{"id":16258,"date":"2012-09-12T23:12:20","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T03:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/b\/?p=16258"},"modified":"2014-04-29T14:02:48","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T18:02:48","slug":"taylormade_penta_tp5_golf_ball_review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesandtrap.com\/b\/balls\/taylormade_penta_tp5_golf_ball_review","title":{"rendered":"TaylorMade Penta TP5 Golf Ball Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TaylorMadeTaylorMade has never shied away from taking chances where technology is involved. The company that brought us three different ways to adjust a driver and a slot behind the face of a fairway wood to increase the CoR is back, and continues to up their golf ball game.<\/p>\n

Already the first company to introduce a five-layer golf ball, TaylorMade has seen their golf ball line take off recently. The TP5 is the fourth premium golf ball TaylorMade has brought to market since their entrance in the mid-2000s, and they’re gaining traction on the PGA Tour as well as in pro shops worldwide. 25 million Pentas were put into play around the globe in 2011, and Darren Clarke used a PentaTP en route to his Open Championship victory.<\/p>\n

TaylorMade’s golf ball market share doubled in 2011, continuing their inroads into a business dominated by the likes of Titleist, Bridgestone, Callaway, and others, and this year they’re aiming to bring their (healthy) obsession with innovation back to the golf ball. Read on to see how they did.
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\nDesign and Technology<\/strong>
\nA few years ago TaylorMade released the PentaTP, the world’s first five-layer golf ball. Alongside it was the Burner line of golf balls, with the Burner TP serving as TaylorMade’s mid-level golf balls (their NXT Tour, basically). This year they’ve expanded the Penta line, though only the Penta TP5 has five layers.<\/p>\n

\"TaylorMade<\/p>\n

The TP5 is, as you might suspect, similar to the original PentaTP, which Erik reviewed here<\/a>. The design is simple, if not brilliant. Rather than a dual-golf ball lineup, like the ProV1 and ProV1x from Titleist, TaylorMade’s only true “premium” golf ball is the Penta TP5 (in the sense that although the TP3 does have a urethane cover, you won’t see it being played on the PGA Tour). Throwing tradeoffs to the wind, the Penta TP5 is made to fit most premium golfers.<\/p>\n

The TP5 follows the same basic strategy as the original PentaTP: take an already-great, premium, urethane-covered golf ball, and add layers. While most companies attempt to give a convoluted explanation for the difference between three-layer balls and four-layer balls (as TM learned first-hand with the TP Black\/Red LDP fiasco), TaylorMade lays it right out on the table for the TP5. Each layer has a purpose, and each is finely tuned for maximum distance and the highest difference between greenside spin and driver spin. As Erik described in his review, TaylorMade used each layer to aid golfers in a different way, and a few extra years of R&D has allowed them to fine-tune that innovation. Let’s take a look at it, layer by layer.<\/p>\n