Titleist makes the best-selling golf ball on the planet, the Pro V1 (both models). They took the concept of the Pro V1 -- a tour-caliber ball -- and created the AVX, which is a tour-caliber, high-end golf ball for amateurs' tendencies.
Both balls are at the $50-ish per dozen range. For plenty of golfers, that's a price worth paying. For many golf players, though, they want something a little cheaper that's almost as good.
Enter the new Titleist Tour Speed ball.
The Tour Speed is a new ball geared toward players who want the speed, control and greenside spin that comes with those higher-end, tour-caliber balls while at a lower, $40-per-dozen price point.
The big difference -- the step-down, if you will -- is in the cover. The Pro V1s and AVX have a cast urethane cover that's the current gold standard material. The Tour Speed uses a new TPU (thermoplastic urethane) cover that Titleist believes comes as close as possible to that performance for less money. Titleist believes its proprietary multilayer technique elevates the injected urethane approach.
The three-piece Tour Speed design has a new core design with an ionomer mantle (their parlance is "casing," tomato-tomato), designed to build speed while not stripping out feel or lowering greenside spin. The company claims it is longer than comparable tour-caliber balls from other manufacturers.
The TPU cover has a new 346 quadrilateral dipyramid dimple design that aims to provide a more penetrating ball flight.
And here's the big reveal: While this ball is new, you might have played a variant of it last year when Titleist released the EXP-01 experimental ball to the public. That move seemed bold and out of step for Titleist at the time, but clearly the results of the EXP-01 and the feedback consumers gave was enough to convince them to move forward (and maybe try this approach again someday with another new ball).
The Titleist Tour Speed is available Aug. 7 for $40 per dozen.
