Locals describe it as a great little beach town, 30 miles north of San Diego on California's Pacific coast. In the golf industry, however, Carlsbad is Mecca, the home of 34 companies including substantial players such as Callaway, TaylorMade and Cobra. And remarkably, much of their current prominence can be attributed to the end of the Cold War.

Several key reasons were suggested for the choice of Carlsbad. Among them was the availability of open land in an exceptionally temperate climate which remains at about 70 degrees all year round, facilitating outdoor testing at any time.

It is also conveniently situated between Los Angeles, which is home to many metal foundries, and Mexico, where much of the finishing work is done. Then there is the availability of a blue-collar workforce of willing Mexicans, whose wage expectations would be more modest than those of their American brethern. Finally, only 50 minutes away is the port of San Diego, offering a gateway to the world.

Apart from the three main companies already named, Carlsbad is home to Odyssey putters - a subsidiary of Callaway - Lynx, Goldwyn Golf and Ashworth.

It is an intriguing notion that onetime military scientists have been drawn to the place in large numbers, so as to turn their expertise to golf equipment. As one local put it to me: "In the past, the belief was that only expert golfers knew how to design golf equipment. Now, ignorance of the game can actually be an advantage."

San Diego happens to have one of the US Navy's most important bases. Indeed, it was from there that some of America's biggest ships of war set sail for the Gulf War. And close to the navy were the aerospace industry contractors, where boffins worked at designing military hardware for possible use against the USSR.

Then the Cold War ended and the US government considered it appropriate to make cut-backs of up to 50 per cent in their military spending. As a direct consequence, some of the nation's most gifted scientists were out of work. But not for long.

Mike Kelly, the marketing director of Taylor-Made, spoke of the "54 engineers downstairs." They and many others were given huge inducements to bring their high-tech expertise to the golf industry where, instead of designing titanium heads for long-range missiles, they began designing titanium heads for long-hitting drivers. I saw them at Callaway, creating digital images on computers.

Tungsten has also become a familiar material in golf equipment and later this year, there is the prospect of something called maraging steel. This is extremely hard - harder than the beta titanium used in some metal woods. And it is to be incorporated into clubheads by a brazing process rather than welding.

All of which is light years from persimmon and hickory. Yet, curiously, these are the materials Ely Callaway was using when he first met up with Richard Helmstetter, now Callaway's senior executive vice-president in charge of new products. A benign, grey-bearded man with the look of a university don, Helmstetter talked passionately about the industry when I met him in Carlsbad.

"I would describe myself as a designer who understands engineers very well, and I met Ely on a golf course - at the Vintage Club in Palm Springs - early in 1985," he said. "I was in the billiard and snooker cue business at the time and I had come from the UK where I was working with Alex Higgins, John Spencer and Ray Reardon."

Seeing my look of bemusement, he smiled and went on: "Yes, I was making cues. Snooker cues. And all of those fellas were on my staff. I split them. I was the first person to make professional quality snooker cues in two pieces.

"The challenge was to invent a screw-joining in the cue that wasn't made of metal and I did it with wood. I developed a way of threading the wood on both sides and it was just as solid as if it were one piece."

One got the impression of a man who would talk softly, cajolingly to his colleagues. And who would listen. "Essentially, I try to get a feeling for what they're talking about and turn it into a product," he said. "Anyway, I was going to the Crucible, home of the World Snooker Championship, and from there to Japan."

He continued: "The early time of the year isn't all that nice in Japan, except for skiing, if you like skiing. So I called a very good friend of mine, Mike Dunaway, who was a long-drive champion and I said `Mike, let's meet somewhere in the United States where it's warm and we'll play golf for three or four days, before I head for Japan.'

"So we end up in Palm Springs and on our second morning there, we respond to a request to go to the Vintage Club and meet this fellow who had just bought Hickory Stick USA. He wanted to make drivers and irons as well as putters and wedges with hickory shafts. That was Ely Callaway.

"People told him they would break and though I was a collector of classic golf clubs and played a lot with hickory, I had to agree that they were right. But he thought if he hired a long-drive champion to hit them, people would believe that they were practicable.

"Ely didn't know anything about my background in cue-making when we met. But I would later help him design the original Big Bertha. While watching television, I got the aesthetics from a combination of the Star Trek War Bird space ship and a Tymori Island canoe, which I saw on ESPN."

As a reward for services rendered, Callaway later honoured Helmstetter by opening a state-of-the-art club testing centre in his name, in 1994.

"I am the golfer's answer to course architects such as Pete Dye," he went on. "More specifically, I'm Colin Montgomerie's answer to Pete Dye. When Colin came and worked here for a week, and decided to give up his forged irons and play with our funny-looking implements, he said he'd been raised to believe that when he made a bad swing with an iron club, he was going to make a bogey.

"But he discovered that with our golf clubs, he could make a less than perfect swing and still make par. The biggest reason for this was that he could control his distance, better than he had ever been able to do before.

"Let me give you an example. A reasonably proficient golfer can hit his four wood and two iron about the same. However, the miss with the four-wood is right-left; the miss with the two iron is short-long.

"So the moral is that if you're playing a very narrow fairway, hit the two iron. But if you have to go over water, don't hit the two iron, hit the wood. That's what led us to build irons that sort of played like woods."

But all is not sweetness and light. My visit coincided with the leaked news that Cobra were laying off employees, following on the decision in May by Spalding Sports to lay off 135 mainly factory workers.

Still, I found the Cobra operation to be both vibrant and enlightening, for sharply contrasting reasons. I watched Mexican workers carefully constructing the only graphite shafts manufactured in the US. And I saw a vaguely familiar photograph high up on the wall of the reception area.

"That's a Spanish golfer, Seve Ballesteros," said the helpful receptionist. Which struck me as odd, given that he no longer plays King Cobra clubs. "We were happy to continue with the arrangement but the asking price was too high," said Joseph Casey, sales, promotions and leadership manager of Cobra which, incidentally, is owned by TitleistFootjoy.

Casey went on: "When I joined Cobra five years ago, we and our rivals were all pretty friendly. Now, everything is hush-hush."

On a tour of the facility, Casey showed me the special club-fitting department where Paul McGinley has made "about four visits" to keep up to speed with the product he endorses. But the understandably dominant image was that of Greg Norman, who made a reported $45 million from a relatively modest investment of $2 million, before the company went public.

It was launched in 1973 by Tom Crow, a former winner of the Australian Amateur title who emigrated to the US at that time. Cobra's early impact on the market was made by the famous baffler, designed by Crow and one of the most effective clubs for so-called trouble shots.

My final stop the following morning was at Taylor-Made, who were putting the finishing touches to their new headquarters. Pictures were being prepared of their top players, including recent major winners Mark O'Meara, Ernie Els and Tom Lehman.

Devotees of Taylor-Made which, incidentally, is a subsidiary of Adidas, are known as Bubble Believers, after the company's famous bubble-shaft. And the company projects a "nice-guy" image through its leading "staff" players, Ernie Els, Mark O'Meara and Tom Lehman. It seems to be working.

"We are currently number one in the market place in drivers and metal woods," said Kelly. "We've taken over from Callaway, by picking up the 12 market-share points they lost over the last 12 months. They had that crown for maybe six or seven years but we've been ahead of them now for four months in a row in the US."

It can be assumed, however, that Ely's boffins are fighting back. Five years ago, Callaway's 500 employees moved into a new headquarters building in Carlsbad designed to last them for 10 years. The company now has 16 buildings and 2,400 employees.

As I was leaving to head back to San Diego, I noticed a large building site where workers were clearing away debris while trailer loads of construction steel girders lay in readiness. "Future site of Callaway Golf Ball Company," a sign proclaimed.

Carlsbad is set fair for the new millenium.