We’ve all heard it before; Titleist is the #1 ball in golf and for good reason. Both the Pro V1 and Pro V1x are excellent products and have a history of success on Tour. This does not mean however, that there are no viable alternatives for golfers who want to expand their horizons and perhaps save a little money in the process. Today we look at some substitutes to both of Titleist’s most popular offerings and explore which manufacturers are making a ball that is similar or perhaps even better than these perennial favorites.

If you’re a fan of Nike golf balls like Rory McIIroy, the news of the company ceasing their production of golf equipment might have been a tough pill to swallow, but don’t give up on the swoosh just yet. With a variety of Nike’s ultra-popular RZN models in stock, LostGolfBalls.com is keeping your golf bag stocked with your favorite balls.

Did you catch Hideki Matsuyama’s approach shot on the par-4 second hole during Friday’s coverage of the PGA Championship? It landed 20 feet past the hole, safely in the middle of the green and seemingly was nothing special. Then it began to roll. And roll. The ball would continue to roll until it disappeared into the bottom of the cup. The crowd erupted and Matsuyama found himself climbing up the leaderboard. While many of us may dream of holing out for eagle in a major, most will have to resign themselves to simply watching such moments on TV. However, there is a way average Joes can get one step closer to competing like such superstars as Matsuyama, Graeme McDowell and Keegan Bradley: play the same ball. Enter the Srixon Z-Star and Z-Star XV.

Callaway Golf burst on to the equipment scene more than 25 years ago with the game changing Big Bertha line of drivers, fairway metals and eventually irons. Alongside a few other key competitors, these products pushed the industry away from persimmon woods and toward the modern era of equipment defined by titanium and composites materials. While its influence on the world of club design is undeniable, the company has also been making some excellent golf balls for the past decade and a half. For this blog post, we want to focus on the Tour caliber balls that rival other industry titans like the ProV1 for a spot in the bags of high-level amateurs and professionals.

The 2016 season has been full of great moments, including a number of first-time winners being crowned on the PGA Tour, as well as some electrifying performances from the game’s heavyweights. In the latter category, two recent victories stand out, Jason Day winning his first PLAYERS Championship and Dustin Johnson capturing the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Both guys drive the ball astronomical distances, have incredible control with their scoring irons and trust the TaylorMade Tour Preferred X ball. Let’s take a closer look at what TaylorMade is doing and why elite players like the aforementioned duo trust them on the world’s biggest stage.

Sometimes even the best putt doesn’t go quite where you would like or expect. Eighty-four years ago, a well-struck putt by Philip “Skipper” Young veered off course and away from the hole. Scratching his head, Young took the ball to his friend, a fellow golfer and dentist, for an x-ray. In the black-and-white image, they could see that the core of the ball had become askew.

Sometimes even the best putt doesn’t go quite where you would like or expect. Eighty-four years ago, a well-struck putt by Philip “Skipper” Young veered off course and away from the hole. Scratching his head, Young took the ball to his friend, a fellow golfer and dentist, for an x-ray. In the black-and-white image, they could see that the core of the ball had become askew. By 1910, Young, an MIT graduate, had already founded Acushnet Process Company which concentrated on deresinating latex and producing rubber. After his experience with the missed shot that should have been “for sure,” Young developed a machine that could uniformly wind rubber string around a rubber core—creating the wound golf ball. With his “Dead Center” concept behind the new “Titleist” ball, he proclaimed it to be the winner of the quest to create the best for the game. By 1949, just a few years later, Titleist had become the most-played golf ball in the U.S. Open.

Tailor-made: (adjective) made special for the individual—as in the TaylorMade golf company, maker of clubs specially tailored to your hand and your golf ball. The first face of TaylorMade was not a Taylor but Gary Adams: entrepreneur, amateur golfer, and founder. In 1979 he borrowed a $24,000 loan. With it he bought a 6,000 square foot building in McHenry, IL with the ambitious goal of creating a new kind of club, one that would catch up to the cutting edge golf balls that had already transformed the game. He began by experimenting with different materials in the hope of improving upon the screws that muttled the face of a persimmon wood.

If all of our golf ball inventory could be placed into a big golf bag, shaken up and emptied, a Titleist or a Nike might roll out like a white marble—or maybe a Callaway, a popular brand for golf gear, would zoom out ahead of the crowd as the company has done in the last few decades. Today, we celebrate Callaway golf balls for their velocity, courtesy of aerodynamics, but some golfers might not be quite up to speed with their history and ingenuity.