Phil Mickelson's Comments on golf balls and liquid center balls

[BH4653golf]

Have you researched what he said about liquid center golf balls.  Sounds improbable to me.  What do your experts at golf b all companies say?

 

[Shankster]

Anything is possible, except for an electric car that charges itself… I still don’t understand how the engineers haven’t figure it out yet… it seems simple to me.

 

Taylormade is the most recent liquid center ball that I can remember.  My dad swore by them. The plastic tubes they came in and everything… I “borrowed” a sleeve one time when I was a kid… bad idea, he wasn’t thrilled.  Haha.

[AndySP]

You mean this right around the 2 min mark (assuming a Twitter link is allowed).

 

 

Honestly it sounds like the claim about liquid filled balls is another claim that is based on pure conjecture, but honestly I’m also not exactly sure what he is even saying. I imagine manufacturers could develop golf balls that have different characteristics—high spin or low spin—even with a liquid core.  
 

“Oncore” had developed a perimeter weighted ball and I don’t think it hung around though I believe it was deemed nin-conforming because of the metal or something. They marketed it as more forgiving though.

The last ball I remember playing with a liquid core was the Titleist professional. I think some testing showed it didn’t spin any more than a pro v1, just that it was slower overall. 

I agree about the driver length though. Capping at 46 is only going to benefit the longest hitters more.

 

[storm319]

He is technically correct but it was not isolated to liquid cores, all wound balls had CG closer to the center than modern solid core multilayer balls. The problem with his suggestion is that there is no realistic way to enforce a CG requirement for golf balls. The physical attributes of the ball that relate to distance that can be realistically measured already are limited by the USGA (weight, diameter, dimple symmetry). If adding more spin off the tee is the goal, the USGA would have to create some type of reactionary test under a specific set of swing variables similar to the current ODS and velocity tests.

[MadMex]

 

Back in the late 80's, while caddying for a gentleman in US Open Locals,  I saw he was using Spalding Tour Edition Golf balls, saw his green shots would stop after one hop or spin back. He did not make it past locals but gave e a dozen of them as a thank you.

My swing was a lot younger then, I hit 3 of them onto a par 3, the 3 Tour Editions were ALL a minimum of 5 yards past the 3 Titleist Balatas I had hit. 

So, now that I set the scene or bored you, could it be that by switching to wound balls it would roll the distance back and maybe decrease spin ? 

[Hook DeLoft]

I don’t know how you would do it, but I am convinced that a ball that spins more the harder it is hit would stop the increases in distance. If you hit a ball with 130 mph club head speed and it spins at 4000 rpm or more, you will see pro players dialing it back to keep the ball on the golf course. 

[storm319]

9 hours ago, Hook DeLoft said:

I don’t know how you would do it, but I am convinced that a ball that spins more the harder it is hit would stop the increases in distance. If you hit a ball with 130 mph club head speed and it spins at 4000 rpm or more, you will see pro players dialing it back to keep the ball on the golf course. 

That is not universally possible as spin is primarily based on angle of attack and strike location (speed can exaggerate these but given optimal club delivery it won’t have much of a direct effect on spin). The best the USGA would be able to do is set spin minimums based on specific sets of less than optimal swing variables in order to further punish poor strikes however OEMs could make club adjustments to adapt to the new optimal.