The right golf ball delivers distance off the tee, consistency with your irons, spin around the greens, and touch with your putter. But how do you find the perfect golf ball to match your game (and budget)? Golf ball testing does not have to be complicated or hard, but it takes thought. Let me help you learn how to test golf balls and discover how they are similar, how they are different, and how you can discover your perfect golf ball.
Your ideal golf ball should give you lots of distance off the tea it should be dependable and consistent when you’re hitting in windy conditions and using your long arand it should give you a feeling of touch and create a lot of spin with your wedges and it should also
Sound great when you’re hitting your putts but how are you supposed to find your ideal golf ball that one perfect ball that can help you lower your scores and have a lot more fun on the golf course especially when you consider that this year in 2024 we had brand new
Versions of the tailor made tp5 and tp5x we have the addition of the Callaway Chrome tour and Chrome tour X we had a significant update to the Bridgestone tour BX series plus because premium golf balls tend to run on a two-year product cycle we still have the 2023 edition of
The Srixon Zar Zar XV as well as the Zar Diamond golf ball and I haven’t even mentioned the number one ball in golf when it comes to sales and usage on the PGA tour the LPGA the DP World Tour the NCAA all the elite amateur events the
Title is prov1 and prov1x we also have an update now for 2024 of the Titleist AVX so with all of these premium golf balls offerings as well as many golf balls that I haven’t even mentioned how are you supposed to figure out which golf ball is going to be best for your
Game that’s going to help you make more birdies avoid big numbers and get better overall performance on The Greens as well as off the te I’m going to show you how the first step in deciding which golf ball is going to be right for you is deciding exactly how much you’re
Going to be willing to spend because like some things in life in the case of golf balls you’re going to get what you pay for premium golf balls can easily go for around $50 to $55 a dozen and if you’re going to be someone who loses a
Lot of golf balls off the tea if you’re new to the game you’re just not ready to make that kind of investment there’s certainly some really good golf balls out there at lower price ranges when you get into $35 to $40 as well as say $ 20
To $30 there’s all different kinds of price ranges so what are you getting for the extra money when it comes to premium golf balls better materials state-of-the-art aerodynamic packages and better overall performance and a lot of that comes down to the coating on the outside of the golf ball the best
Premium golf balls out there are going to have a urethane cover urethane is a very soft material that’s applied over the top of the golf ball and soft urethane can be grabbed by the grooves in your wedges and your short irons to create a lot of spin the material you
Used to make the cover of a golf ball really doesn’t have that much to do with distance off the tea and really with distance with your long irons and your Fairway Woods however the slower the club is going to go the more you’re looking for spin the more you’re looking
To try and get green side control the more you’re going to be wanting to get into a urethane golf ball and urethane simply costs more than the sering and ionomers that are going into more budget friendly golf balls those materials are more about durab ility premium golf
Balls also are going to have the most modern and most upto-date dimple patterns in aerodynamic packages so many of the premium golf balls out there that do sell for more money they will be more stable in the wind if you play in an environment where the wind is strong
There are some golf balls that will simply hold their line and bore through the wind more effectively than others you see it all the time where you hit the shot that you’re looking to get a gust of wind hits it and it knocks it offline some balls can handle that
Better than others once you have your price range down you want to buy several different three ball sleeves of as many different golf balls as you possibly can all the different golf balls you would want to consider in your appropriate price range but instead of heading out
To the tbox and on your golf course go to the practice area and go around the green the reason for that is that the biggest difference between One Premium golf ball and another is not found in distance off the tea and performance off the tea it’s going to be found in
Performance around the green how the golf ball behaves on chip shots pit shots bunker shots the best players in the world know this because every time a golf ball comes out and a change or modification is made either to the formulation of the cover maybe a difference in the overall compression
How hard or soft the golf ball is it’s going to potentially affect the way that the golf ball performs the way it feels the way it sounds on chip shots on pit shots on those bunker shots and Pros know that’s where they really need to focus so instead of heading off to the
Te and immediately hitting driver take the golf balls that you want to test and hit a series of Chip shots and Pitch shots go into a bunker and hit some shots in there pay attention to how the ball comes off of your wedges does it sound good does it feel good do you
Notice that there’s a big hop after the very first time that the ball lands when you hit a pitch shot if you see that big hop that’s backspin that’s the control that you’re going to be looking for if the ball seems to land and immediately skit out more than you would have
Otherwise anticipated you probably aren’t generating the spin that you could be the biggest top the most spin again is going to come from those urethane covered golf balls and the more full a swing with your wed shot you’re going to get the higher the spin you’re
Going to generate so personally for me I like to hit a series of say like 15 to 20 yard pitch shots to start with then I’ll go back and I’ll hit some longer shots maybe 50 or 60 yards and trying to gauge exactly how the ball is going to
Come off and what kind of reaction I’m going to get how much spin am I’m going to get only after you’ve put in the time around the green to get a sense for which balls generate more spin for you and the way that you hit your wedge
Shots and your short game shots then you go back into the Fairway and start considering how you’re going to be playing with these B balls with your irons with your Fairway with your hybrids and eventually with your driver the best way that I like to do it is to
Figure out which two or three golf balls perform the best for me around the green then i’ head out to the golf course and I’ll play say the front nine with one ball and I’ll play The Back Nine with a different ball and I’ll take a look and
See what type of performance I’m getting do I seem to carry the ball the way that I want to off the te are my irons holding their line in windy conditions the way that I would expect them to that’s the type of performance I’m going to be looking for with advancements in
Technology specifically with advancements in launch monitors you can test for golf balls in an indoor environment if you have access to a facility that has a simulator with a good launch monitor like a trackman or a GC quad or a gc3 for example something that has good reliable data then you can
Do some different testing inside which can be very good because you don’t have to consider wind you don’t have to consider other factors like the wetness of a wedge or getting grass in between um the club face and the golf ball however you don’t generally get to measure the quality of the aerodynamic
Package on a golf ball when you’re hitting inside the simulator and different golf balls down range will behave differently and you really might not get a feel for how that’s going to work when you’re working in a simulator situation although again I also do think that there is value in going indoors and
Potentially testing golf balls in a simulator look if you’ll take the time to thoroughly test out several different golf balls that are within your price range and find out which one from a performance standpoint is going to be best for you you win you have found your
Ideal golf ball and then the beautiful thing is more golf balls come out over the course of seasons and then in course of years all you have to do is basically test out any of the newer offerings against the golf ball that you already have you know that it’s the best one
Amongst the the balls from 2024 but a year from now when new 2025 golf balls come out you can just grab one or two sleeves of those tested against your gamer and see which one works best for you so look don’t be intimidated don’t be afraid this is not that hard and
Answer a few questions for yourself go ahead and buy a few sleeves of different golf balls head to the practice scen then head out into the golf course and before you know it you will have found your ideal and perfect golf ball
1 Comment
great video I've narrowed mine down to a few balls 2024 AVX , Taylormade TP5 , Callaway ERC soft , PXG Extreme , and for spring and fall months Taylormade Speedsoft , tour Response Striped , Srixon Q-Star tour Divide I actually Love all these balls and play them all depends on weather and which ones were on sale and to tell you the truth no real difference distance wise off the driver some are a smidge softer than the others but i Love the way they all react nowadays ya can't really go wrong if ya go with which ever ball I am 59 years old and a 7 handicap and LOVE golf cheers to you all from Vulcan Canada