Golf Ball Head to Head Comparisons

With spring starting up in full swing, and companies moving forward with their product releases for the calendar year, I am planning on taking a number of different golf balls out for head-to-head comparisons (hopefully on a GC2 launch monitor, if it goes to plan). However, in order to do this, I need suggestions on what different golf balls I should test. Here's what I currently have on my list:

- 2013 Titleist ProV1

- 2013 Titleist ProV1x

- 2015 Titleist ProV1

- 2015 Titleist ProV1x

- Nike RZN Black

- Nike RZN Platinum

- Bridgestone B330

- Bridgestone B330-S

I, however, don't know enough about other ball manufacturers to know what other golf balls I should be looking at in the same "high end" golf ball category. I will be checking around at the local pro shops to see what I can find about other companies, but the easiest way to know what other kinds of balls I should test is people telling me! If there are any other balls in the same category as these that you want to see me test directly against the others, let me know.

To give a bit of detail on the testing, I plan on purchasing a sleeve of each of the golf balls listed (besides those which I already have). I will then test five shots per ball (not individual ball, but make/model) with both a wedge and a driver and post my results. Hopefully this will be done on a GC2 launch monitor if the indoor golf area I have in mind has it installed in time. I did this two years ago with statistical analysis (it was actually part of an AP stats program) to decide which golf ball to play then, and I will post the statistical analysis as well if anyone is interested.

Srixon Z-stars are very good balls...they are my third choice after ProV1's and ProV1x's.

The Callaway and TaylorMade Tour balls are usually nice, too...I just can never keep up with names of their ball offerings.

In addition to the other high-end balls listed above:

I think Srixon still has a Z-Star XV to pair with their Z-Star; much like ProV1 and the X version, TM TP and their X, etc. Volvik makes a top tier version, the Vista iV and iS perhaps.

The Callaway SR tops their line now IIRC. I would be more interested in seeing how the Chrome Soft matches up with all of these.

Happy testing!

@Pretzel, Why are you comparing the - 2013 Titleist ProV1 & - 2013 Titleist ProV1x ?

They are no longer available.

Plus, living in Colorado, elevation to sea level, has much more effect of ball flight compared to lower altitudes.

Thin air, dry humidity, effect ball flight 15 to 20% at 5200 ft. compared to sea level.

Wouldn't a high spin ball have greater distance, along with stopping the ball on the firm greens?

Club Rat

Probably to see if there's a difference between generations. I doubt there is any, though.

There was a very large (~1800 rpm and 15 yards) difference between the 2011 and 2013 versions of the ProV1x. I also happen to have a couple dozen of each lying around my house. As for the altitude factor, it's not a 15% difference. My tee shots only fly about 10 yards shorter when I travel to Michigan to visit family (though admittedly the humidity helps lower the density of the air there). Low spin is still important to maximize distance, but you can tell a difference between plains golf (where I live) and mountain golf (up in Estes Park, for example) in how straight your shots fly!

That's a massive difference. I'm curious what the sample sizes were of the tests and how you accounted for differences in strike?

Since I tested fewer golf balls that time, the sample size was approximately 20 shots each for two different golfers (using a full sleeve of brand new balls each, so it wasn't one scuffed up ball skewing the data). For me the spinrate of the 2011 ProV1x was about 1800 RPM higher on average (compared to the 2013 ProV1x), while it was about 1400 RPM higher on average for the other golfer.

To account for the variability in strike quality, and how I plan on doing it this time as well, I tossed any shots that were clearly poor. Ones that were decent enough to be an "average" shot for me were kept, while the extreme outliers at either end of the spectrum ("Wow, I crushed that one!" or "That sucked...") were removed from the data. At the same time I kept enough variation in the data so that I could represent fairly which golf ball would perform best for me over the course of a round, because my strike will not be identical on every shot that I hit. If a ball spins optimally on perfect strikes but jumps up to some crazy high spin or down to crazy poor distance (which would obviously be a very odd and rare occurrence) when I don't hit it perfectly the golf ball is useless to me in a round of golf.

I was highly surprised by the difference between the golf balls myself. I had expected them to be near identical since Titleist already appeared to have a working formula. I was more impressed, however, with how much longer the new Titleist ball lasted on the course. The 2011 one would scuff up and the cover would slice really fast for me, especially if I hit a lot of wedge approach shots, but the 2013 one lasted until I lost it.

That's interesting stuff. I have two questions that sort of double as suggestions for future testing:

1) To what extent are you able to perform the tests blindly? In other words, to not know what ball you're hitting as you're hitting it. Something like having the alignment markers / labels blacked out so you don't know which ball you're hitting. This is more useful for intra-company comparisons like between ProV1xs because the only visual difference is the design of the AIM line.

2) Do you have access to the HMT version of GC2 to make the comparisons between strikes more granular?

As for the first question, the last time I did this the only blinding done was having the other person tee up the ball while the person who hit recorded the data and the shot number (which was later matched to the ball and brand). That was mostly just for efficiency at the time, and I know I knew what ball I was hitting about half the time. I hadn't thought of doing a blind study on this, but I have someone in mind that could help me accomplish this. I don't think I would swing any different based on the ball brand, but that would be a good way to eliminate any bias. As to your second question, I'm not certain what version of GC2 it is. The way I sorted the strikes last time (on a non GC2 monitor) wad making sure the driver shots had a smash factor of 1.47 or 1.48. I forget what the smash factor requirement was that I set for the wedge shots.

I second @WildTurkey 's suggestion that you consider the Callaway Chrome Soft as well. :)

I am also very interested to hear your thoughts on the 330 versus 330-s.

Due to budget constraints (I'm currently in high school), I have decided upon a final list of golf balls that I will attempt to obtain for testing purposes, just because I can't test them all as much as I wish I could afford it.

- 2013 ProV1 and ProV1x

- 2015 ProV1 and ProV1x

- Nike RZN Black and Platinum

- Bridgestone B330 and B330-S

- Srixon Z-Star

- Callaway Chrome Soft

- Callaway SR3 (This one is a maybe, I haven't seen them anywhere near me)

Once I obtain the golf balls and ensure that the GC2 monitor is available, I will write up my intended methods for review to see if anyone has modifications or tweaks they would like to see to ensure a fair comparison.

I would be very surprised if you see any differences in your "testing".

Unless you are using a machine to hit the balls, you will be not be testing anything.

You will find that most top tier balls are similar to the point of being indistinguishable from one another.

While a contradictory viewpoint is appreciated, my previous testing had showed differences in the balls to the point that the numbers could identify the ball that was hit on the shot.