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Polara Golf Ball Testing Review Thread

SuperStroke
My Polara balls arrives as well. I will get on with the testing and post my initial review asap. Thanks again to THP and Polara for allowing me to participate in this testing!!!

Cheers!!
 
Super Tuna said:
Nice post One-T!

I'm heading out tomorrow afternoon with my boss and sales director, neither of which are straight shooters. I've already told them I'm covering them both for their sleeves of balls tomorrow because I want to see how they get on with them. Personally I think it will be a rousing success like your post above but we'll see. I also want to see if they see the same high bounce and stop that Rex saw because that's not what I'm getting out of them.
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thanks buddy, if distance isnt something they care about and its just a straight ball then I think they will be just like my dads buddy...happy! Have fun with the boss tomorrow
 
Just another update. I gave one of these balls to a friend of mine last week and showed him how to make it work. I spoke to him today and he played it over the weekend. He said he shot the best round in over a year. He said he was not sure it was the ball he was just hitting it great that day. <YA RIGHT> :laughing:. When I asked him if he sliced any he said "no they all pretty much went straight" But he was hitting the ball great that day anyway. YA RIGHT :laughing:.

his comment was that they seemed to putt a little different then his standard ball and that the driver had a diving tendency but rolled a long way. When I told him that they were not legal for tournament play he said. "Well just don't tell Steve, (that the guy he beat out of some $$$) that its not legal. NO PROBLEM>
 
Played 18 Sunday after church to test out the Polara XS.

Cloudy, 73 degrees 7-10mph winds.

Driving: Just like the "US" balls, these went impressively straight yet are very low launching. The one time I was able to hit the XS and my usual ball off the same tee the XS was 12 yards shorter, but was in the fairway. My usual ball was 3' off the fairway into the right rough. I tried using my 3 wood a couple times to tee off and didn't see much success.

Fairway wood: Once again I have little success hitting these off the fairway with my 3 wood. I probably will just use a hybrid next time for more loft and see if that helps.

Hybrids: The XS were just like US here. Very straight and long but not as long as my regular ball. I did drop and second hit test though didn't have the time to pace it out. (Was trying to keep pace of play up)

Irons and Wedges: If I decide to play the Polara's full time here is category that would sell them. I hit a few short irons and full wedge shots and wow did they hold the greens much better than the US's could even come close to. I even dropped one US and tried a full wedge shot just to see if I could replicate it. Hit down on it just like the first, matching divot, similar flight....off the back of the green. When I had hit the XS it went about 3' and stopped, which ended up about 8' from the pin. That's great for me, predicable and was repeated several times during the round.

Chipping, putting: Chipping with the XS is also much more predictable than with the US. Unfortunately I still do not like the feel nor sound off the insert on my putter.

The XS is obviously the top of Polara's line, and my choice too. Next round I'm planning on playing the both along with my regular ball hole for hole. Thanks again THP and Polara for this great chance to test these fine products!
 
i took a bunch of vids out on the course but they came out lame hahaha... maybe ill post a few of me actually hitting the ball to see if the sound translates on vid
 
I have a new 17 degree 3 - wood to test the Polara with this week. It will be interesting to see how the additional loft works. I tried it with my old Ping 11.5 degree driver. It worked slightly better than my current 10.5 driver however I still noticed lack of distance. Again less side spin than a majority of the balls on the market, but lacking in distance. Let's see what it will do for me with the 3- wood.
 
anyone play the ball dirty but still aligning shots with it? wonder if mud on the ball will affect flight? i think maybe that might have also contributed to the "hook"
 
bogey_russ said:
anyone play the ball dirty but still aligning shots with it? wonder if mud on the ball will affect flight? i think maybe that might have also contributed to the "hook"
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Yea I played it one day after a big rain. Muddy and although I tried to wipe some off it still had mud caked on the ball. As far as making it hook more and me being a hooker, I did not see any additional side spin.
 
I had no problems with side spin off a dirty ball either. I think I am gonna pass these on to my super slicer friend to test out. I will faithfully relay his comments, but I don't think I can take them any farther.
 
i think ill upload the vids just for the heck of it hahaha
 
Thainer said:
Have you tried teeing off with your 3wood or 5 wood? The company replied with a fairly good reason to why it wasnt working with the driver so much. Just wondering if this is something that you couldve explored?
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Yeah I got close to the same distance with my 5wood as I did with the driver. Also I crushed it off the ground with my 3wood but every time I tried it at the tee box I would not hit it good. It was probably more in my head then the ball in this case. I was probably swinging to hard and picking my head up to see how far it went.
 
bogey_russ said:
anyone play the ball dirty but still aligning shots with it? wonder if mud on the ball will affect flight? i think maybe that might have also contributed to the "hook"
Click to expand...

I definitely have been playing it muddy and dirty here in newly opened NE courses. I didn't notice anything odd with the flight when it was muddy or dirty after I re-aligned it.
 
bogey_russ said:
anyone play the ball dirty but still aligning shots with it? wonder if mud on the ball will affect flight? i think maybe that might have also contributed to the "hook"
Click to expand...

Hit close to a 100 yard shot with a mud ball, no change in flight for me russ.
 
I found that mud affected my ball flight and distance significantly less than it would have on a normal ball.
 
Well I played a course this past weekend with a lot of water and I sacrificed several of these to the golf gods. The most noticeable thing about these is what everyone else is saying about distance loss. On the holes that I can carry the water, I was coming 5 to 10 yards short. I cam say the 3 piece ball is alot better than the 2 piece especially off the irons with feel. I have one each of the balls left and I am going to let my brother in law check them out this weekend and see what he thinks. Thanks again THP and Polara for the opportunity to give these balls a whirl.


Just Tap It In. Just Tap It In.
 
The Polara balls came in yesterday and I took them out with me for my round yesterday. There have been a lot of good reviews on these balls so far and I'm sure I'm the last to get them so I thought I would look at them a little differently, as a training aid. I have bee working really hard on an inside out swing plane, to correct my slight outside in that has plagued me for a while. It has been going well, but as a lefty that has feared the left for some time, the hardest part for me with the new swing, is worrying about a ball that starts left, then fades left. So, yesterday I would play my Penta, off the tee first and then play the polara. I knew I would lose distance, but what I was looking for was a ball that started left, knowing it would hold its line, I didn't have to fear losing the ball in the yards of the homes lining the fairways. I hit the Polara with a nice inside out swing all day and had the ball started left every time, with a short straight shot, but it was giving me what I was looking for. This worked great, all day I had a ball that started left, and then drew slightly, or went straight, with my penta, all day. I would then pick up the polara and hit from wherever my game ball was and hit it second.
Both the two piece and the 3-piece felt hard off the face of my irons, but nothing that would bother me to any great length. They flew about the same distance off the irons as any other ball, but with some more roll out than I am used to. Chipping and pitching is as you expect with these balls, the two piece rolled out but was predictable, and I could get the three piece to check a little, and I could easily play with the way it reacted around the greens. Putting with these balls is really like putting with any ball. I play with an insert and to be honest I can't tell to a large extent the difference with most balls, but I could feel that they were a little harder, but they rolled true.
I will continue to use the Polara when I can on the course to work on my inside out swing path. It helped my driving all day, and I was not concerned about where the ball ended up, just where it started. I do think these balls could really help, the average weekend, summer golfer keep the ball in play and enjoy his round of golf, but I personally would not put it in play just due to the loss in distance on the driver. If you are working on your swing and have a chance to pick up a sleeve or two of these I think they make a great training aid. I know thats not what the company has in mind for these balls, they do exactly what they say they do, but I thought I would add a different perspective to these balls after all the other great reviews.
 
coolbreeze said:
The Polara balls came in yesterday and I took them out with me for my round yesterday. There have been a lot of good reviews on these balls so far and I'm sure I'm the last to get them so I thought I would look at them a little differently, as a training aid. I have bee working really hard on an inside out swing plane, to correct my slight outside in that has plagued me for a while. It has been going well, but as a lefty that has feared the left for some time, the hardest part for me with the new swing, is worrying about a ball that starts left, then fades left. So, yesterday I would play my Penta, off the tee first and then play the polara. I knew I would lose distance, but what I was looking for was a ball that started left, knowing it would hold its line, I didn't have to fear losing the ball in the yards of the homes lining the fairways. I hit the Polara with a nice inside out swing all day and had the ball started left every time, with a short straight shot, but it was giving me what I was looking for. This worked great, all day I had a ball that started left, and then drew slightly, or went straight, with my penta, all day. I would then pick up the polara and hit from wherever my game ball was and hit it second.
Both the two piece and the 3-piece felt hard off the face of my irons, but nothing that would bother me to any great length. They flew about the same distance off the irons as any other ball, but with some more roll out than I am used to. Chipping and pitching is as you expect with these balls, the two piece rolled out but was predictable, and I could get the three piece to check a little, and I could easily play with the way it reacted around the greens. Putting with these balls is really like putting with any ball. I play with an insert and to be honest I can't tell to a large extent the difference with most balls, but I could feel that they were a little harder, but they rolled true.
I will continue to use the Polara when I can on the course to work on my inside out swing path. It helped my driving all day, and I was not concerned about where the ball ended up, just where it started. I do think these balls could really help, the average weekend, summer golfer keep the ball in play and enjoy his round of golf, but I personally would not put it in play just due to the loss in distance on the driver. If you are working on your swing and have a chance to pick up a sleeve or two of these I think they make a great training aid. I know thats not what the company has in mind for these balls, they do exactly what they say they do, but I thought I would add a different perspective to these balls after all the other great reviews.
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CB did you notice that both balls had xtreme amount of top spin with the woods and lower irons or was it just me?
 
ogie said:
CB did you notice that both balls had xtreme amount of top spin with the woods and lower irons or was it just me?
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Ya, I was seeing crazy amounts of top spin with driver, and 3 hybrid, irons I'm not sure if I was seeing that much top spin but more than on regular balls. I think these have a good concept, and they work for what they say they do. If you were going to make them the ball you play regularly then you would have to get yourself a 14 or 15 degree driver to make it work.
 
Bogey317 said:
Well I played a course this past weekend with a lot of water and I sacrificed several of these to the golf gods. The most noticeable thing about these is what everyone else is saying about distance loss. On the holes that I can carry the water, I was coming 5 to 10 yards short. I cam say the 3 piece ball is alot better than the 2 piece especially off the irons with feel. I have one each of the balls left and I am going to let my brother in law check them out this weekend and see what he thinks. Thanks again THP and Polara for the opportunity to give these balls a whirl.


Just Tap It In. Just Tap It In.
Click to expand...

you lost 10 balls? how? only on water holes?

ive lost 2 balls... both in the water... both hitting it super fat and straight up in the air
 
I snuck out to play 9 quick holes today, and to put it mildly, I was hitting the ball like crap. No, actually, that's giving crap a bad name. It was horrendous, especially off the tee. But it did give me a good opportunity to put the Polara to use.

Part of the reason I was struggling so mightily I think is that I didn't warm up, and because of an outing, they sent me out on the back 9 of this course. The back 9 is completely tree lined, with some landing areas smaller than 50 feet. Its a real accuracy type of setup so if you're off, you're in deep.

Today I gave the 2 piece a go, and it performed pretty much exactly as the 3 piece off the tee, with maybe a little harsher feel off the driver and hybrids I was hitting. Again, it brought the ball flight down significantly. I got paired up with a couple guys, and I hit driver on a par 5. The ball headed out straight and fairly low, and then just looked like it was shot out of the sky as it dove to the ground. I didn't tell them I was hitting this type of ball, so they both were commenting on that shot so it was obviously apparent how different the ball flight was. They were throwing out jokes about Roy Halladay's sinker ball and the like. Funny thing was, even though I think it touched down about 200 yards out, it rolled out to a respectable 250 because of the lack of spin and low trajectory so it didn't kill me. They were both shocked when my ball was furthest out by about 15 yards.

With the M1 mashie I hit, I was only losing maybe 10 yards of distance, and it was holding its line through my horrid swings.

Green side spin was minimal, but again I compensated for this and actually put a couple approach shots nice and close with roll out. I don't think there's anything wrong with these chipping or putting as far as consistency goes. I still prefer a much spinnier ball around the green, but the tradeoff off the tee for me today more than made up for that.

As far as the topspin comments in some other posts... I don't think this ball actually puts top spin on it, we're all so used to a driver rising with the backspin action that when it plummets 50 yards early it appears to have over spin. I actually don't think its possible to put top spin on a golf ball unless you had a driver with negative loft (or maybe a 5 degree loft where you deloft the club more than 5* at impact for instance), but then you'd launch the ball directly into the ground.

From my earlier posts, I still feel these balls can be very effective for people fighting sideways spin, I just think you need to tee off with fairway woods, hybrids or a driver with at least 12* of loft.
 
I tried the 3 piece Polara ball today with my new 17 degree Cleveland HL 3 - wood. I was able to get the ball in the air much better than with my driver. I must admit, the ball is dogmatic about going straight and will be an excellent choice for weekend or beginning golfers. I say that and then when they change over to less spin balls, they go in the woods. The overall carry of the ball was not equal to other balls I play. With that said, the roll out was good off the tee and at the same time had decent bite on the greens. Buy some for your hubby or wife who is starting the game and keep them in the fairway. Thank you Polara and THP. I appreciate the opportunity to test new products!
 
was that on your 'word of the day calendar' Gray? lol Glad to see you have some bite on the greens with this ball!
Ole Gray said:
I tried the 3 piece Polara ball today with my new 17 degree Cleveland HL 3 - wood. I was able to get the ball in the air much better than with my driver. I must admit, the ball is dogmatic about going straight and will be an excellent choice for weekend or beginning golfers. I say that and then when they change over to less spin balls, they go in the woods. The overall carry of the ball was not equal to other balls I play. With that said, the roll out was good off the tee and at the same time had decent bite on the greens. Buy some for your hubby or wife who is starting the game and keep them in the fairway. Thank you Polara and THP. I appreciate the opportunity to test new products!
Click to expand...

Polara to the 'rescue' G4L! So I guess you weren't able to assault it but maybe beat it?
golf4life said:
I snuck out to play 9 quick holes today, and to put it mildly, I was hitting the ball like crap. No, actually, that's giving crap a bad name. It was horrendous, especially off the tee. But it did give me a good opportunity to put the Polara to use.

Part of the reason I was struggling so mightily I think is that I didn't warm up, and because of an outing, they sent me out on the back 9 of this course. The back 9 is completely tree lined, with some landing areas smaller than 50 feet. Its a real accuracy type of setup so if you're off, you're in deep.

Today I gave the 2 piece a go, and it performed pretty much exactly as the 3 piece off the tee, with maybe a little harsher feel off the driver and hybrids I was hitting. Again, it brought the ball flight down significantly. I got paired up with a couple guys, and I hit driver on a par 5. The ball headed out straight and fairly low, and then just looked like it was shot out of the sky as it dove to the ground. I didn't tell them I was hitting this type of ball, so they both were commenting on that shot so it was obviously apparent how different the ball flight was. They were throwing out jokes about Roy Halladay's sinker ball and the like. Funny thing was, even though I think it touched down about 200 yards out, it rolled out to a respectable 250 because of the lack of spin and low trajectory so it didn't kill me. They were both shocked when my ball was furthest out by about 15 yards.

With the M1 mashie I hit, I was only losing maybe 10 yards of distance, and it was holding its line through my horrid swings.

Green side spin was minimal, but again I compensated for this and actually put a couple approach shots nice and close with roll out. I don't think there's anything wrong with these chipping or putting as far as consistency goes. I still prefer a much spinnier ball around the green, but the tradeoff off the tee for me today more than made up for that.

As far as the topspin comments in some other posts... I don't think this ball actually puts top spin on it, we're all so used to a driver rising with the backspin action that when it plummets 50 yards early it appears to have over spin. I actually don't think its possible to put top spin on a golf ball unless you had a driver with negative loft (or maybe a 5 degree loft where you deloft the club more than 5* at impact for instance), but then you'd launch the ball directly into the ground.

From my earlier posts, I still feel these balls can be very effective for people fighting sideways spin, I just think you need to tee off with fairway woods, hybrids or a driver with at least 12* of loft.
Click to expand...

Good stuff CB....interesting that you think these feel about the same off the putter as other balls do.....
coolbreeze said:
The Polara balls came in yesterday and I took them out with me for my round yesterday. There have been a lot of good reviews on these balls so far and I'm sure I'm the last to get them so I thought I would look at them a little differently, as a training aid. I have bee working really hard on an inside out swing plane, to correct my slight outside in that has plagued me for a while. It has been going well, but as a lefty that has feared the left for some time, the hardest part for me with the new swing, is worrying about a ball that starts left, then fades left. So, yesterday I would play my Penta, off the tee first and then play the polara. I knew I would lose distance, but what I was looking for was a ball that started left, knowing it would hold its line, I didn't have to fear losing the ball in the yards of the homes lining the fairways. I hit the Polara with a nice inside out swing all day and had the ball started left every time, with a short straight shot, but it was giving me what I was looking for. This worked great, all day I had a ball that started left, and then drew slightly, or went straight, with my penta, all day. I would then pick up the polara and hit from wherever my game ball was and hit it second.
Both the two piece and the 3-piece felt hard off the face of my irons, but nothing that would bother me to any great length. They flew about the same distance off the irons as any other ball, but with some more roll out than I am used to. Chipping and pitching is as you expect with these balls, the two piece rolled out but was predictable, and I could get the three piece to check a little, and I could easily play with the way it reacted around the greens. Putting with these balls is really like putting with any ball. I play with an insert and to be honest I can't tell to a large extent the difference with most balls, but I could feel that they were a little harder, but they rolled true.
I will continue to use the Polara when I can on the course to work on my inside out swing path. It helped my driving all day, and I was not concerned about where the ball ended up, just where it started. I do think these balls could really help, the average weekend, summer golfer keep the ball in play and enjoy his round of golf, but I personally would not put it in play just due to the loss in distance on the driver. If you are working on your swing and have a chance to pick up a sleeve or two of these I think they make a great training aid. I know thats not what the company has in mind for these balls, they do exactly what they say they do, but I thought I would add a different perspective to these balls after all the other great reviews.
Click to expand...
 
MaryC said:
I definitely have been playing it muddy and dirty here in newly opened NE courses. I didn't notice anything odd with the flight when it was muddy or dirty after I re-aligned it.
Click to expand...

I hit some muddy shots with it aligned and it pretty much performed the same with my irons, straight as a string, similar distance as the Penta, and not alot of spin. When not aligned and muddy, I had some fade with my 7 iron.
 
Hanks said:
was "dogmatic " on your 'word of the day calendar' Gray? lol Glad to see you have some bite on the greens with this ball!
Click to expand...

The Polara ball just wants to go dog gone straight :thumb:
 
Hanks said:
Good stuff CB....interesting that you think these feel about the same off the putter as other balls do.....
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Not the same exactly, you can tell the're harder, but I guess I'm in the minority when it comes to putting, I almost feel like a ball is ball is a ball. The insert on the 8876 is also very soft.

Great stuff G4L, that was a great write up. I think your absolutly right that there is no top spin, but just a lack of back spin. When that ball runs out of juice it just falls out of the sky.
 
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