Round and Dimples pt. 3

Okay, I’ve decided that I should play a “distance” type ball with good feel. I know I play in a climate that reduces distance, but has softer greens that do not demand I spin the ball a ton. Now what? I mean there are 20 different brands of balls that all say the same thing. How do I decide which brand of ball to play?

First a short story…I was playing a college tournament when a guy came in with a semi-ridiculous score. On a day where NOBODY stopped balls on the concrete hard greens, this guy comes in with a 67! So as we all sat around talking about our round, one of my teammates came up and told me that “the 67 guy spun the ball BACK on 4 or 5 greens.” Now I am not the best spinner of the golf ball but I knew that this was virtually impossible given the conditions.

I walked up to “the 67 guy” and asked him what ball he was playing that spun on these runway-like greens. His answer, “anything round and dimpled.” I was floored. I demanded to know what version of Titleist balata he was playing and he walked me outside and emptied his golf bag of all his golf balls. Wilson Ultra, Top-Flite XL, Slazenger Raw Distance, every manner of distance ball fell to the ground. So I asked him to his a few and sure enough, he spun every one of them. It was there that I learned that “fitting” for a golf ball was not only important, but was imperative.

At that time, as a member of the golfing general public, there was no way to test a golf ball outside of hitting it and watching it. There were no launch monitors, simulators, or internet questionnaire to help me choose a ball. I had to go about it the way that everyone else did. Trial and error.

I would sleeves of balls and test them on the same day, on the same golf course to see what each did. So I would take my Titleist Balata and compare it against the Maxfli HT-balata and against the Top-Flite XL to see what each did on tee shots and around the greens. I would play 4 holes with one ball and then 4 with another and so forth. Most of the time I would play well with one ball and it would be “my ball” for about 4 days. Then I would play bad and switch to something else.

Over time I found that I like softer feeling balls that give me some spin around the green. But I don’t hit it very far so I need all the help I can off the tee. I went through Titliest Professional, ProV1, Callaway Rule 35, and do on. I have settled on the Bridgestone E5+ for now. It does what I like. Long off the tee and soft feeling, it is my current “my ball.”

But what if I don’t have the time or the patience, or the budget to buy a ton of different golf balls to see what I like? Well golf ball companies have heard you. Every golf ball manufacturer has description pages on their websites. Bridgestone has taken things a step further with online fitting and the current “mother of all ball fittings” something they call the Bridgestone Challenge.

This is a traveling fitting center for golf balls. Your club just did a demo day? Imagine one of those for golf balls! That is what you get with the Bridgestone Challenge. You hit a variety of balls using a launch monitor and, through mathematical data, find the ball that is best suited to your swing.

I am more the trial and error type and have yet to be mathematically fitted for a ball. I can say this though. If one of the largest ball manufacturers in the world is taking golf balls this seriously, shouldn’t I?

HIT EM WELL!