PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT/Ball design: John O'Sullivan talks to Megan Morgan, one of the senior figures behind the development of the Titleist range of balls

Megan Morgan wanted to work with injured athletes, a desire nurtured since her early teens. Unfortunately for the budding Florence Nightingale there was a significant drawback that would stymie her ambition.

"I really wanted to be an orthopaedist and treat injured athletes. But when I was in college I worked at a hospital in surgery and I realised very quickly I don't like sick people very much," she says with a laugh.

Quite a handicap, but that didn't daunt her unduly as she simply focused on a different career path, to considerable success. The 29-year-old, who lives in Newport, Rhode Island, is a product test engineer with Acushnet, known to golfers as the parent company of the Titleist, Cobra and Footjoy apparel and equipment.

Her title does not convey the fact that she is the main person responsible for the development of Titleist's golf ball range. Oh, and she also boasts a Masters in bio-chemistry.

She explained how a young woman who had no interest in golf came to be one of the leading "players" in the evolution of the Titleist golf ball.

"I suppose through a long, involved process it came out that what I really wanted to do was design sporting goods. I realised that Darren Clarke doesn't buy golf balls and (David) Beckham doesn't buy soccer cleats, but you do and I do and my dad does.

"Those of us who have regular jobs, Monday to Friday, don't mind paying good money for sporting goods, but we just don't want to have to buy them again next month. That's what really keeps companies in business and I decided that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make good quality sports goods.

"I sent out my resume to a bunch of companies whose products I believed in; Titleist called back and I went to work for them. For two years I did product development. I took the parts and pieces that our material scientists hand over - cover materials, core formulations - and we built them into golf balls.

"It was about seeking better construction, the balls being more efficient and also finding out what the players wanted. The more I did that the more I realised that what I really wanted to do was work with the athletes. So I started to do more product testing, prototype testing and that end of the business.

"For the last two-and-a-half years that is exclusively what I have been doing, product testing. I have been testing everybody from 'Joe Weekend', scraping it around in a hundred, right up to the best golfers in the world. Depending on the kind of answer we are looking for, that test could be standing around a chipping green testing ball types to a full tee-to-green blind test.

"That involves bringing a tour player out to our test site for a full day. I have now gone from doing that sort of thing to spending a lot of time making sure that the players are 'well fit', that is to say that they are playing the best combination of our products for their specific games.

"I also try to fill in the gaps. For example, if we are making a product and they're not perfect, they are not everything they could be, then I need to translate back to the scientists that still do the product development what we are missing.

"That is the role I now fill for the most part: there is only one of me for golf balls in the company. I speak scientist in R&D (Research and Development) materials, parts, pieces, constructions, and then I come out here (we spoke in the Titleist tour van at the recent European Open at the K Club) and I speak regular person language about performance and feel and all that.

"I then take that and put it in a language that the scientists understand. Players are good communicators in their own language but they don't speak engineer, they don't speak rubber chemist. And I promise you, our rubber chemists and engineers don't speak golfer.

"It's that translation that probably sums up what I do. I don't consider it that difficult until you try to watch someone else do it. I have always wanted to work with athletes and then I went to school to become a scientist."

Morgan attended the University of Pennsylvania, in Scranton, from where she earned her degree and then Masters in bio-chemistry. She is very down to earth, witty and in no way fazed by her proximity to the world's leading golfers. When she speaks, they listen.

Golf would not be her sport of choice, although she does play. She describes her handicap initially as an unspeakable number; it's 19 if you're really interested.

"I didn't start playing golf until I was 19 or 20. There's more to life than 14 clubs and a pair of spikes in my world. It's definitely more than a job and a pay cheque to me but it's not my life."

Living in Newport - it's twinned with Kinsale - she felt honour bound to take up sailing a couple of years ago, but her real passion is baseball. She's a "massive" Boston Red Sox fan, travelling to as many as 20 away matches during the season. Her position offers her that latitude.

Titleist have recently launched the ProV1 Star ball, a follow on to the hugely successful ProV1, and they are significantly advanced on a prototype with the monicker ProV1 Diamond.

The original ProV1 sparked a revolution in ball technology, although it took a while to evolve from blueprint to the golf course.

"It was designed for the most part in 1996-97 and by 1998 it was pretty much on the shelf, almost in its current form. From '98 to late 2000, when we launched it, we have improved the product; better rubbers, better materials, better urethane covers and better systems.

"We did testing in September 2000 and the ball was listed for play by the USGA (United States Golfing Association) and the R&A (Royal and Ancient) in October 2000. It took off from there. The ProV1 is a wonderful ball and it's great for a lot of golfers, but there are people that needed something else. That's where that translation comes from that I spoke about earlier, the feedback from the players that it (the ball) wasn't perfect for.

"That's where the ProV1 Star came from which is the ball that Ricardo Gonzalez has been playing for a couple of weeks. This ball is to answer a specific set of performance concerns from players on one side of the spectrum.

"We have a ball, a prototype on which we are working with the players - it's not available for sale - for players on the other end of the spectrum. I don't think that it is right yet. It's called the Diamond. About 70 per cent of golfers, probably more, are really well fit with the ProV1 and can make it do what they need to do. However, there are players at each end of the spectrum.

"The three combinations are speed, launch angle and spin. If you are big on two of those, ie, high spin and high launch or high speed and high spin, then you are generating a lot of lift, probably more lift than the equipment is designed to perform well.

"The answer to that conundrum for those players is the ProV1 Star which Greg Norman plays. He creates a lot of spin. This ball brings the flight down, creates a flatter trajectory from tee to green and it goes into the green shallower with less spin, where the ProV1 comes in steep. It's not a dramatic difference. It's not the difference between a balata and a Pinnacle. It's subtle, but it's what they need.

"The other group of players at the opposite end of the spectrum would be the low-lift golfers, guys who don't have a lot of speed, don't launch it very high. They have these nice, big, sweeping flat swings. The LPGA women would also fall into this category because they don't attack the ball steep and therefore don't impart a lot of spin naturally. Hence we have a prototype out there that's a higher lift product.

"Is it the best thing? Maybe, maybe not, that's what we are looking at, which is why it is not available yet."

So are more expensive balls really better for the average golfer? "If you don't care and just want to go out and experience the golf course and hack it around, then by all means play the jar ball. But if you are aspiring to be better and want to see your scores improving and give yourself the best chance of shooting the best score, then the golf ball is a contributory factor to doing just that.

"The reason they're expensive is the materials and the front end development costs, which are astronomical - not to the extent of the pharmaceutical industry, but they're high, and to be honest that's what you're paying for.

"It all depends on what your goals are when you stand on the first tee."

The furore surrounding the advance in golf club technology is well documented but the parameters governing balls are more stringent.

"In defence of what I do for a living, I will say that we have been working with the same rules, been in the same box in terms of golf ball development, for decades. I think the last rule change concerning a golf ball was 26 years ago. We have been within those parameters of initial velocity, size and weight for 26 years.

"The progress we have made is in the materials. A huge factor is player acceptance. The reason we shelved the ProV1 ball in 1997 was because players were screaming, 'get that away from me. It's hard, it's solid' - you just could not get them out of the wound ball in 1997. It was a very slow change in terms of attitudes before they would accept something other than the liquid centre.

"Nowadays players are far more accepting. You can bring out a wacky shaft that looks awful and there's no way it's going to work but they hit it. If you tried to do that to a player in the early 1990s - well, you saw how slow metal woods were to catch on among tour players.

"Everyone's looking for an edge so players are quicker to embrace new technology. This generation is not afraid of it. A player is far more willing to change equipment nowadays than he was even five years ago. It has allowed us to move quicker, to develop quicker."