The Top-Flite Strata golf ball
A few years later, balls such as Callaway's Rule 35, Titleist's
ProVI, Maxfli's M3 Tour, Nike's TA2 (both the Long and Spin
models), and others, including new balls from Strata, improved
on Strata's original breakthrough, by improving the durability
of their urethane outer covers and making them thinner and
firmer for added distance. At the same time, advances in
rubber systems allowed ball makers to design cores that
were more energetic or "faster," for even more
distance on shots hit with the longer clubs, while maintaining
a nice soft feel. Here's the short course on how these long-flying/soft-feeling
balls work and why they represent a sea change in the history
of golf ball design.
Titleist's ProVI golf ball
A golfer swings the driver, fairway woods, and long irons,
on a relatively level path into the ball—so the clubhead
penetrates through the three-piece ball's soft outer cover
layer and compresses its firmer mantle layer and solid energy-packed
core. On such swings, the clubhead "sidesteps"
or mitigates the ball's high-spin-producing cover, which
results in the kind of high launch/low-spinning drives that
optimize distance (as discussed in the next section). Furthermore,
the reduced spin on the ball also means it will hook and
slice much less than its Balata forebears, so the golfer
gains not only distance but also accuracy.
On short and mid-iron shots, a golfer strikes down on the
ball with a more descending blow. This action pinches the
three-piece ball's thin and soft outer cover for shots that
spin a great deal. The clubhead's force is also strong enough
to reach or engage the ball's mantle level, which contributes
height and distance to the iron shots. The blow with an
iron, however, does not reach the ball's core or center
layer, because the club contacts the ball obliquely at an
angle, rather than squarely with all of its energy and mass
as does a driver. If it had, the core layer's energy and
speed would reduce the spin of the ball and it would be
next to impossible for even skilled golfers to control the
distance of their shots. Chips and putts almost exclusively
use this soft cover for the kind of spin control and feel
golfers need for scoring shots on and around the greens.
If the progression from a two- to three-piece ball yielded
such performance benefits, why wouldn't companies progress
to a four-piece ball? Of course, this is exactly what they
did, with balls such as the Ben Hogan Apex Tour, Titleist's
ProV1x, the Nike One, and the Strata Tour Ace. All but Titleist's
ball feature a second firm mantle layer that acts like a
conduit during impact that transfers extra energy into the
core for even more low-spin-derived distance. The ProV1x
achieves extra firmness by adding a second core. These balls
perform best, however, for golfers with exceptionally high
clubhead speed (in excess of 100 mph with the driver), because
it takes considerable force to penetrate the additional
material added to the balls.
Nike's One golf ball
At the same time, ball makers were applying this new fast/soft/low-spinning
core and high-spinning/soft-cover technology in much improved
(and considerably less-expensive) two-piece balls. Products
such as Titleist's Next, Maxfli's A3, and others offered
comparable distance as their three-piece compatriots, but
marginally less spin off the irons and around the greens.
This made them less appealing to most Tour players and low-handicappers,
although extremely popular with budget-minded mid- and high-handicap
players.
Companies then softened the covers and cores of these two-piece
balls and birthed yet another class of two-piece balls aimed
at a different demographic. Balls such as the Precept Lady
Diamond, Maxfli's Noodle Spin, and Nike's Power Distance
Super Soft have given golfers with very slow swing speeds
(some women, seniors, and juniors) more distance than ever.
All of these two-, three- and four-piece balls are virtually
indestructible. You can't cut them. You can't scrape them,
you can't blemish them in any way. All you can do is lose
them.
Although the superior multilayer balls have driven the
pro and better amateur batty with delight (if not delusions
of grandeur), they seem to have also intimidated average
golfers, who feel they lack the skill needed to play with
them. This is a tragic misconception according to Maxfli's
senior director of research and development, Dean Snell,
who, while working for Titleist, was instrumental in the
original ProVI's creation. In fact, Snell believes the average
player benefits as much if not more from today's multilayer
ball than a pro. Here's why.
Dean Snell, Maxfli's Senior Director of Research and Development,
on common misconceptions about today's multilayer golf balls
There's a big push in the golf equipment industry right
now to develop new technologies. So custom fitting has become
more important, and everywhere you go you see fitting carts
and fitting centers. If a person is going to spend a thousand
or two thousand dollars on clubs, they want to know about
what they are playing, and they want to play clubs that
fit them. A dozen golf balls costs 40 or 50 bucks, so people
don't take the time to understand the technology or the
difference between balls, and, consequently, don't usually
play with the ball that fits them best. People today still
think that if it's cold outside, they have to play a 90-compression
ball, and if it's hot a 100, and that's a total myth. Compression
or the relative hardness or softness of the old wound balata-covered
golf balls no longer matters. Today we can make a ball with
a large rubber center that feels soft like the low-compression
balls of years past, but flies far with a lot of initial
ball speed like the old high-compression balls.
But the real misconception average golfers have is that
they feel they are not good enough golfers to play the new
multilayer balls. They think that if Freddy Couples plays
a Maxfli M3 Tour, for example, then they must not be good
enough to play it, or that such a ball has too much technology
that won't help them anyway. What the recreational player
needs to know is that this technology is actually better
for them than for the Tour player. It helps the Tour player,
sure, but it helps them more. Here's why.
First, these balls have such a low driver spin rate that
they don't hook or slice very much at all, making it easier
to hit the ball straighter with the driver. In fact, today's
multilayer better balls have essentially the same spin rate
off the driver as do the Pinnacles, Top-Flites, and other
distance balls that they have been playing anyway. In other
words, from the tee, these balls perform like distance balls,
so there is no need to fear them.
Finally, when a Tour player shoots 70 in a round, he or
she hits the driver 14 times, which we've fixed or made
better because the ball goes farther and straighter for
these 14 shots. Recreational players, who shoot 100, also
hit 14 drives in the round, so they gain the same benefit
off the tee as the Tour player does from the multilayer
ball, with respect to this lower spin rate. Instead of playing
56 additional shots to the green and including putts (to
make up their round of 70) as do the Tour players, they
play 86 shots, which will fly higher, stop quicker on the
greens, and offer more short game control and feel softer
with the putter. That's 86 out of 100 shots that this type
of ball improves for the average player, whereas for the
Tour player it improves 14 out of 70 shots. So the percentage
of improvement is actually higher for the recreational golfer
than for the pro, which, again, means there is no need for
average players to fear multilayer technology
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