The Greening of Golf Being ecofriendly doesn't mean you don't have a great product.

There's a truism for companies that want to create green products, whether they're in fashion, building materials, shoes, cars or sports: It's not good enough to have a great green product. You need to have a great product, period, because your product isn't going to contend solely against other green products.

"It's a great time to be green as long as your product can compete in the green market and the general market," says William Carey, CEO of Mesa, Arizona-based Dixon Golf , a division of DW Sports Group. Carey and his compatriots at Dixon Golf discovered that truth through trial and error as they sought to create a biodegradable golf ball. They wanted to do something about the fact that 300 million golf balls end up in landfills every year. And since they couldn't make golfers better, they had to design a better ball.

Dixon Golf discovered that a biodegradable ball was unrealistic--not because it couldn't be created, but because it couldn't perform as well as regular golf balls. Carey recalls that the biodegradable balls carried a great message, but nobody was going to hear it because no golfer wants to play a ball that can't carry the water hazard like a Titleist or check up downhill from the hole.