What Golf Ball You Play Matters! Matt Adams Explains Technology Inside Your Ball

Matt Adams takes a deep dive into the construction of golf balls and how the many layers of the ball interact. What ball you play affects your game, which is why getting fit for a ball could drastically increase your performance.

I was thinking about tigerwood switching to golf ball because I that you know the press release is coming through on all my stuff and I was reading it and I was like you know I feel like not a lot of people know that you should get fit for

A golf ball because it makes a difference a bigger difference than you think so I made that the question of the day and I was correct right now the answers are coming back it’s now at 83% they don’t get fit and Andrew go ahead and roll that video Andrew found some

Video there you can see Matt when you go into a PGA TOUR Superstore how many unbelievable opt I mean there are so many options it’s overwhelming and so I think it’s a good opportunity for you to just address that and and and tell people a little bit

About the technology that goes into a golf ball because there’s a lot of technology these days that goes into a golf ball and the differences among them and why you should get fit because there the golf balls that are available now there’s so many different models there are ones that are better

For you than others your your grandfather should not be playing the same golf ball as your 15-year-old yeah I mean from the standpoint of getting fit you can go through some of the fitting programs or you just should at the very least have an understanding of why you’re playing a particular ball Andrew

Do you have that photo the old photo we had of the old feathery golf ball the the gutty golf ball that had there it is I just want to start with how it all started with golf balls what they used to do with golf balls is they would take

Leather and they would sew it together and then they would take these boiled feathers and they would stuff it inside of this pouch and sew it up and as it dried the leather and the feathers and all the rest they said it would take a

Top hat one of the big like stove top stove pipe top hats of feathers into this little pouch and then they would Harden and they would of course obviously sew it all up and it would Harden in in into the golf ball that they used back in the day day of uh

Allan Robertson and and and old Tom Etc although old Tom got himself a little trouble with Allen because when the guty came out this was all around St Andrews in Scotland the the just before I finished with the feathery what used to happen that is remember it’s

Leather So and it rains in Scotland so it was okay because it got so hard but after a while it would get beat up it also didn’t perform very well with irons that’s the reason why when you look at the old clubs they’re almost all predominantly Longnose Woods as an

Example they had irons but irons were mostly used like to get a ball out of a rut and things like that so there was a doctor in St Andrews and he got a something was shipped to him and it was packed in in the gut of perer which is

Which is the sap from the tree and for some reason I don’t know why his sons boiled it and they molded it and they created the first golf ball that was not from feathers they took the golf ball out it performed obviously like rubber and so it was a great

Performer A4 mentioned Allen and Tom battle Allen was against it Tom was was working for him as an apprentice he wasn’t really that against it he started using it Al found out about it they supposedly never Lost In match play when they were together they kind of had a

Falling out eventually they came back together because Allan realized that it was a pretty good golf ball to use and and the reason why that picture Andrew go back to that picture again one more time I want I want to show every what I’m talking about here this and this

Goes to the modern golf ball which I’m going to get into in a second there’s a reason why a golf ball has dimples dimples act like wings on a plane and so the middle picture that you’re looking at there they’re calling it ham a hand hammered that means that someone

Physically and and old Tom used to do this too they would they would take it looked like a a a flathead screwdriver and they could that was just one of them they had VAR various different ones that they could use and they would pound in this pattern so that the ball had flight

Better flight right and you you could here it is we’re taking a look at it with a modern golf ball right now so because the golf ball started to have better flight it was then the introduction of irons into the game and young Tom Morris was one of those who really championed

This change this fundamental change in the equipment in the golf industry that was because of the change in the golf ball so just to give you an idea of how it started its early Origins and and I’ll tell you young young young Tom Morris still doesn’t get the credit that

He deserves in the game of golf because he fundamentally changed the way the game was played he was that he was that far ahead of his time his his ending was tragic unfortunately it’s really interesting because old Tom Morris outlived every one of his sons really really very interesting story if you go

To St Andrews you can see old Tom shop is still there uh you can see where ultimately he he had his demise old time was was he got up to go to louo and he he took the wrong door he was 86 years old and he went down the the door that

Was actually a staircase and that was that was the end of old Tom uh but that origin of the golf balls is is interesting to know where we stand with a modern golf ball here I got one on my pile of junk so this is a modern golf

Ball as I was talking to you about you’ve got the dimples the thing that’s interesting about the golf balls now part of this is the marketing that goes into golf balls is that they they want you to believe that there’s almost like a nuclear core in the middle of these

Things what they are is golf balls are rubber compound now the picture you’re looking at there I’m not sure when that was from but it was it was a photo that we obviously took here in the studio of a golf ball that’s cut in half and it

Shows you what modern golf balls look like with the various layers of rubber compounds now these players that go into a golf ball what what I like to say about golf ball technology is that it’s really a symphony of Technology but what’s important to realize is that in a

Modern golf ball the technology at times works together and at times it works in contrast to each other so Adam the first just to take this in in pieces here the first question you ask me is that does it matter which golf ball you play it does matter which golf ball you play

Relative to the core that’s in that golf ball what I mean by that is if if you’re sitting at home on the couch and you say that you want to hit a golf ball the way Rory hits his golf ball or the way Bryson hits his golf ball you want to

You want to play the golf ball that they are playing because you want the kind of performance that they are getting the difference is is that for the best players and somebody you mention uh was talking about the swing the average speed last year year before

On the PJ tour was around 150 miles per hour okay it’s a little bit higher than that now but 100 around 150 miles per hour so if you have a swing speed at that level you can effectively engage the entire Symphony of technology that exists in at golf

Ball in other words if if you have a tour level golf ball you are going to have a core that’s going to want to resist the deformation that happens during the the very violent impact between say a driver and the ball so the harder that you can swing

The more that you can deform that golfball at impact the more that you can deform that golf ball at impact the more that you are going to create velocity because this is physics that ball will want to rock it back to form right so the best players are

Playing golf balls that have a hard core because they have the strength they have the club Ed speed in order to compress that golf ball the part of the technology where people don’t always understand it’s it’s very common especially with tour caliber golf balls nowadays where where you’ll hear them

Say you’ll get less spin off your driver and your longer clubs and you’ll get more spin in and around the greens with your scoring clubs and people hear that and they go what how does that make any sense well what’s happening and this goes this goes to these layers that I’m talking about

So Andrew pull up one of the shots that you have that show a golf ball cutway it could be an artist rendering whatever it is and so you have the cover of the golf ball and let’s say a cover of the golf ball that we’re talking about you say

Urethane in this one right that’s that’s it’s a soft material that we’re talking about and what happens is is if you have that cover and that cover is up against the mantle layer that mantle layer is designed to be very very hard again picture it you’re hitting

Your driver into that ball it is still a rubber compound that mantle layer is going to move just like that core how much you compress it is going to be dependent upon how much Club head speed you can generate and how much you compress it is going to be the result of

What kind of performance you get from the golf ball given distance Etc however when you come into it with a higher lofted iron that very hard mantle layer is not likely to yield as much so what happens that cover gets pushed into the grooves of your higher lofted Club it’s

Like the grooves of your Club act like teeth and they bite into that golf ball so a couple things happen one is the golf ball remains on the face face longer because the grooves are biting into it and the golf ball as it is going through this Dynamic process is rolling

Up the face as well and generating spin that’s where you get the control as you’re coming into the green with your higher lofted clubs that’s the that’s what’s happening with all of this so the reason why I’m going down this road is so that people understand when you had

You guys had the video of walking into a golf shop and just seeing a wall of boxes of golf balls you’re trying to figure out okay what gol golf ball is best for me and the way the industry sorts it is that people pick golf balls

For a number of different reasons one of the big reasons that people choose the golf ball that they choose is price point right and the price points that do a lot of volume generally are around $1 199.99 each $24.99 it’s always a 24 right 99 at the end of it uh those price

Points $29 up to $39 those are very active price points and if and if you do and this is what it comes down to where Dom saying you know get fit for a golf ball which I do think you need to get fit for a golf ball but I don’t think

You always have to go see someone to get fit you can use the online technology I don’t know I was talking about Bridgestone earlier they have it uh or you can just do the research to understand your game and which golf ball necessarily would be best for you that

Is still kind of getting fit from that standpoint instead of just going in and blindly buying a golf ball or playing a golf ball that you found in the mud so price point is one of the things that people choose by and once you find a price point that suits your budget then

You could start to look into features that may work for your particular golf swing so as an example if you are the average amateur golfer which means that you have a swing speed that is generally under 100 mph you’re just a regular person play in the game of golf it helps

If you go with a softer compression golf ball and the reason I’m saying that is remember the conversation I had about the best players in the world and how hard they hit the golf ball they can compress that golf ball that has a super hard core the slower your swing speed

The harder it is to do that so you’ll get less Dynamic performance out of that technology so if you go with a softer compression you stand a better chance of compressing that golf ball so that you create the velocity that equates to distance after that what I look at is

Are there layers in the golf ball what are the layers in the golf ball does it have that mantle layer for an example and if it does that mantle layer is going to have that Dynamic I was talking about regardless of the particular material that the cover is made from it

Could be a sering cover for example it’s still going to have some compression into the grooves so that you have some control as you move up the line and when I say up the line now let’s define it say by price point you are going to get through more and more sophistication

Into these golf balls that means that the layers that Symphony of technology that I’m talking about will become more and more sophisticated and that’s why those price points are going up that’s the reason why the best players in the world play these golf balls so what I’m

Saying to you is you may be able to play a golf ball that the very best of the best play but if you’re going to it’s important to understand how and why it might work for your game or why it doesn’t work for your game because of all of this different technology once

You get to understand these basic elements it’s a lot easier to find a golfball that works for you in your game instead of just looking at it and going hey if the best player in the world can hit it that far then surely I’m going to

Hit it farther than I do right now if I play the same ball not necessarily that just goes to we haven’t even talked about it on this show yet but that just goes to the complexity of what’s going to happen when the USGA and the RNA

Decide to limit the distance of the golf ball and yet they want to use a golf ball that works for all layers of players uh we’re going to have to get into that at some point as we move forward