Ball Lab – Mizuno RB Tour Ball Review

MyGolfSpy Ball Lab is where we quantify the quality and consistency of the golf balls on the market to help you find the best ball for your money. Today, we’re taking a look at the Mizuno RB Tour. An overview of the equipment we use can be found here. To learn more about our test process, how we define “bad” balls and our True Price metric, check out our About MyGolfSpy Ball Lab page.

It’s perhaps not entirely accurate to say the point of the Mizuno RB Tour golf ball is to be different. However, it’s absolutely true that Mizuno made a conscious decision not to produce something akin to a Pro V1.

The RB Tour (and the RB Tour X) is a low-launch/high-spin offering. It’s overstating it a bit to call it “unique” but its space in the ball-fitting world is where not everyone plays … at least not at retail.  It’s a tail end of the bell curve offering where the only legitimate performance comps are the Volvik S4 (perhaps the most extreme example of a low launch/high spin golf ball) and what now is the prior Gen of the Kirkland three-piece ball.

It’s not a performance spec for everybody but it will definitely work for somebody.

About the Mizuno RB Tour

The Mizuno RB Tour is a four-piece, 360-dimple urethane-cover design. While launch and spin characteristics differ significantly, from a compression and feel perspective, it’s Mizuno’s answer to the Titleist Pro V1. Originally priced in the $45 range, Mizuno has lowered that to $34.99.

The Mizuno RB Tour is manufactured in Vietnam by Fang Tey, the same factory that produced Nike’s RZN balls. The company continues to produce RZN balls under the RZN Golf brand.

Mizuno RB Tour – Compression

It should come as no surprise that the RB Tour clocks in at 91 compression on our gauge. I’d wager that 90 is the most common compression target across the “Tour ball” category so it’s only logical the more mainstream of Mizuno’s two Tour offerings is more or less on that number.

As with most everything else that hovers around 90, we’d classify the ball as firm by the standard of the market as a whole but, within the Tour ball category, the feel reasonably qualifies as medium.

Mizuno RB Tour – Weight and Diameter

• None of the balls tested exceeded the USGA weight limit of 1.620 ounces.
• A single ball failed to meet our standard for roundness.
• None of the balls tested was smaller than USGA’s minimum allowable diameter.

Three bullet points to tell you that there aren’t any major flags with respect to weight, roundness or size. It’s perhaps notable that the Mizuno RB Tour runs a tick large for the Tour category while it’s also a bit on the light side. Both of those could potentially cost Mizuno some speed and distance relative to others in the category.

Mizuno RB Tour  – Inspection

Centeredness and Concentricity

We found some degree of core centeredness and or layer concentricity issue in roughly two-thirds of the balls in our sample.

Nearly 20 percent of the sample had defects significant enough that we flagged the ball. The majority of those were for off-center cores though we also observed issues with inconsistent thickness in both the mantle and cover layers. It’s likely all fruit from the same tree as centering issues will very often cause outer layers to be less than uniform in thickness.

Core Consistency

Core color consistency was generally excellent. There are some visible bits of regrind which was common across our entire sample. We didn’t find any miscellaneous chunks or anything else unusual or out of place.

Cover

Other than the thickness issues covered in the concentricity section, we found no issues with covers in our RB Tour sample.

Mizuno RB Tour Consistency

In this section, we detail the consistency of the Mizuno RB Tour. It’s a measure of how similar the balls in our sample were to one another, relative to all of the models we’ve tested to date.

Weight Consistency

• Consistency (of weight) across our Mizuno RB Tour sample fell within the average range.

Diameter Consistency

• Diameter consistency relative to the other balls in our database also fell within the low end of the average range.

Compression Consistency

• Compression consistency across the sample was average though we did find some issues.
  • We flagged a single ball as bad because its compression was about 10 points below the median value for the sample.
  • Another ball was flagged for having a significant variation across the three compression points measured.

Mizuno RB Tour – Summary Report

To learn more about our test process, how we define “bad” balls and our True Price metric, check out our About MyGolfSpy Ball Lab page.

The Good

• The performance characteristics of the ball fit a niche of the ball-fitting world where not a lot of options exist.
• Values for some quality metrics fall within the average range

The Bad

Nearly two-thirds of the balls had some minor defect. In total, 25 percent of the sample was flagged as bad.

True Price

The True Price of the Mizuno RB Tour is $46.64. That represents a 33-percent increase over the current MSRP ($34.99). Obviously, that’s not great. We’ll recommend Mizuno irons all day and we’re increasingly impressed with the woods but unless you really need low launch with high spin from your golf ball, the RB Tour is probably one to skip.