56 - Big Brother Is Watching - From Massachusetts...

After writing my last post about the legal battle between Titleist and Callaway I sat back and re-read my little story. My lovely, lovely fiancée asked me what I was reading so I regaled her with the courtroom battle, how patents had been breached, how Titleist were forced to redesign parts of their award winning ball and how in the end it is basically all for nothing (at the moment).

After thinking for a couple of seconds she labelled me ‘sad’ and asked if I had anything better I could be doing with my time instead of gossiping about massive corporations squabbling over golf ball designs that may, or may not, be patented. I thought for a second and answered “no”. As far as I was concerned it was just a little bit of harmless fun. Hmmm…

Later on this evening I checked my stat counter (oh you better believe I have one, I need to know if anyone actually bothers their arse to read this crap) and was alarmed by what I saw. As well as telling me how many people drop by it also tells me roughly who and where they are – don’t worry it just gives me IP details for most people and the city they are visiting from…unless you are a big company.

I noticed a weird entry in the log coming from Fairhaven, Massachusetts in the good ole United States of America from a company called Acushnet. Hang on a minute, that is the company the irrate bloke with the funny name works for, the one who sent the snotty message out to the media explaining what was going on in the case according to Titleist.

Why was this lot suddenly interested in my little corner of the web? Is it something as innocent as the company having a web crawler checking what is being written about them to judge public perception of them or is it something more sinister that will result in me being dragged through the American legal system?

I hope it is the former but if it isn’t it may seriously cloud my view of Titleist and may make me think twice about buying a Vokey wedge. I’m serious; I’ll take my £90 and give it to another manufacturer that doesn’t snoop around little, badly written blogs. Be warned Titleist, BE WARNED!!!