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Dean Snell has been designing golf balls for over 26 years for Titliest, TaylorMade and now his own company, Snell Golf. Please feel free to ask any golf ball related questions with respect to performance, testing, technology, past or present, tour player testing, etc... Hope this can be educational and allow forum readers a chance to ask an expert on the MGS site..

A lot of golfers on forums have been touting the Snell My Tour Ball as a quality 3-piece tour level ball at a reasonable price ($32/dozen). I am one of them. If you like the feel of a tour ball and want tour level performance, this is a ball that you have to try. I am writing this thread to bring attention to Dean Snell's other golf ball; the 2-piece soft Surlyn covered GET SUM ball. If you currently play a 2-piece ball, have a slower swing speed, need a little more height to your ball flight, or if you simply want to try a softer ball, you should give the GET SUM ball a try. I have played the Snell My Tour Ball all summer and it is my go-to ball, but it is autumn now in the Pacific Northwest and temperatures are dropping. It's time to play "winter golf". Let me define "winter golf" here in the TriCities, WA. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not wet; that's Seattle, here it will be cold and dry. Soon the temperatures will reach the 20-30's. Only the hearty golfers play during the winter. For some reason these golfers are older and have enclosed, heated golf carts. Except for being older, I'm not one of them. I walk. I stay warmer walking because I am dressed for it, but I digress. Sorry. My point is that in the winter the tour level ball does not play any better than a 2-piece ball. So why play an expensive ball if there is no performance gain. What matters for "winter golf" is using a ball that has a soft feel so it won't feel like hitting a rock. Landing a ball on the green will surely result in the ball being behind the green. It won't stop, no matter what ball you use. Now you have to judge how far in front of the green to land it so it stops on the green. Old guys do this really well because they do it all year long!! They don't generate enough spin to stop a ball even in the summer! So, yesterday I played a round of golf at a course I don't play much. I know the fairways and greens are firm, even in the summer. The Snell My Tour Ball stayed in the bag; I pulled the Snell GET SUM ball. On my last order of the MTB, I order a dozen GET SUM balls just to see how they played and if they might be my new winter ball. I had a great round; 71 on a par 70 course. Was it entirely the ball? No, for some reason I had a great ball striking round, but the GET SUM was very predictable in its feel around the green. No, it doesn't spin like a tour ball, but I found it easy to judge how it comes off the club. Less spin produced longer, straighter drives than normal. I knew it wasn't going to spin much on chips and pitches, so I played for it to roll out. Here is what Dean Snell says about 2-piece balls and spin: In past testing that I have done with a scratch golfer, I took a tour ball and a 2-pc golf ball and had him hit wedges.. he spin the tour ball 10000 rpm and launch angle was around 30 degrees... then with the 2-pc ball, his spin was 6000 rpm and 45 deg on the launch angle.. so the tour ball has almost twice the spin and launches much lower off the face.. this is why a lot of better players do not play 2pc balls.. they have a tough time of occasionally getting those fliers of high launch and lower spin and over the green... the tour balls slightly compress and roll along the face causing lower launch and higher spin.. the 2-pc balls will "slide" a bit more than roll, so they launch higher with less spin... Although a few of you are scratch golfers or close to it, the rest of use don't generate that much ball spin. So we compensate by playing a lot of bump-and-runs and pitches with lots of roll. During the winter this is true for all of us in the north. I am looking for a softer ball and the amount of spin around the green becomes less important because the ground firms up and no ball stops like it does in the summer anyway. I think I have found it; I had a couple of birdies and a bunch of par saves. The ball is soft enough off the club to let me feel the shot, but not squishy like I have experienced with the Wilson DUO. It seems to be more like the Callaway Chrome Soft. Compared to the Snell My Tour Ball, I would say that besides less spin around the green and being softer in feel, the ball flies higher off the driver and certainly higher off the irons. If you want the extra height, play this ball. If spin is not that important to you for whatever reason, play this ball. You really can't go wrong at $21/dozen.