling one shot short of playoff at the Byron Nelson Classic (now called THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson).

During an interview with PGA TOUR Originals, as part of “Tiger 2000” presented by Genesis, giving a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most iconic seasons in golf, where Woods changed the golf landscape, Devlin shared the full story behind the development of the golf ball, 25 years later.

The team at Nike had been challenged to make a golf ball. As with most innovations for the iconic brand, it was about creating something that had never been done before.

At that point, PGA TOUR stars used balls with a liquid-filled core and a compression-molded cover to improve durability compared to older Balata balls.

By early 1999, Nike had created four prototypes with the help of Bridgestone due to the joint development agreement the two companies shared. Still with a urethane cover to help with wear and tear, the balls were instead comprised of three pieces, using injection molding to fill the rubber core and create a solid construction. It made a more precise golf ball for spin and was faster off the clubface.

As the summer arrived, they had already started developing a fifth ball, and that’s when Devlin reached out to Woods for his first involvement.

With the attention of Woods after he had just won the 1999 TOUR Championship, the two spent time testing the prototypes, which left Woods amazed by the stability of the new ball.

“It's moving quicker at its apex than a wound golf ball,” Devlin told Woods. “So, it's going to be more stable in the wind, which means the wind's not going to affect it.”

It was something that Woods had never seen before. But still, there were issues. The sound was a huge key for Woods, and the prototype ball wasn’t up to par.

“One of the first things he would do in every single test was he would take the two or three or four versions of the ball that we would bring and bounce them on his wedge,” Devlin said. “He’d bounce them on the wedge to get the feel of the ball, and he would eliminate a golf ball purely off how it felt when he's just bouncing it off his wedge.”

This was so important that the team used an oscilloscope to measure the sound wave Woods’ current ball was making off his putter face in an attempt to match it on the prototypes.

“We recorded the sound that he liked versus the sound that he didn't like,” Devlin explained. “Then the job for the engineering team was to go, and don't change the properties of the golf ball, but change the sound of the golf ball. And you have to do that with materials.”

By the time Devlin and the team found a solution for Woods’ acoustic preference, they were right into the thick of major season preparation. Despite leaving Woods with six different versions of the golf ball again, Devlin wasn’t hopeful, as he doubted Woods would consider a mid-season switch.

But something changed at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson, where Woods closed in 63 to finish one back of a playoff. That’s when Devlin got the call back from Woods, saying he wanted his ball in Germany the next week.

“I've been working with the different balls you left for me,” Woods said during the call with Devlin. “... This is the version I want. Can you meet me in Hamburg, Germany, Tuesday morning?”

Devlin managed to get Hideyuki Ishii, Bridgestone’s senior director of golf ball innovation in Japan who had been creating the Tour Accuracy prototypes, on a plane to Germany with six dozen golf balls for Woods to test at the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open TPC of Europe.

“We went from thinking we weren’t going to do anything with him until October, to all of a sudden we're coming from Japan and Portland, Oregon, to meet him in Hamburg, Germany,” Devlin said. “For him to officially test the golf ball.”

Woods tied for third in Germany and especially loved the way the new ball performed in the wind. But when he returned to the U.S. for the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday the next week, Devlin and the team still didn’t know if he was going to play the new ball at Muirfield Village. But again, to Devlin’s surprise, Woods told the media at the Memorial that he would “test it in competition.”

The ball passed the test with flying colors at the Memorial, as Woods won by five, and the rest is record-breaking history.

“He knew that he had a ball,” Devlin explained. “It was working better around the greens. He could spin the ball more around the greens than what he had been using. It gave him the ability to be more aggressive at flags.”

Woods’ 15-shot U.S. Open win three weeks later was the largest margin of victory in a major. He secured six TOUR victories after changing to the Nike Tour Accuracy, totaling nine for the season, including three major championships during his “Tiger Slam,” all while recording the lowest scoring average (67.794) for a single season on the PGA TOUR.