The disruption of the $5-billion golf ball market is in full swing

Startups are chipping away at a $5 billion market

Unless you’re developing a fertilizer, you probably don’t expect to disrupt the golf industry from the spare room of a sewage company. But that’s where Dean Snell found himself four years ago, holed up in an office with a single computer. “In the mornings, we were walking past the trucks that pump out the port-a-johns,” he says with a laugh.

It wasn’t what Snell envisioned when he decided to start his own company. He’d been an engineer in the golf-ball business for 25 years—first with Titleist and then with TaylorMade Golf Co., where he worked with such pros as Dustin