Callaway Golf Balls...Insight Needed

Hello, I had recently been given some Callaway golf balls my friend gave to me. There was a mix of HX Hots, HX Tours, and Warbirds.

To give you a little info on my game, I just started in August '06, but have gone to more 18 hole courses, and 9 hole courses the last few months. I had recently shot 92 (S: 124, R: 69.8) my first time at one of the courses here in town the other weekend.

First, I have a played a round with the HX Hots, and I liked the distance coming from my driver and they went pretty straight. They felt pretty good hitting iron shots and didn't have excessive roll on the greens from my irons. Chipping and putting felt great as well.

Second, I played another full round with the Warbirds. My distance from my driver was phenomenal, it was straight, and rolled a tonne on the fairways. Irons felt ok, I got the distance, but got robbed on a few greens as they just kept rolling off. Chipping and putting didn't have the same feel as the HX Hots (I guess I expected that because this was more of a distance type of ball).

Now, I have yet to play with the HX Tour balls. I really like the HX Hot, I really like the distance and feel, does the HX Tour offer the same? Any pros and cons? Just looking for some insight before I play a full round with these guys. Thanks in advance!

Cheers

I'm not really an expert with the Callaway golf balls. However, I recently found myself having to play with the 'Callaway Warbird' a couple of weeks ago and found much the same results. I drove it about 15-20 yards further; it really is a long ball, it was great fun. Like you I found myself shooting to the back of a lot of greens, however, I'm not sure if this was because I was overclubbing by about 5 yards or so on my irons because of the increase in distance or the fact that it is just a distance ball and doesn't spin a whole lot; this needs further investigating I guess. The interesting thing is it had a lot more feel than I expected, it wasn't that hard compared to the distance balls of years gone by and I still felt I had a lot of feel with my chipping and putting.

I've always hit a Titleist but they are so expensive in my part of the world I may just switch to the Warbird just because it's cheap and a quality ball, in my humble opinion.

The HX Tours are a tour-level ball with a higher compression than the HX Hots -- so you'll need a higher swing speed to get the most out of your ball. Plus, the HX Tour sports a very thin urethane cover (versus a much firmer cover for the HX Hot), so though it will produce more spin off of short iron shots, it will tend to shred and won't last anywhere near as long.