I recently picked up a new stat gathering tool called Arccos.  At first look it seemed fairly similar to Game Golf, which I used for a while last year, but when I delved further into its functionality as well as ease of use I became more and more impressed with the new gadget.

Last year, my hopes were high when I first got my hands on a Game Golf unit.  I thought it could be the answer to my on-course stat collection needs as prior to having one I had just been writing down everything while playing.  I would have 30-40 scorecards sitting around with a bunch of random numbers (FW hit, GIR, Putts per GIR, Tee misses Left or Right, GIR per FW hit, etc etc) and I didn’t have a good system to compile all the data outside of a homemade excel sheet that slowly started looking like the stocks page of a 1980s newspaper.  It was a lot of grey on white and wasn’t helping me see trends, let alone figure out where to focus the majority of my practice.

After that phase I moved on to GolfShot GPS which is an app that helps compile data during the round.  I liked the app and still use it here and there, but I found it to have a very limited set of data that you could input during the round.  For example, whenever you missed a GIR it compiled a “scrambling” stat but it doesn’t take in account whether you are punching out and then having to hit the green from 180 yards or are on the fringe making a 15 foot chip.  Also, any time you were in a bunker it compiled a “sand-save” percentage, no matter if it was a green side bunker or a fairway trap.  Fairways were either hit, left, right, short or long.  Didn’t matter if you striped a drive down the middle 280 yards or played a 4-iron to 190.  There is no differentiation per club selection off the tee so your “driving” stats could all be from hitting irons safely.  I want to know how my driver, or 3-wood, or hybrid, or iron, does, not just the overall average off the tee.  Long story short, it didn’t quite do it for me, but is a decent generalized view of your game and it has a built in GPS that provides distances to the middle of the green, which is a nice bonus for those without rangefinders.

Then there was Game Golf:

I was VERY excited about when it first came out.  I got a unit and charged it up and slapped it on my belt.  As you can see from the pic above, there are screw-on widgets that you place on all 14 clubs and then a larger widget that you clip to your belt.  How it works is. before every shot you tap whichever club you are about to use to the belt widget and it records the info.  Then you take the belt unit home and plug it into you computer and download the round as well as charge it up for the next round.

What I found was that no matter how prudent I tried to be about tapping every shot I would get lost in the moment of a round and forget a string of shots and then have to go back and manually edit the round.  I also would charge it up and then not use the unit for a day or two and by the time I got it out it would die about half way through the round.  You really had to charge it the morning of the round.

That said, it was revolutionary in concept, at least as far as things I had seen or used.  I appreciated using it and found the numbers fairly accurate (all GPS based tools tend to have about a 5 yard discrepancy).  They also continued to improve on their stats gathering software and were starting to have some solid numbers.  But, another slight issue is that you have to log onto their site in order to see your stats and rounds.  And, I just didn’t like having to wear something on my belt.  I like to keep it minimal when on the course and don’t even keep a wallet in my pocket so having something that feels like a cell phone clipped to my belt was a minor distraction.

All in all I think Game Golf is a good way to build a picture of your rounds and for someone very adept at remembering to charge before a round and tap before every shot and download after the round it’s a great tool.  For me it just kind of added a few more things to remember at the end of a long day.

Then there was Arccos.  My buddy Sean first showed me an Arccos unit and when I saw it I thought it was pretty much the same thing as Game Golf; a widget that you screw into the top of your club:

But Sean was pretty excited about it.  He was the one who introduced me to Game Golf a year ago and assured me that Arccos was worth looking into.

I needed a new system to more accurately illustrate my actual on-course play so decided to try out this new too.  The first thing I noticed was there wasn’t the need to “tap” or wear a separate unit, or charge or download anything.  It runs off of an iPhone app and each widget automatically sends the swing data via bluetooth to your phone.  I have no clue how they stay charged or if there is a battery life in the individual units, but after a couple of weeks of use they seem to be going strong.  As the weeks go by I will update this post if there are any issues with wear and tear.

On an aside, when I flew cross country with Game Golf screwed into my clubs somehow two of them fell out and got lost.  The one on my putter broke, too.  If this is the case when traveling with Arccos I will  let you know.  That said, Game Golf comes with 16 screw tops whereas the Arccos package contains just the necessary 14.  When I lost some Game Golf ones the customer service promptly sent out new ones to fill the voids.  I have not had to contact Arccos about replacement units yet, but am hopeful that they will provide these if needed.

As you play the units transmit data to your phone and after each hole you get a picture like this:

It keeps it pretty real and is similar to what Game Golf does, but with Arccos you immediately have it on your phone and if for some reason it picks up too many putts or not enough (it doesn’t get one-two footers well so if you are hitting them close and tapping them in you have to manually click “add gimme putt” on the app) you can adjust immediately.  At the end of each round you can look over the stats section and it breaks down the stats into categories similar to how ShotbyShot does, giving you a specific handicap for all the different parts of your game:

As you can see by this round, even though I shot a 74, my driving handicap was a 15.5.  This is exactly the type of information that I need to know.  As you build up more rounds you can view them all and see where your game is, as well as see how things are trending along the way.  It also collect these type of data:

This is exactly the type of on-course information that I have been looking for while also having an incredible ease of use.

My only problem thus far is that it can be a battery killer.  They say an 18 hole round typically takes off 50-60 percent of your iPhone’s battery, but I have a 16-month old iPhone 5S and it seems to take about 75 percent of a battery per round.  About half of my rounds have been cut short at the 15th to 17th hole due to the phone dying.

That said, I emailed them and customer service got back to me ASAP with some battery saving tips.  They had a few suggestions and I found them helpful.  I emailed again with another question and within 45 minutes got an answer, so that’s a good sign for customer service so far.

Another difference between these two is that since Arccos is a phone app with GPS it provides accurate distances to the front, back and middle of the green as you go.  So if you don’t have a range finder you can use the app to get a general distance.  Game golf does not have any screen on it so does not provide anything during the round.

I plan on updating my “stats” page with data from Arccos after I get in another ten rounds or so.  For me it really helps paint the picture of my game that I had imagined was there, namely that the long game is in need of some big help.

I think that either unit is a good addition to a golfers arsenal and no matter which one you go with, or even if you just record your own stats, you will find ways to improve your game.  If anyone has had experience with these two tools let me know, I’m always curious to hear what others think about this kind of thing.

If after reading this you are interested in purchasing one, click here and get it on Amazon  at a good price and through my affiliate link.  A small percentage will go to The Dan Plan with each sale of either product.

Arccos:

Game Golf:

I was going to make it a pdf download and ask people to contribute what they thought it was worth, but I thought if I put the book up on Amazon’s website it would be better formatted for all types of digital readers.  If this doesn’t work after a couple of months I may put a link to the pdf up as well, but for the time being please think about supporting The Dan Plan by purchasing the book here:

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I wish to apologize in advance as a few external links did not translate to this format.  One of the most blaring absences are videos.  On a few occasions I talk about watching a video and it’s just a blank on the page.  Outside of that the content is whole.  I edited out about one third of the posts but there is still quite a bit of content, too much in a lot of ways.  Down the road at some point I will have a professional editor (or a well versed friend, or myself when the amount of time in a day magically doubles) take a gander at the content and polish it up.  For now, this is the story, more or less, word for word from the beginning.  I hope you enjoy and get some value out of the content.

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While on TrackMan, I tested every major brand that they had and found that my best “misses” came from the new Nike Covert Tour with an 80 gram stiff shaft.  I decided that it made sense to try it out on the course, but I didn’t want to spend the $230 it was listed for at RedTail so went online and found it at a  discount golf website for under $100 including shipping.  It was a deal too good to pass up so I ordered it and the new stick arrived yesterday.  It was listed in “used” condition on the site, but came with the original wrappers still on the club:

It did, though, have one tiny blemish on the top of the club.  Something that I would have eventual put there myself…:

Definitely a steal of a deal and I’m interested to see if this change makes a difference in my 200-230 yard game as well as potentially adds some confidence in short par 4 tee shots.  I’m not saying it will or won’t help, but I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens.

To pay for this stick, I sold some golf clubs for the first time ever.  I posted one of my old Nike pro-combo iron sets (pw to 5-iron with Project X 6.0 shafts) on eBay and was interested in what they would go for.  All in all, after eBay took it’s cut, the irons sold for about $100, so it was a wash to trade the irons for the hybrid.

I truly hope this doesn’t spoil my potential relationship with Titleist.  I love my Vokey Wedges and AP2 irons as well as 913 driver, just have been struggling with the new hybrid.  I am sure there is a way to have it better fit my new swing and this is something I will talk with them about when I return to Oceanside in mid-January.  I do, however, want to keep it real and talk about what I am doing and right now I am exploring the world of the hybrid.  A club that I want to compare this Nike to is the Titleist 912U 2-iron.  As soon as I find one of those I will do a full comparison of the two.

On to newsy-news.

Over the past few months I have been working with Axon Sports to assist in developing an entirely different approach to golf learning in a new golf training app.  We are focussing on imagery, imagination and visualization within the golf swing and the first version of the app is finally in my hands.  I will be testing it out and tweaking aspects of the user experience over the near future and am excited about this new tool.  It should be a game-changer down the road when it has been fully developed and a way for anyone to optimize their 10,000 hours.

To do it right, these things take a lot of time.  I will definitely be updating this process as it develops and will reveal aspects of the app when the time is right.

I’m very excited about this.

That’s just one shelf of about 8 this size dedicated to demo clubs.  It’s a good place to spend a few hours and they have about 20 TrackMan machines so the feedback is pretty straight forward.  If you are a righty you have unlimited choices.  But, even us lefties had an option in every “tour” and regular category.

I got there in the morning and the left-handed bay was open so I was able to get straight to work.  The guy helping me was nice and as soon as I warmed up it was game time.  I’ve been curious about this stick for a long time and wanted to see what the differences were between the brands.

First thing that stood out was length.  Not of the ball flight, but literally of the shaft length.  The standard length of the Adams, Ping and Titleist was about 1/2 to a full inch shorter than the Nike, which was itself 1/2 inch shorter than the TaylorMade.  TaylorMade have by far the longest shafts of any club that I have seen.  When I hit that one I had to grip up well down the shaft to be able to manipulate it like a normal hybrid. It felt more like a 3-wood in length and how the swing needed to be.

The Nike was actually the most forgiving club out of the bunch and I was pretty interested in how it was adjustable from 17-21 degrees.  That’s pretty awesome and could be used to your advantage depending on the course that you are playing.

To get started.  Here is a list of images. First is the screen capture for a decently hit shot via TrackMan and then the image of the club that produced that shot:

Titleist 913 Hd 20 degree:

Cobra set to 20 degree:

Ping Answer 20 degree:

TaylorMade RBZ Stage 2 Tour 18.5 degree:

Nike Covert Tour set to 19 degrees:

Adams Idea 20 degree:

That was the gist of the day. Total distance between all of the clubs was between 210-230, basically.  The biggest difference in carry numbers was the length of the shaft and strength of the face.  Spin was low on the Nike and pretty high on the Ping.  That’s just how it reacted for me.

That’s the biggest learning experience:  “how it reacted for me”.  All of the clubs had a pretty good feel and each had a similar stock stiff-flexed shaft which seemed to launch the ball at a similar height when gripped up to equalize the length of the shafts.

The funny thing was that I just couldn’t hit the Titleist.  I think it could easily be a mental thing, but the demo 913Hd 20 degree reacted a lot like mine does on the course.  I hit it how I think it should be hit and it ends up starting right and then drawing (I’m a lefty, so that’s a pull draw).  I didn’t have this problem with any of the other clubs, except perhaps the Ping.  When we looked at the TrackMan numbers my club path was 2.4 degrees from the inside out and the face was .4 degrees open.  That should have produced a very nice baby draw, but it was starting right and then hooking about 25 yards right of the target.  It wasn’t about where on the face I was hitting it, either as you can see from this pic:

I’m sure there is something that I am doing wrong, but I can’t figure it out, so am going to head back in the next few days and pick up a different hybrid to experiment with on course.  I’m leaning towards the adjustable Nike and the solid feeling Cobra.  Will post about it when I put something new in my bag.

This is just the beginning.  Clubs can be adjusted and fit and there is a lot more to learn with the hybrids.  I wish I had coach Bruce with me for this experiment, but he is in Palm Desert so I had to surmise what I could from the numbers alone.

Much more to be posted on this pursuit soon.

Also, when I returned home, a sweet new Vokey Wedges golf bag was waiting for me.  I can’t wait to get out there and rock this new bag, it’s really well made:

One more note before starting with the golf balls.  I love this time of year.  The leaves are all changing, World Series is underway, college football is getting interesting and the weather and courses are perfect for golf.  All around, October is a wonderful month:

On to the test.

Srixon Z-Star SL:  This ball is a urethane covered 3-piece ball.  I didn’t realize when I purchased these balls that they were a lower compression ball.  I asked the guy at the shop for a sleeve of the Srixon Tour balls and he sold me these.  I’ve never played Srixon so didn’t know the differences between their Z-Star line and assumed they were all about the same.

What I found while playing it was the ball felt very soft.  It compressed well, perhaps too well in some cases, and was one of the longer balls that I tried, especially off of the irons.  After a couple of holes I started to realize that this had to be a lower compression ball based on feel, they played similar to the Bridgestone E6 or E7 balls and to me seemed like a good choice for someone who has a swing speed around 75-90 mph with their driver.

Around the greens the ball released a bit, but still checked up fairly well.  Most of my shots felt like fliers, though and a lot of shots from within 100 yards ended up over the green or on the back of the green.  All in all it wasn’t a bad ball, but just felt too soft off the driver and longer clubs.  I will have to try out one of their other Z-Star balls, though, as the cover was nice and it seemed like a quality ball in the right hands.

Callaway Hex Black Tour:  This is a five piece Urethane covered ball.  This ball had a totally different look in it’s dimples, I suppose that’s their whole schtick with the hex dimples.  The ball had decent performance and stood up with the Pro V1X as far as full-swing ball striking went, especially off the driver and 3-wood.  Distance control was very similar, I knew after 9 holes that when I pulled a specific iron the ball would be within a couple yards of where I thought it should be and how the ball checked up on the greens was comparable to the Titleist, meaning I got it to one hop stop with full shots ending up about 3-4 feet past the landing spot on fairly firm greens.

What was different was short game shots.  Putting wasn’t too off by any means, but short pitches and chips didn’t have a great feel off of the club face.  It’s supposed to have a Urethane cover, which is the same material in a lot of “tour” balls such as the Pro V1 line and the TaylorMade Lethal, but it had a more plastic feeling to it.  Like a hard plastic wrap somewhat similar to the Nike line, but not nearly as hard.  I couldn’t quite get over it around the greens and it started to bug me a bit.  All in all, it’s a pretty solid ball, but short game feel is so important to me and I couldn’t really give that up unless the rest of the performance was dramatically better.

Bridgestone Tour B330:  Four piece urethane covered ball.  I like the Bridgestone lineup of balls.  For me, they are a second choice if I happened to have forgotten my Pro Vs and the shop was out of them:  Bridgestone it is.  The E6 and E7 are nice lower compression balls and the B330 was a high performing top line ball.  The urethane cover had a great feel around the greens and while putting and the ball had a solid sound coming off of the driver.  All in all it played well and I reacted according to the swing that was put on the ball.

The ball had a nice amount of spin, evident by the height of shots and from how it checked up nicely around the greens.  I played four different par 3s with both the B330 and the Pro V1X and each time the ball ended up within 3 feet distance wise of each other.

This brings me to what I think is the point of all of this.  The Bridgestone and TaylorMade are both pretty solid golf balls.  That said, when it comes to tourney time or if there is something on the line and I need a ball that I can completely trust, I will be hitting the Pro V1X.  It’s not that I have played the Titleist for a long time (I’ve only used them as my main ball since about March 2013) but there is something about teeing one up that instills confidence.  I know there are some comparable balls out there but nothing beats the all-around performance of the Pro V line.  This has been an eye opening and interesting experiment for me, as well as one that has helped build confidence in my current gear.  I would encourage everyone to try as many different balls as they can to see what fits you best.

Dixon Earth:  I had to add this ball as they tote their environmentalism.  I love the idea of this as we have all hit way too many balls in the water or lost them somewhere and a ball that breaks down over time is better all-in-all than one with a non-biodegradeable plastic cover.  This one has some pretty decent performance to it as well.

It hit pretty well and had some compression to it as well as lower spin off of the long clubs creating nice distance.  It wasn’t, as I suspected, the best ball around the green or out of the bunkers, but all in all I was impressed by it’s performance.  It’s a great ball to use in practice rounds and is, I suppose, slightly better for the environment.  The best thing for the environment, though, is to play with one ball and to stay out of water hazards :).   Nonetheless, a solid idea and I applaud them for doing something different.

That’s the end of my test.  Well, almost the end.  While in South Carolina I only brought a few balls with me and seeing as there was OB left and right on most holes down there I ran out of my Pro Vs with about 36 holes remaining to be played.  Instead of purchasing new balls (it’s hard to bight the bullet and spend 12-15 a sleeve at a golf’s pro shop) I played with whatever I found around the course.  Sometimes I found nice balls and sometimes I found “others”.  The others included a few balls I had never heard of and some Wilsons and Top Flights.

One that I found on the course was the Wilson Staff FG Tour X.  As it turns out, it’s their “tour” ball and for the life of me I could not lose it.  It wasn’t a great ball and didn’t feel or sound particularly nice, but it was solid and went forward when hit.  The distance was similar to other tour balls but it didn’t check up that well.  That said, I literally couldn’t lose it.  I played it until I found a name brand ball that I knew and would switch until I hit that one OB or it plugged then would switch back to the Wilson.  I seemed to always be able to find it no matter how poorly it was hit.  Not sure if I would recommend this ball or not, but there was something special about this particular ball.  I’ve had a similar experience with a Pro V last year, ended up playing 99 holes with the same ball even though I wasn’t playing especially well, just couldn’t seem to lose it.  Maybe I should give these Wilsons a shot and purchase a test sleeve…

I also found plenty of Top Flights, which played about as suspected.  If you want to grab a dozen balls for about 10 bucks these will definitely move forward when hit.

That’s that.  So many different choices out there.  Personally, I am glad that I still know what I thought I knew and will happily continue to play my Pro V1xs.  Worse comes to worse I know more about all of the other options out there.  There is always more to try, but this was a great start.

The first thing I learned:  No matter the brand, color, markings, etc, I loved how each one sounded when it hit the bottom of the cup.

The balls that I purchased and will review in a two-part blog:  Titleist ProV1-X and NXT Tour-S, TaylorMade Lethal, Bridgestone B330 and E6, Nike 20XI, Callaway Hex Chrome, Srixon Z-Star, Dixon Earth, and I threw in some of the new Titleist Velocity for the heck of it.

It’s a pretty good list of a bunch of balls that I was interested in trying.  For the record, I have been fit for and predominantly play the Titleist ProV1-X and occasionally hit around the NXT Tour-S during practice rounds.  In the past I played the Nike Tour One D and then the 20XI for a bit when they made that switch but have been playing Titleist for about the past 8 months.

A bit about me, your (hopefully) trusted reviewer:  If anything, I have a tendency to play too much spin.  Judging by my TrackMan stats, both from tee shots and approaches I have high spin pretty equivalent to Tour averages with my irons and a bit higher with the driver.  So, I play the Titleist ProV1-X to help control that spin.  My swing speed with the driver is between 101-108mph depending on how much I go after it.  Keep those numbers in mind and always remember that the most important thing is to find a ball that feels right and performs how you think it should.

Bridgestone E6.  The E6 is a 3-piece ball with a surlyn cover.  A friend, who happened to finish the Appalachian Trail yesterday, (I have to show his picture here, it’s mega awesome inspiring, he just finished hiking more than 2,000 miles):

played these balls all last winter as they are a lower compression rate and he insisted he hit them better when it was sub-45 degrees out.  Playing with him I was not going to argue as he consistently drove the ball 20 yards past me in January.  So, I decided to pick some up and see how they performed.  I hit the first ball off the driver’s toe and it started turning and then seemed to pick up steam as it shot across the fairway  into some trees.  It wasn’t a good start, but I punched out and then hit a solid 205 yard hybrid to the green which one-hop stopped pin high.  The ball felt great off of the putter, almost bouncing off and landed in the bottom of the cup for a birdie.

Not a bad start for old E6, although definitely not loving that first drive.  On the next hole, I must have left the face open a bit and the ball took off super high and drifted hard until it found some water to land in.  I’ve played that hole probably 500 times and never pushed it far enough to reach the water.  Another troubling sign. I took a drop, hit a 210 hybrid and two putted for a bogey.  The third hole was a par 3 and the ball felt solid off of my 7-iron.  Putting was good again.

On the fourth hole, I managed to hit a harsh snap hook and hit it into a hazard closer to the pin than I think I have ever done on that hole.  Again I dropped and hit the green from 210 yards, so at least it worked well off my hybrid’s face, but there was so much spin coming off my driver that my miss-hits were unplayable.

The fifth hole I hit the drive OB once again, officially concluding my E6 test as I only brought out a sleeve with me.  The ball honestly felt good, but my intuition tells me that the lower compression was amplifying my misses and when you struggle with keeping it in play with your driver you can’t afford to make tee shots harder, so I was happy to move on to the next ball.

TaylorMade Lethal:  The Lethal is a five-piece urethane covered ball.  I don’t know if the TaylorMade folks are marketing geniuses or imbeciles.  Their product names are interesting to say the least. Perhaps it’s working and good for golf, and perhaps there is a whole new youthful generation growing up loving this stuff, or maybe they are just having fun with us and seeing how “different” they can name things.  Whatever it is, people joke around with the names of their stuff and that proves brand recognition.  Anyway, on to the Lethal (I just feel like it should be italicized and perhaps a snake head instead of the “a” in the name).  I thought this was a cheaper consumer ball and didn’t realize that they basically changed the name of their TP5 ball to Lethal until I was in the shop buying balls.

In the past year, I have played my best rounds with either a Titleist or a TaylorMade ball so was pretty excited to try this new one out.  This ball touts more distance and better control, but then again so do all premium balls and with regulated coefficient of restitution it’s hard for me to believe that a major golf company like TaylorMade somehow managed to make their balls go farther (or further, as my grammatically incorrect self likes to say).  And if they have done that it just means their past balls had not been optimized.

I will spare you a hole by hole with the Lethal as I played it for the remaining 13 holes as well as 9 the next day.  It held up great, and how well the cover held up was one of the strangest things about the test.  Here is a pic of the ball immediately after it landed hard on a cart path:

It’s not a bad thing by any means, but after playing 22 holes with this ball and hitting all sorts of trees and a couple cart paths I was a bit shocked that this tiny scratch was the only discernible damage on the ball.  All of the other urethane balls that I have played seem to get beat up easily and if this is how it is then TM has a good thing going for them.

The ball played well.  It had a very nice muffled sound off of the driver (I play a Titleist 913D3) and generally had a good feel to it.  It is the closest thing to a ProV1line of balls that I have played and I felt confident while teeing it up that the ball would perform according to the quality of the stroke applied.

I would do a full review of the ProV1, but in all honesty it is the standard for golf balls and what I currently play so the point is to really see how other balls stand up to that line.

Nike 20XI: a 4-piece with urethane cover:  It’s hard to find specific details about the construction of this ball.  What I do know is that this ball was a disappointment.  After reading so much about how Nike was going to reinvent their 20XI line I was looking forward to give this a go.  Back in the day, I learned to putt and strike the ball with the Nike Tour One D and enjoyed hitting that ball, but then they went to their resin core and the past few balls have been anything but fun.  That said, I do believe that if you have a driver swing speed above 112mph you can play this ball.  It’s hard, and it takes a lot to compress it.  Also, it rolls slow on the putting green and for me doesn’t seem to check up quite as much as other balls.   This could be a good thing, though, as you can see from this pick that the Nike rolled back just 4 feet with an 8-iron to a par 3 while the Taylormade Lethal spun back about 15 feet.  In this photo the Lethal is on the left and 20XI on right:

It was an extremely similar strike with those clubs, and both balls landed within 2 feet of each other distance-wise, but had an entirely different experience after impact.  This was very interesting.  Later on I hit about 10 different balls to this same green and finished with a a Pro V1-X which one-hop stopped and pulled back about a foot from the mark.  But, that’s a story for the next comparison.

Nike says on their site that the 20XI is for swing speeds from 85mph and higher but to me it doesn’t seem to compress off of the driver and my gut tells me, as I said before, it’s for the big hitters out there.

As a final test, I hit tee shots with all of these balls:  Titleist ProV1X, Nike 20XI, TaylorMade Lethal and Bridgestone E6 and not too surprisingly they all landed within 10 yards of each other.  There was no significant difference in total distance, but sound and feel varied.  Nike sounded the most like a Top Flite: hard and metallic.  The Bridgestone felt somewhat like hitting a stale marshmallow, although great off the irons and pretty decent around the green and for half the price of the others it’s not a bad option, especially if your swing speed is under 95mph.  The Lethal had a nice muffled sound and was a solid ball all around.  The Titleist just felt like home and I knew exactly how far it was going to fly and how it would perform on approach shots and around the green.

Next post I will continue the process and look at the Bridgestone B330, Callaway Hex Chrome, Srixon Z-Star and try out the Dixon Earth. As always, the ball to stand up to will be my trusty Titleist ProV1X.  Also, I’ll take a look at the new NXT Tour S and Velocity balls by Titleist.

ADDENDUM::::

Today I was very curious as to what would happen if I played a “best ball” 9 holes with the TaylorMade Lethal and the Titleist Pro V1X.  I went out on the back nine of Riverside and alternated which one I hit first (so as to not have a bias towards the second shot) and played with the idea of wanting to score well in mind.  At the end of the 9 I shot even par with one bogey and one birdie, but felt like I could have dropped a few more if the greens hadn’t been recently punched and top dressed.  Putting was pretty obsolete.  Here are the competitors:

I didn’t count putts in my shot count and only had one chip throughout the nine (hit 7 greens in reg, chipped on one par 3 and the bogey was after a punch out to 140 yards that I then hit and 2-putted) and if both tee shots were in the fairway or equally bad in the rough it was a push.

So, the game was to see which ball I hit better, or which ball suited my personal game better.  I kept a running tally through the nine as well as some notes on distances.  I did see a bit more iron distance off of the Lethal, although it had more spin and tended to pull back farther on the greens equalizing the shots.  For example, on one par 3 I hit the green with both balls.  The Titleist took a little hop and pulled back one foot to rest at roughly 154 yards and the Lethal landed about 159 yards but spun back to almost exactly where the Titleist ended up.  They flew different distances but ended up within 4 inches of each other.

In another situation, I hit two cut layups on a par 5 and the balls landed about as close as possible:

you can see how sanded things are, it’s that time of year where top dressing is in fashion.  You can also see that to similar cut shots from the rough with a 7-iron landed exactly the same distances.

I finished the round and in all honesty the ball that got the shot was the one that was hit better. I suppose that’s probably true with any ball, but I was curious to see how to top-tier competitors would hold up in a direct battle.  Long story short:

Titleist: 7

TaylorMade: 7

I hit each of them an equal amount of “winning” shots.

Personally, I felt like I knew the Titleist better and my approach shots were tighter with that ball, but the TM kept doing well off the tee.  This needs some more research, but it’s an interesting experiment.  What has everyone else found about their golf balls?