Another great video!! Just seems backwards to me, but interesting for sure. Counteracts my theory of using a softer ball in the wintertime here when I play when it is 40 degrees out.
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Enjoyed the video and the test. I suppose if the test was correct, balls fly shorter distances in the winter simply due to the cooler, more dense air.
Thanks for the test, I know I expected a different result. Makes me wonder if it would be the exact opposite if we are testing balls that have been in hot temps for that amount of time.
Im curious about this too. I used to play with a guy that was convinced heated golf balls gave him more distance. He used to boil his golf balls and bring them to the course in a thermos. He was a terrible golfer, but it was entertaining.
I have this image of a guy tipping out a Thermos with a golf ball, bouncing it in his hands, going "hot hot HOT!" and dropping it to the ground...
This doesn’t pass the smell test. Test each ball a dozen times and see if there is consistency to get a sense of the relative accuracy of the meter. Also the soft / firm scale is pretty subjective.
I don’t believe for a single second that any ball gets softer when frozen....
So I just spoke to a golf ball person and their response was similar to one of the thoughts I had above. 1 bar difference could very well be ball to ball variation. Meaning something is a couple of points different, but on the border a sudden change alters that a couple of points more or a single point and without showing numbers it becomes a bar different. Variables will always exist, including in the testing equipment.
But, what I would like to know is the difference in compression/decompression between the balls when hit.
That device measures the softness of the ball, but not the ball reaction/energy gained or lost in differing ball temperatures.
The results were the complete opposite of what I was expecting and made me wonder if the cold affected the device in some way. It's hard for me to reconcile cold balls not being firmer. Of course this began the question as to if it is more the cold air or the cold equipment affecting distances in winter
Soooo...are we boiling the balls next?
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Based on the industry experts thought that it could be ball to ball, I think you need to use the same ball standard then boil/freeze it and see what the difference is there.
That is the plan for tomorrow. I will video the test of the ball and then freeze that same ball and check it again in the same 5 hours.
If it is ball to ball, would this be something possibly worthwhile if there were larger swings depending on brand?
I checked a dozen chrome soft and they all came out the same.
A dozen Wilson Duo U all came out the same.
This one I only had a sleeve and the results were seen.
Then a dozen TP5 and I had two balls that were 1 bar different, but 1 bar could be as little as 1-3 numbers.
I think depending on where the average is for a given brand/model has the potential of making a ball look less consistent, since the compression scores are discretized. If something is right on the edge of two categories, it could bounce back and forth even with a 1 point change. On the flip side, you could have a ball that varies by 3-4, but if it sits right in the middle of the range, it will look spot on.
If we’re testing extremes and a ball that’s being abused, ie in the garage all winter then the car in summer, you’d probably need to do 24 hours in freezer, 24 hours outside, and repeat at least once.
But I take care of my stuff and store my stash of golf balls in the house, so really rather unconcerned. However one does wonder if the golf ball storage warehouses - and big retailers too - have air conditioned space.
That’s a good start but the freezer isn’t going to get cold enough to test the extremes. It is highly likely that a freezer will not cause the core to lose meaningful elasticity (or materially alter it) because it simply does not get cold enough.
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Agree - as pointed out in the Procheck thread, 10 points variance is way too much.
Give us a number on the device, and a chart to compare it to. I can see that a 45 is in the X range and 55 is in the Y range. Consumers aren’t idiots.
The tricky thing there is that there are two sources of variance in the reading - variance from the device, and manufacturing tolerance. I agree that consumers aren't idiots, but without knowing what the variance in measurement is, it's hard to interpret a hard number. The cynic in me wonders if the device has enough variability where the binning is there to make the device look more consistent (though there's issues at the edges).
Well I live in Tennessee so our winters get down to about 20-25F at nights. And I have a deep freeze in the garage that sits at 0F. Thats’s the extremes the average person will have in this area, though further north it’s colder.
If the material isn’t freezable until -32F (random number) for instance, then cold won’t make much difference for most anyway.