Golf Ball Review - Blind Ball Testing

Jman said:

Some good stuff in here, playing a ball with no markings or anything and breaking it down makes reviewing a whole new ball of wax doesn't it? Its awesome.

I think I'll join in on Monday.

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I love it for every other shot except for putts. For some reason that alignment aid that is on every ball made now has become a real security blanket for me even though that's not where my eyes are directly looking at during my putting stroke.

I will add this too. The B330 I played today lasted about 25 holes and it was still in pretty decent shape. After a few holes and some unexpected run ins with a tree or two, the mystery ball is showing similar signs of durability with the cover which is a huge plus for me

That is good stuff dude, durability is honestly what I hone in on the most with a golf ball.

Makes sense to me too with the putting, for guys who use an alignment line/etc, I can see how that would play with your head. Sharpie time!

PhillyV said:

I love it for every other shot except for putts. For some reason that alignment aid that is on every ball made now has become a real security blanket for me even though that's not where my eyes are directly looking at during my putting stroke.

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I am experiencing this too. I broke out the sharpie tonight in advance of the 18 I'm playing tomorrow.

tequila4kapp said:

I am experiencing this too. I broke out the sharpie tonight in advance of the 18 I'm playing tomorrow.

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I really need to do this. I need all the putting help I can get. I was sort of haphazard with putting today during my round/testing on the front 9 and had 23 putts. I buckled down on the back 9 and the greens started drying and firming up and had 16 putts. Not once did I use a line on a ball, but I should have. I need to take an aim point express class to because I under read just about every break.

-CRW- said:

I will at some point this week. I didn't hit the E6 today.

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Thanks. I didn't want to be a jerk, but I was really interested in that shot you wound up hitting fat in the video. I have a feeling that they'll sound identical. You have a good wedge game though, I bet your shots stop pretty quickly.

I had a chance to play this on a few holes today. It was a tough course I haven't played in years, so I didn't put this ball in play too often. I don't want to lose them.

My initial thoughts are good. The ball is long and gets a decent amount of spin. On the 10th hole I hit a gap wedge from 120. The ball backed up about a foot, leaving me a 9 footer for birdie.

The cover is soft enough to dig a fingernail into, but not FG Tour soft. In general, the cover is durable, and right in the medium range of softness.

I enjoyed putting this ball. A lot of people like to have an alignment line, but I sort of enjoy having a completely blank ball to look down at.

I did not hit this ball particularly high

Spent 45 min chipping and pitching with 2 mystery balls and one pro v1. Great feel not quite as much check out of the mystery but very good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I put this ball in play intermittently yesterday, but am just now getting time to write on it. I waited to hit driver with it til the end of the round for fear of losing one, but when I finally hit driver I found it to be okay. It definitely wasn't overly long, but I hit a few in the fairway that were 260+ with the ground soaked. I found it similar here to my RBZ Urethanes and current model Bridgestone B330-S I played along side the mystery ball.

It wasn't the best day to judge the mystery balls with my irons. It was my first time hitting my new irons and I was consistently hitting everything off the toe and hooking balls. I tried setting up closer to the ball and felt crowded which restricted my turn/follow thru and resulted in pushed shots. The new irons are .5-.75" longer depending on the club with the same lie angles as my previous shorter clubs. So some lie bending needs to occur before some additional iron testing for me with the mystery balls.

On the good approach shots I hit I found the ball to again perform similarly to my RBZ Urethane and B330-S balls. The greens were slower then normal and a little soggy, but I still got up to four feet roll out from each of the balls. I haven't really paid attention to this before with the RBZ's, but have hit balls in the past that stopped closer to their pitch marks on approach shots. I will have to try more balls and pay more attention to this before. I know I've hit balls that stopped much quicker before, like 6"-1' from the pitch mark. Maybe me hitting my shots more toward the toe and off or partially off of the club grooves played a factor here.

I was also dealing with distance issues in general because of the new clubs. Especially with full or 3/4 shots with my wedges. I tried to hit a 3/4 shot with my new J15 58* wedge for 75 yard approach shots and blew past the green twice. One of which was with a new ball into woods surrounding the green. I also hit a push on a lazy, bad swing with the driver and sent another one into the right tree line. So I'm down to 4 mystery balls now.

I will try to get more short game and some putting in with these and other balls (E6 and more) for the next round of testing.

I played about 15 holes as a practice round Thursday at an executive course, dropping balls and hitting different shots. I played 18 at a regulation course today. My thoughts:

Driver (today only) - the test ball produced a slightly lower and more piercing trajectory than I am used to. It isn't a big difference, just enough for me to barely notice. It was perfectly pleasant, in some ways kind of cool - the ball shot off on a laser like path. The flatter trajectory led to more roll. That was nice. Overall distance was generally in a normal range for me on reasonably well struck balls. I lasered one tee shot back to the tee box at 242. This was into a decent head wind. Other tee shots were in this same general range. 240s are probably in the lower end of my normal range...which probably means it is really my actual normal but I just remember the rare ones that were longer. I hit one tee shot 269, but that same wind was at my back.

3w / hybrids (both days) - much the same as above, slightly lower trajectory and "regular" distances.

Mid irons - trajectory starts to increase here. Results were basically in line with the swing. Not a lot to report.

Scoring irons - Thursday was a bad swing day, today I was compressing the ball nicely. The bad swings were producing mid flight balls that often landed on the front fringe and rolled onto the green. I attributed that to catching the ball low on the grooves more than the ball. But today when I was compressing it well the ball was flying high and still rolling out. It was common to see 3 hops before stopping with 8i down through SW. Notably, many of these shots were into the wind or from up hill lies where the club is naturally de-lofted, but it still rolled out a good bit. The roll out was also a bit perplexing given how high I was hitting these clubs today. We might expect trajectory to cause the ball to stop faster (even if I'm not spinning the ball) but I was not really seeing it happen.

Partial shots (aka Pelz shots) - Thursday I was seeing behavior consistent with what I described above. Today was a touch better. The best result I got was a 7:00 Pelz shot from 50 yards that hopped once and stopped 3 feet from the pitch mark. A 9:00 shot from 95 was obviously spinning because the ball landed and changed direction, but it came to rest 10 feet left of the pitch mark. On the positive side I was hitting these shots higher than usual. Could be some user variance involved.

Bunkers - During Thursdays round I intentionally kicked balls into the sand on nearly every hole. I could not get the ball to spin and stop. There's obviously some user variance involved but generally the ball rolled out more than I am used to seeing.

Miscellaneous stuff...
- Sometimes I think I'm almost seeing e6 like directional corrections with this ball, which is appreciated.
- The ball does not float, so I am down to 4 testers.
- I am really interested to find out what this ball is. IF (big IF) this turns out to be Bridgestone and IF the R&D guys are reading, I'm not seeing the hydro-core 330-S stopping power into greens with this one. The ball plays rather 330-RX ish to me and IF that is what this is then I am not yet seeing anything transformational about this iteration. But we don't know what it is...maybe it is something entirely new or an e6, in which case that paradigm gets turned on its head.
- Someone else asked about Srizon comparisons. I played a found XV on water holes after losing 2 test balls. I thought the test ball was softer off the club face, rolled out a bit more with irons into greens and was comparably to slightly longer off the tee.
- Very solid durability. There have been some wayward shots. The ball still looks great.

It's incredible the vary of results as to how the ball feels and reacts around the green. Goes to show you how everybody is different and unique. Just because one works for someone doesn't mean it will work for others. Keep up the good work fellas.

Erky said:

I did not hit this ball particularly high

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Not at all or just with particular clubs?

T4K,
Away from this unmarked ball, you see large amounts of spin difference beween Bridgestone RX and B330-S? Im genuinely surprised by that.

JB said:

T4K,
Away from this unmarked ball, you see large amounts of spin difference beween Bridgestone RX and B330-S? Im genuinely surprised by that.

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I have a sneaking suspicion your comment is telling me something about the ball's measured spin numbers on your machine :bashful:

To answer your question, yes, I have seen the balls behave differently into greens off irons for me. I guess I have to say I don't literally know that is spin, but I believe I've routinely seen a difference in performance in that area, whatever is causing it. I have never gotten much stopping power with the RX but have with the 330-S.

Finally got around to hitting these last night. I felt like I needed to at least get something in here so I set up my net in my yard and hit some 6 irons and Driver with these. I dont have a launch monitor so I cant give any numbers I can only communicate my feedback based off experience at this point.

I hit them as well as these balls in sequence:

Mystery Ball
Bridgestone e6 (2014)
Bridgestone Lady Precept
Callaway SuperSoft
Callaway Chrome Soft
Callaway SR2
Wilson Duo

I wanted to get a good feel for the ball vs the others so I warmed up hitting 10 shots with a 6 iron and 10 with my Driver with the mystery ball. My initial reaction was that I really liked it and it reminded me of a Bridgestone e6 or the Lady Precept. Felt good when making solid contact and felt like I was able to compress the ball well with driver. Obviously couldnt tell spin or launch.

Next thing I did was alternate the Mystery ball and then one of the balls listed above in order with my driver. I will list the ball below and list what difference if any I felt:

Bridgestone e6 (2014) - Felt extremely similar. Admittedly I havent played this ball in a little while and I dont really know why. I felt like I was able to compress the ball very well and it felt good coming off the face on a well struck shot.

Bridgestone Lady Precept - Felt a little different but I think thats because the Lady Precept is a softer ball so I felt like I almost over compressed it (if thats possible) I played the Lady Precept back before I made any swing changed and my driver swing has gotten much better and faster.

Callaway SuperSoft - Felt fine but a little different for me. Was fine but it didnt seem to come off the face as hot as the Mystery ball. Again, hard to tell by hitting into a net without a LM. Just going off initial reaction.

Callaway Chrome Soft - Admittedly, I havent liked this ball as much as others as I just feel for my swing something is off. Maybe I dont swing hard enough to compress it. I dont really know but given the choice between the Mystery ball and the Chrome soft, I would choose the mystery ball

Callaway SR2 - This is the ball I was fit for the MC and what I have been playing mostly so I thought it was a good comparison and actually found it a to be pretty similar to the mystery ball. I actually had to look and make sure I was hitting the ball I thought. Felt and sounded similar to the Mystery ball.

Wilson Duo - Recently started playing this ball and have really enjoyed it. Felt like I was able to compress the Mystery ball and the Duo a similar amount and they both felt really good off the face. For some reason they sounded a little different on well struck shots but I'm not sure thats really a measurable thing.

I am going to be getting these on course this week and will bring these balls with me and probably hit some extra shots with wedges to check spin and around the green as well off the tee. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask away.

tequila4kapp said:

I have a sneaking suspicion your comment is telling me something about the ball's measured spin numbers on your machine :bashful:

To answer your question, yes, I have seen the balls behave differently into greens off irons for me. I guess I have to say I don't literally know that is spin, but I believe I've routinely seen a difference in performance in that area, whatever is causing it. I have never gotten much stopping power with the RX but have with the 330-S.

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Not my machine as much as most tests I have seen done including the ball test by Digest. A couple of hundred RPMs at most is what I had seen in wedge testing, but everybody is different and contact plays such a huge role in this.

I've read several tests that came out to roughly 200 rpms less on the B330-RX than the B330-RXS and B330 (which produced similar spin numbers), and the B330-S was 200 rpms more than the B330/B330-RXS.

I believe it because I tested all 4 balls out on course a few weeks ago and didn't see much difference. I picked up a box of the B330-S to play with longer and will try the B330 for a long run afterward.

I managed to sneak a round in between thunderstorms on Saturday afternoon and put the mystery ball in play. I tried to alternate it with a Chrome Soft so that I had something to compare it to, but those were the only balls I had, so I don't have a wide range of comparison this time. Also, we were really hustling to try to beat the storm, so I didn't get to pay attention quite as closely as I might have liked to testing-type specifics. Let's just call these first impressions, with more to come:

1. Off the tee, mystery ball was a little shorter than some others for me, even on well struck shots. This was a course I've played a lot, so even trying to play exceptionally fast, I have a pretty good gauge of where I expect my tee shots to end up. I wouldn't say that the differences were huge, but they were noticeable. Any difference in distance on iron shots was negligible.

2. The ball felt nice off the clubface. This is an area that I'll admit I didn't pay particular attention to on Saturday, but nothing jumped out at me enough to really take notice either. I'll try to pay more attention to this next time.

3. The biggest difference between this and the Chrome Soft for me was run out. I had several mid-iron shots that ran out significantly with the mystery ball when I didn't expect them to. I did not have that problem with the Chrome Soft. Same thing with wedges. As I mentioned in my initial post, I'm not a high spin player with my wedges by any stretch, but I do have a pretty good idea of how much run I'm expecting with various clubs, and the mystery ball gave me a little more than I am used to.

4. Putting with the mystery ball was good. My reaction on the course was the same as on the Birdie Ball in my basement. To me, the mystery ball feels very similar to the Chrome Soft off the putter, which I like. The first time I got to the green with the mystery ball was the first time I realized I wasn't going to have an alignment aid (which I usually use), but that didn't turn out to be a big deal, and obviously doesn't have any thing to do with the testing.

This week is looking terrible again for weather, but I'm going to do my best to get back out there and get some more detailed testing done.

Worked with this and some other balls at a short game area. Two different types of shots - a greenside pitch/chip shot with a high lofted wedge from a fluffy collar trying to put some spin on the ball and a standard 40 yard pitch off a fairway lie.

Other balls I did the same thing with were: FG Tour, Snell My Tour Ball, Snell Get Sum, e5, and B330-RX.

I eyeballed the greenside shots. I think this is a hard one to gauge at times, because you don't have the right perspective to visualize checking, as opposed to being perpendicular to the direction the ball is flying. Not to mention the million variables that can and do come into play. I hit multiples of each. My impression was that I saw similar performance to the urethane balls. It responded pretty well to an aggressive swing and came to rest after a check and some run out. However, I had one shot with the cleanest contact of all with a surlyn ball (Snell) and it wasn't far off in how it reacted, showing that technique is king here.

Going back to the 40 yard pitch shot, I was using a 56° wedge and the GC2 to track spin. Thiis one that should stop pretty fast, but it's not hit hard enough to get crazy unless the green is sloped hard, really soft or something like that. I expect moderate spin based on the length of the swing, which is below hip high. Just so happened that the green was quite sloped, so balls were hitting, spinning and moving just a small amount forward or even a bit to the side and back (due to slope mostly, but spin obviously played a part).

All the urethane balls were within 150-200 rpms of each other. The surlyn Snell ball was 500-700rpms lower. The mystery ball was in the same range as the urethane balls.

Really good info Hawk. I used my only sleeve recently and found the spin really compares well. In fact it checked as good as any ball I tried and will have it on the FlightScope tomorrow to confirm that for me.

I rarely use a monitor for those shorter shots. It was interesting to see how different impacts affected the spin rates.

Hawk said:

I rarely use a monitor for those shorter shots. It was interesting to see how different impacts affected the spin rates.

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It really is. Its why I believe that compression and being able to compress a ball properly is the most important trait in choosing the ball.

For those that have had some time with your woods and irons, how does this ball compare in terms of compression? Does it feel hard on impact and maybe closer to 90+ compression or is it softer close to the 60-70 we see from Chrome Soft, '14 B330-RX (RXS), or softer than that?

So far I would characterize it as being on the softer end of the spectrum. Maybe not as much off the club face to me as the FG Tour or Chrome Soft, but a step in that direction.

Same as Frank.

This is hardly scientific, but I was able to hit the mysterball on two holes yesterday evening after adjusting the lie on my new irons. The conditions were nasty, muddy, and soaking wet. The range was closed so I had no warm-up before hitting the first tee (which I need). I hit the mystery ball, a current B330-S, a current E6, and a current Nike RZN Black.

For the drive I was using my 9* Callaway XR set to S/D. I assume I may have had the tee position too far forward in my stance on the first tee with the driver because I was hooking everything to some degree. My first shot was the E6 and hooked the furthest left for me, roughly 20 yards left of the left edge of the fairway. It hit a tree and was stopped short on distance so it ended up 30 yards short of everything else. Despite hitting the hook, I tried my best not to change my setup to keep the test fair. I then hit the RZN Black and hooked it as well, but considerably less. It landed about 10 yards left of the fairway, just left of the cart path, and roughly 30 yards further than the E6. Based off GPS on my phone, the shot was roughly 250 yards. I then hit the B330-S and hooked it the same as before. It was in line left of the fairway with the RZN Black but roughly 15 yards further. I hit the mystery ball last and it hooked the least and was in the fairway. It was also shorter than the B330-S and roughly 5 yards further than the RZN Black. I'm sure the majority of the variances seen were from my swing though. I suspect I hit the last ball/mystery ball with a little less swing speed which would explain why it was a little shorter than the B330-S while also not hooking as much.

I then moved all of the balls to the fairway to hit from the mystery ball position. The pin was lasered at 116 yards and the fairway was pretty wet and muddy where I was hitting from. I assumed the front of the green was closer to 90-95 yards, but didn't check the GPS app for true front/back distances. I'm also not sure what to expect on my new club distances just yet. So I pulled my 58* Bridgestone J15 wedge thinking I'd at least hit the front of the green. Either the front of the green was further than I thought or I didn't hit the club as far as I thought, or some combination of both because I didn't hit the green : ) ... I hit the E6 first again and hooked it left into the woods. Had it been a straight shot I think it would have been the longest ball and would have landed on the green. I then hit the remaining three balls in the same order and all three landed about 5 yards short of the green and overdrew about 2 yards left of I had hoped the balls would end up. This course has mounds all over the place, including around the greens. So the balls were sort of in a pit between these mounds. They aren't waste bunkers, but they are similar in position and the green was about 5 yards above level I was standing on in the pit. Since the pits are generally drainage areas as well, I moved the remaining 3 balls up on top of the mound, closer to the green. I cleaned all the balls off because they plugged and were covered in mud.

The next shot would less than 5 yards from the green, but maybe 15 yards to the pin. I used my 58* wedge to hit a low pitch that I was hoping to land short of the flag and let it roll out toward the pin. The remaining balls - RZN Black, B330-S, and Mystery Ball - all performed very similarly with one bounce and a couple feet of roll out. The B330-S rolled a few inches past the hole and stopped a 1 foot or so past. The RZN black was probably 2 feet from the pin, and the Mystery Ball was roughly 5 feet from the pin. But the variances in distance were all me and not the balls. I felt like I didn't hit the mystery ball quite as hard as the other two, but not intentionally. I was running out of time at this point.

The last shot I tried was a 195 yard approach shot with my Bridgestone J15 CB 5 iron. I unintentionally over drew the Mystery Ball, but it was pin high and landed left in a large green side bunker. It was pretty windy with right to left wind so I set up to the right side of the green to hit the RZN Black expecting it to at least move more to the center of the green from the wind, but instead it went dead straight, and may have been slightly pushed, and landed roughly pin high into another pit area between mounds. I hit the B330-S last and aimed a little less right and got a slight draw that landed roughly pin high and rolled out to the back of the green around 200 yards and stopped again the skirt/bumper of the green.

Again, this is hardly scientific and is how the ball performed for me. But this ball performs similarly to known various make/model urethane balls for me. I wouldn't have any issues with playing this ball full time. I'm not sure if its the best ball for me, but I haven't spent enough time with any particular ball or done enough testing to know what ball is best for me.

I am shocked that the E6 hooked more than the other balls, especially the known urethane balls that theoretically should have had more spin. It was only two swings and could have been me though. So I will have to pick up a sleeve and do more testing (especially so I can get the sound on video as requested).