News·10 August 2026·3 min read
Women's Golf Is Growing Faster Than the Men's Game
Ball marketing still hasn't caught up. The real difference in a "women's" ball isn't the colour on the box - it's compression matched to swing speed.
Women's golf is growing faster than the rest of the sport - participation in the US just hit its highest share on record, and in Great Britain one in three new golfers is now female. The equipment side of the game hasn't kept pace: golf ball marketing to women still leans on colour first and swing mechanics a distant second, when the physics say it should be the other way round.
The fastest-growing part of golf
US National Golf Foundation data reported by Forbes shows female representation in on-course golf has climbed to 28% of the traditional golfer population - the highest share on record, up from 20% in 2012 - with women and girls accounting for 52% of all net participation growth in American golf between 2020 and 2025. In Great Britain, women and girls make up around a fifth of adult golfers, but England Golf's Girls Golf Rocks programme and similar initiatives mean one in three new golfers joining the game today is female. Investment is following participation: the LPGA's 2025 prize fund reached a record $131 million* (£97.0 million), up roughly 90% in four years.
Verified DataSources: TrackMan tour averages via NeoGolf; TrackMan/Snell Golf amateur data, as previously cited on KaddieIQ.
*Converted to £ at the exchange rate on 10 August 2026, the day this article was published (US$1 = £0.7405). Prices are as reported and subject to change; the conversion was correct at the time of publishing.
What actually changes in a "women's" ball
Strip away the packaging and there is a real engineering story here, not just a marketing one. Balls marketed to women typically use a lower-compression core - some rated under 50, well below a standard tour ball - built to compress properly at a slower swing speed, alongside dimple patterns tuned for a higher, more forgiving launch. That is genuine ball-fitting logic, not invention. The problem is what the label does with it: it takes a product built around swing speed and sells it as a product built around gender, then paints it pink to make the substitution feel complete.
The label is solving the wrong variable
The industry has a name for this pattern, and it isn't a flattering one. Equipment analysts have long described it as "shrink it and pink it" - take the men's product, soften it, resize it, repaint it - and outlets from MyGolfSpy to researchers at Harvard's Advanced Leadership Initiative have documented how often that substitutes for genuinely understanding what a woman golfer's swing needs. As consumer-marketing expert Bridget Brennan has put it: "Pink is not a strategy unless you're raising money for breast cancer research." The three numbers above make the point better than any critique could: swing speed, not gender, is what a ball needs to be fitted against - and the overlap between the fastest women and the average man is enormous.
This is the whole argument for fitting, not shopping
This is precisely the case KaddieIQ has made since our first article on this site: the ball you play should answer to your own numbers, not to an aisle sign. BallFIT doesn't have a men's version and a women's version - it has a swing-speed-and-priorities version, because that is the only variable the ball itself actually responds to. A woman swinging 95 mph is not the golfer a soft, pink, high-launch ball was engineered for, whatever the box suggests. A man swinging 75 mph very possibly is - whatever the box suggests otherwise.
Questions? contact@kaddieiq.com
What “Verified Data” means
The figures inside a Verified Data panel are checked against a named, public source - a retail listing, a press release, an independent test - before they are published, and we link to that source directly. They are not the same as a manufacturer’s own performance claims, which we report as claims, in the body text, until an independent test confirms them. If a number carries the badge, you can check it yourself at the source link below the panel; if it doesn’t, treat it as reported rather than verified. KaddieIQ is not paid by any equipment brand and sells no clubs or balls.