Titleist has a couple of new generations of golf balls that have hit the market in the sweet-spot price for lots of golfers, with new variations of the Tour Speed and Tour Soft golf balls.
Titleist Tour Soft
The third-gen Tour Soft was designed in response to golfer feedback that sought more distance off the tee and soft feel, using a larger, faster core to give this golfer what they want.
The Tour Soft core is 1.6 inches, which is one of the largest Titleist makes, but it maintained the same compression as the second-gen Tour Soft. This bigger core required a thinner cover -- dubbed the 4CE grafted cover -- which helps generate reliable greenside spin.
The cover features a new 346 quadrilateral dipyramid dimple design -- the same found in the new Tour Speed -- that's been optimized for more distance. However, this cover wasn't in the original plans for this Tour Soft model.
“Our team developed many designs and went down a myriad of paths from a research standpoint, but it wasn’t until the Tour Speed golf ball when we tested and determined the quadrilateral dipyramid dimple pattern made for a really efficient way to process an injection molded cover,” said Mike Madson, Senior Director, Research and Engineering. "We never planned to put the same pattern on the Tour Soft, and we looked at a multitude of other dimple counts and patterns within the same family that might work better. But when it came to optimized ball flight and total performance, the 346 quadrilateral dipyramid pattern was clearly the best.”
The Tour Soft will fly slightly lower than the Tour Speed, however, because of the larger core that's softer.
The Titleist Tour Soft is available now in white and yellow models.
Titleist Tour Speed
The second-gen Tour Speed builds on the original, which was the first Titleist ball with a proprietary Titleist Performance Urethane (TPU) cover. The ball still is relatively fast, flies with a more boring trajectory and has good short-game control.
This golf ball to maintain low long game spin.
The Titleist Performance Urethane (TPU) cover utilizes the 346 quadrilateral dipyramid dimple design, like the Tour Soft, but adds a casing layer (mantle layer) to work with the cover to perform on each shot.
The Titleist Tour Speed is available now in white (and yellow models are coming June 21) for $40 per dozen MAP
