buckpillar

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Good Call! Great response.

Good Call! Great response.

They’re rolling back the fries by 20% and thought you wouldn’t notice. USGA approved. 

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Just fiddling around between snow flakes, I'm still getting the same feelings about the test ball, good feel, flight, sound, control and spin. Distance remains the same, cover is finally showing a small amount of roughage. I would still play this ball.
 
BTW, have you noticed that the prices have gone up at McDonalds on the Large fry, but yet the only give you the amount of a medium?
They need to give you the amount of fries that you pay for. 😁

Weather here has changed drastically( even a dusting of snow ) I will definitely be putting and using the simulator.  

In an effort to keep the Forum Cup Points Race updated more frequently, we will be releasing the standings every 4 weeks. Here is the update through Week 32. Also, ICYMI, we will be accepting SIM and/or virtual rounds now through the end of season 2. SIM and/or Virtual rounds are gross score only, no handicaps applied. Without further ado, here is the updated standings:
 
 

Back on Trackman for short game stuff. Hit both 3/4 54* shots (typical carry there is 80 yds) and 30 yd pitches with a 58*. Today I used Kirkland Performance + (yellow), Srixon Z-Star XV and the test ball. Again, a few things stand out...
-Kirkland doesn't really spin that much for me on shorter shots
-The test ball does a decent job spinning on these and seems to launch higher on average
-The test ball, to me, does a good job offsetting the potential loss in spin with higher peak height and land angle

 

 

Since I was so enamored with the sound difference between these balls and there was no one behind me for 3 holes, I threw the Maxfli Tour S in the mix and did a sound/feel test around the 9th green for a while after my round. Hopefully you can pick up how much more clicky the Vice is than both the Maxfli and the TEST. 
Then I got out the putter to record a video for the sound and again Vice was much more clicky, followed by the Maxfli and then the TEST ball.
I prefer the firmer, clickier sound of the Vice over the Maxfli and TEST (especially for wedge shots), but I think I could get used to something with a more muted sound. 

Spin Comparisons
Thursday I was given a very gracious session on the simulator at my local driving range, The Bristol Golf Centre, at Hambrook in Bristol.  The team were very accommodating and made the session extremely enjoyable.  Our host Declan set me up with the driving range setting as I wanted to get some spin data on the balls, but by the looks of it there were options for playing full rounds of golf as well (could be fun to be able to play middle of winter!).

 
I used the following balls:
Titleist Test Balls (TT)
Fazer Distance Balls (FD)
Slazenger V300 Balls (SV)
Volvik Vimat Balls (VV)
Fazer Distance were the hardest core, going down to the Vimats which were super soft feel.  
 
I only used my 7 iron and my driver for the test as i felt they would give a good idea of how the Titleist balls felt compared to my usuals.

Here is a look at the averages of the data that i collected there:

From what i could see the Titleist balls they had less spin than the Fazer Distance balls, but more than the supersoft Volviks, and the soft Slazengers.  Distance-wise it performed similar to the Volviks, but better than the Fazers.
 
Driver:  Titleist balls did best off the driver, carry was about 8 yards more than the Slazengers.
7-Iron: Produced a lot more spin off of the face than the soft core balls, but a fair bit less than the Fazer distance balls.  
 
The feel was good, the Titleist balls felt good off of the face, they seemed to pull to the right a bit more. I have a general fade on my swing anyway, but the Titleist balls seem to go further off course than the others.
 
Went to my other local driving range Windmill Academy in Westerleigh to use the chipping and putting green.  The Titleist balls felt good off of the face and had a fairly good roll out.  Putting with them was very good.
 
I'll be playing a round with them on Sunday.  Be interesting to see how they compare with the other balls.
 
If anyone local wants to check out the Bristol Golf Centre then here's the link to their site, they have inRange tracking as standard on all of their bays, thank you to Darren for setting it all up for me, I really appreciate you doing that!:
https://bristolgolfcentre.com/driving-range/
 
All the best folks
 
Ryan

Earlier this week, I played 9 holes with my usual gamer, the Vice Pro, vs. the Titleist Test ball. The course conditions were very soft fairways and rough. The greens were firm but slow. It was windy with forecasted winds of 10-15 mph with gusts up to 30 mph.
Scoring: I varied which ball was hit first off the tee and then played the farthest ball out from there so I didn’t have “2nd shot me is a pro” syndrome. My score was +4, 39, with the Vice Pro and +7, 42, with the Titleist TEST ball. I lost a TEST ball on hole 4 and the rest of the dropped shots were putts. Some of the putting blame was proximity to the hole and some is a speed issue I had doing this 9 hole side-by-side. 

Driving: In summary, the TEST ball flew lower and had seemingly less spin than the Vice Pro (the TEST ball rolled out farther than the Vice). Under the windy conditions, on-course performance varied. When the wind was helping, the Vice was 10-15 yards farther total distance than the TEST ball. When the wind was hurting, the TEST ball was 7-15 yards farther than the Vice. The TEST ball had more roll out than the Vice on every drive (it was soft so the ball divot was easy to spot). 
In the photo below, hole 8 is a drivable 274 yard (pin was 267) par 4 and the wind was into and slightly off the left. I hit both balls very solid and the TEST ball was 12 yards farther than the Vice. I also wanted to brag that I drove a par 4 with each ball on back-to-back shots (Please note that I've played this hole about 20 times and these two shots are the first two times I've hit the green in 1)! 

Irons: On iron shots the TEST ball flew higher and farther with less spin than the Vice. My sample size was small for a perfect comparison here because I only used the same club into the green one time. It was an 8 iron from 134 almost straight into the wind and the TEST ball flew 142 (just off the back of the green). The Vice ball had 135 and flew 132 short and left of the pin. There’s a chance there was more wind for the Vice, but on multiple iron shots with the TEST ball I expected to be short of the pin by a couple yards and I was long every time. The Vice ball definitely had more spin and stopping power. 
Wedges: On less than full swings and chips I could really tell that the Vice spun more than the TEST. It didn’t bother me much at all this day because the greens were so slow, but I could see having to compensate in summer conditions. One thing that caught me off-guard was the sound. The Vice was much “clickier” and the TEST seemed to thud and was more muted. Feel between the two, I thought was nice and I like the feel of both for different reasons. 
Putting: For some reason, during the round, I was consistently hitting the TEST ball putts much longer than expected. I have no clue why, but it lead to 4 three-putts. I did not have the issue on the putting green before the round and feel of the ball off the putter was good (the sound was much different, just like with the wedges). I might chalk this round up to an anomaly because I like the feel of the TEST ball off the putter face.
I’m excited to get to a launch monitor to see if my on-course experience matches the simulator numbers and I’ll hold off on my final thoughts until then. 

Played an executive course yesterday with the kids. I wanted to test the short game spin and the durability of the ball, as other testers above have indicated that the cover wears out fast.
I found that the ball spun a bit more than I’d like around the green, both on flop shots and bump and runs. The ball felt really good off the wedges, though. Probably the shot of the day ended up here:

I didn’t evaluate the balls today on the green (as you can see, the course was using temporary greens that just won’t give good feedback).
The ball was still in pristine condition after this round. I have one more round on the books, so will hopefully be checking back in.

I mentioned this a few posts back as well, or in the message group,  I don't remember.   but after reading this post, the only way to determine that, is if everyone cut all their testers in half and posted the cores and covers pics

I suppose that is a possibility. I also think that players, swings and amount of spin each player generates are all over the place as well. That even happens with elite players. For example Nicklaus and Trevino both elite players; however, flight and the spin and shots they generated were completely different. Now take that to regular players and the difference is really going to be all over the place. 

Short answer it could be.  Its good R&D to test different balls and they could even be the same ball but with different core variations.  The challenge of that is keeping track of which ball went to whom, which ball they are testing and then having a large enough sample size to be statistically significant.  So challenging.  We have a wide variety of testers with varying swing speeds and ability playing in very different conditions with respect to temperature, turf, wind etc.  All we can report on is what we see, feel or are able to measure. So am I surprised that the results are at times quite different.  No, not really.  What were seeing is real world data and observations.

Let me add to this thread, what's the possibility that Titleist is completing multiple ball test?
Since they have all our contact information, they can track which type of ball goes to a specific person and flag those reviews for each ball?
Could be why the tests / comments are all over the board.
 

Let me add to this thread, what's the possibility that Titleist is completing multiple ball test?
Since they have all our contact information, they can track which type of ball goes to a specific person and flag those reviews for each ball?
Could be why the tests / comments are all over the board.
 

Let me add to this thread, what's the possibility that Titleist is completing multiple ball test?
Since they have all our contact information, they can track which type of ball goes to a specific person and flag those reviews for each ball?
Could be why the tests / comments are all over the board.
 

Date 11/15/2023 Course Name Uniontown Country Club Gross Score 77 Course Handicap 6 Gross Strokes over/under par 6 Net Score to Par 0 Net Score 71 Net Birdies or better 2 Longest Drive 244 Final days of good weather up here in the northeast, greens were aeriated and still bumpy. Leaves piling up and fairways soft, had a great day anyway. played with a test ball and still think it out performed the prov1. 

Let me add to this thread, what's the possibility that Titleist is completing multiple ball test?
Since they have all our contact information, they can track which type of ball goes to a specific person and flag those reviews for each ball?
Could be why the tests / comments are all over the board.