Discover Your Perfect Golf Ball

Golfweek’s David Dusek gives you a detailed checklist on how you can find the golf ball that is perfect for your game.

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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 ARS 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 had 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 ball 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 it’s going to help you make more birdies avoid big numbers and get better overall performance on The Greens as well as off the tea 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 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 that 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 te 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 serin and ionomers that are going into more budget friendly golf balls those materials are more about durability 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 off line 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 T box 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 a modification has 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 hop 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 pit 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 them I’m going to get only after youve 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 and windy conditions the way that I would expect them to that’s the type of performance I’m going to be looking for 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 the 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 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