arbeck

The ball going left could be caused by you striking the ball with a face closed to the path, the dynamic lie angle being too toe up, or hitting the ball on the toe side causing gear effect. It could also be a combination of all three. In my case with fairway woods and hybrids slight toe strikes that would lose distance and wouldn't gear that much off an iron lose almost no distance and gear a ton. Combine that with my tendency to close the face, and I can get some dramatic left misses. It's not the clubs fault though, it's me. I just have to swing those clubs slightly different than I do an iron.

There's a law of diminishing returns here. The higher compression tour balls can't be over compressed by the people with the fastest swing speeds out there, so there's no reason going firmer. It's reaching the compression limit that causes the softer balls to slow down. An 85 MPH swinger won't lose ball speed on almost any ball. And the firm balls today don't lose speed for 125+ guys. Maybe if we start seeing a ton people with 130+ swing speeds, the ball will need to firm up. But I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.

Joaquin Neiman -14

They may make 4pc balls that are exclusive to a single brand. The Maxfli balls are both 3 and 4 piece balls, and do have at least one patent on them. FGM probably makes them but doesn't let anyone else buy those balls for their own brand. But you might accidentally get one in your order. I also think that they make the cores for Taylor Made. Taylor Made imports the cores (and it's possible other brands are doing this too). Those cores could easily end up inside a different cover at the FGM factory. I have a feeling FGM can probably make a ball for someone like Snell who is even designing it on their own. And if so, those cores and balls are going to be mixed in with the others and mistakes will happen. I don't think anyone is being nefarious. But the smaller brands simply can't do the kind of QC that would be required to catch all of these mistakes and FGM really doesn't have any motivation to do so.

When a company like FGM is manufacturing multiple different cores at one time, it's not really that surprising that occasionally (or even more than occasionally), one of those cores will end up in the wrong pile and get covered by the wrong cover. For someone like Vice, or Maxfli, or any of the other brands that depend on FGM for 100% of the manufacturing; they have no way of knowing for certain if the core in the ball is what it's supposed to be. Taylor Made (who I believe is just ordering cores) has an easier time because you can obviously reject one if the outer layer of the core is wrong (of course if they messed up an inner layer they're SOL). Frankly, I'd be more shocked if this never happened than by it happening. The only real question is how prevalent is it. Do 1 out 12 Maxfili/Vice/etc balls have the wrong core? Is it 1 out of 100? 1 out of 1000?

It might effect our scores, but we'd never know. If 1 out of 100 balls hooks into the trees, I'm not going to blame the ball, I'll blame my swing. It's probably lost and the next ball will be fine. As long as no one knew the number of bad balls and it was too small for a single golfer to notice it didn't hurt their brand. that may be changing though.

Building or buying plants to own the entire process is pretty expensive and might only improve 1 out of 100 balls in the worst case scenario (they seem to imply it's more like 1 out of 1000). A regular golfer is never going to notice if that few balls are out of spec.

Don't obsess over distance differences that are only a couple of yards. This was outside and even if it was a mostly still day, wind and atmospheric effects can still have some differences. The XV launched at a steeper angle with more speed, which generally means it is going to peak higher, where any wind might effect it more. Those two balls are so close to each other off the driver though that you shouldn't even be considering using driver numbers to pick them.

The 3pc ball under performs most other 3pc tour balls, but not by much, and it costs $12 a dozen. It way out performs almost all other balls at it's price point. It's going to be better than a Wilson Duo or Callaway Supersoft. It's going to be better than the ERC Soft at 1/3 the price. I'd argue other than feel, it's a better performer than the Wilson Duo Pro or Q-Star Tour. It even undercuts most of the other direct to consumer balls which are going to be similar in performance. I'd argue that you should either play a full on tour ball or you should be playing the Kirkland, there's basically no in between any more.

My best guess on the Costco 3 Piece ball is that it was the same ball as the original Cut Blue. The 3 Piece K-Sig performed very similar to the Cut Blue on the TXG tests. It also appears that Costco stopped buying overruns and now has a steady supply of the 3 Piece. At the same time, the Cut Blue changed quite a bit and is no longer the same ball. The circumstantial evidence suggests to me Costco could guarantee a purchase of enough balls that the factory making that ball might only now be supplying them.

It either has to do with tolerances of the aerodynamics package on the ball, or possibly the yellow changes the aerodynamics of the ball a tiny bit. The launch conditions of the two balls are basically the same, and once it leaves the club face it's the aerodynamics that make a difference. The fact that the yellow is going higher, landing shorter, and has a larger land area leads me to believe that it's probably one or two balls on the yellow that are slightly out of spec.

Dean Snell has said that compression really doesn't make a difference at the low end of the spectrum. I haven't seen any data that refutes him. That being said a low compression ball will spin less than a high compression ball, all things being equal. And knocking off spin will also usually add to distance. Of course things aren't always equal with golf balls. You can make a firmer ball that spins less.