Putter Talk

How we review a Ball.

January 2, 2007 on 8:41 pm | In News, Reviews

Reviewing a golf ball strictly on its putting merits isn’t an easy task. When manufacturers make a ball, they generally concentrate on how LONG the ball is, how it’ll fix your slice, have better ‘feel around the green’, and all kinds of other wonderful promises…but what about putting? For this section we usually get the elaborate description of “Soft”. Well THAT clears a few things up, doesn’t it!

When I decided to start Putter Talk, I wanted to make sure that I reviewed balls, and how they putt. I didn’t realize how tough, and subjective that ball reviews can be. First, I needed some ground-rules.

#1 - Have a sleeve of ’standard’ balls to review against.

This is imperative, because you need a starting point. When I was reviewing the speed of computers back in the mid 90s, we had ‘benchmark’ systems that we needed to compare against. This had to be a machine that was ‘common’ and not out of the general user’s budget. The problem with this, was that the computers were getting so fast, so quickly, we were always using a new benchmark system. So what I did here was find a few constants. I’m going to rate balls between a “Marshmallow” and a “Rock” scale. I found the Maxfli Noodle to be the ball that I’m going to review against. I think it sits comfortably in the middle of the Pro-V1 (Marshmallow) and the Top-Flite Range Ball (Rock). Anyone can pick up a dozen at their local Wal-Mart for $15 and being the #2 ball in golf isn’t such a bad thing.

#2 - Have Standard length Putts.

No putt is the same…unless you are on my basement putting green. I’ve put 4 different putts together. Straight 3-footer, Straight 6-footer, Left to Right 5-Footer, and Right to Left 5-footer. this ought to give us enough of a read on how a ball will react to everyday situations. (Because we are all ALWAYS inside of 6 feet on our approach shots…right?) I’ll putt a dozen of each ball at each target, and a dozen noodles at the same target. This ‘back-and-forth’ between two balls is a pretty good barometer. Try it yourself…it works. 48 putts is a high-putting round, so it’s really the same as me playing 18 with a ball. My putting surface rolls at about 8 - 9 on the stint meter, so I’m playing your average green too.

#3 - Cut one in half.

What does this prove? Nothing. But it’s fun to do, and I get to use power tools. Seriously though, it’s nice to see what makes a ball tick. I chopped a dozen different balls in half for a picture, and it was pretty interesting to see the difference in technologies between the different manufacturers. I was amazed at how similar some were, and how different others are.

So that’s how we’ll be doing ball reviews. I’m not sure how it’ll go, but you are going to get 3 right out of the gate. The Maxfli Fire, Nike Juice, and Titleist Pro-V1.