Callaway’s 2024 transition from Chrome Soft to Chrome Tour + Chrome Soft might be the second-most significant evolution in the history of Callaway’s golf ball business.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the decision to ditch Speed Regime (Remember that? Thought not.) for the Original Chrome Soft. Billed as the “Ball That Changed the Ball”, the original red-box offering inarguably transformed Callaway’s golf ball biz from one among a handful of also-rans to the clear No. 2 in the market.
So, while maybe not the birth of Chrome Soft-big, 2024 is a stake-in-the-ground moment for Callaway’s ball franchise that brings core-to-cover enhancements across the entire lineup. Beyond the performance improvements, changes include a shedding of the “soft” branding from its high-compression offerings, dropping “LS” from the lineup and shifting focus toward better players who perhaps haven’t taken Callaway golf balls as seriously as they should.
It’s all part of a larger plan built around the objective of creating the most advanced tour balls the world has ever seen. And, yeah, if it sounds at all like Callaway is ready to stand toe-to-toe with Titleist in a way that it hasn’t since before the first Chrome Soft hit shelves, it’s only because that’s exactly what’s happening.
2024 Chrome Lineup
Callaway’s 2024 Chrome golf ball lineup consists of the familiar (though not unenhanced) Chrome Soft along with the Chrome Tour X and the entirely new Chrome Tour.
We’ll dig into each of the three individually in a bit but the three-sentence overview is that Chrome Soft and Chrome Tour X are direct replacements for the familiar Chrome Soft and Chrome Soft X of past generations.
The Chrome Tour replaces Chrome Soft X LS in the lineup but it’s not a one-for-one replacement. What it is is a ball that’s designed to appeal to Pro V1 players in a way that nothing in the prior Chrome Soft lineup has.
Think about that for a minute. Until now, the Chrome Soft lineup has never included a ball specifically designed to deliver a performance spec similar to the most-played golf ball in the world.
Relative to the Pro V1, Chrome Soft has always been softer, higher-flying and lower-spinning. Chrome Soft X with its high-90s compression and higher spin was always more similar to Pro V1x. For the multitude of golfers seeking something in between, in the interest of differentiation, I suppose, Callaway had nothing for you.
Callaway’s previous strategy in the ball category was to bookend the market leader. With Chrome Tour, that changes.
Core-to-Cover Enhancements
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that not everything changes each time a new version of a golf ball hits the market. Golf balls often evolve one layer at a time. That’s not the case with Callaway’s Chrome series.
Improvement, reformulations, changes … whatever you want to call them … have been made core to cover and, I suppose, on top of the cover as well.
New Cover Formulation
Working from the inside out, the new balls feature a new core formulation. Callaway is building on the prior generation of Chrome Soft where it exchanged inert materials in its core mixture with ingredients that contribute to more speed. A new base polymer along with other new materials further increases speed without increasing compression. That bit is common to all three models.
The core is critical not just for speed but also for feel to manage spin rates. If you have a slow core, you’re going to have a slow ball.
Mantle layers (Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X are four-piece balls, Chrome Soft is three-piece) have been tweaked to deliver the target performance with the new core.
Updated Hex Dimples
Of all the changes Callaway has made for the Chrome Tour (and Soft) golf balls for 2024, there’s an argument to be made that the changes to its signature HEX dimple pattern are the most significant.
Through its most extensive use of computational fluid dynamics to date and a high-resolution nine-camera Toptracer system at the Ely Callaway Performance Center in California, it was better able to model and validate aerodynamic performance over the full flight of the ball.
The new pattern uses a combination of hexagonal and spherical to provide maximum distance while improving stability over the entire flight.
In the past, Callaway manipulated dimple depth and the width of the facets that form the hex dimple shape to modify the trajectory of each ball. This time around, dimple patterns are unique to each ball which ultimately helps it fly through each ball’s target window without the golfer needing to manipulate trajectory.
Softer Covers
As part of the new cover design, Callaway has softened the cover of Chrome Tour, Chrome Tour X and Chrome Soft. The bragging rights side of things is that Callaway says its covers are softer than those of its key competitors. On the performance side, that yields not just more spin but more consistent spin (even in wet conditions) as you move closer to the green.
Seamless Cover Design
You’ll hear a lot of manufacturers talk about their seamless cover designs. In reality, every golf ball cover is formed by two molds coming together and where those molds meet, a seam is unavoidable.
Callaway isn’t denying that, but the larger point is that they say their manufacturing process eliminates the difference between in-seam and cross-seam performance it often sees in its competitors’ products.
The difference can be found in Callaway’s finish process. Rather than trimming and buffing the seam directly (the common industry practice), Callaway effectively smooths the entire ball. The company says that provides greater uniformity and eliminates the need to modify dimple geometry along the seam to account for the buffing process.
More Premium Look
A small thing, perhaps, but Callaway has made changes to the outside of the ball as well. The player number has been updated, the side stamp is larger and the paint quality has improved.
While it’s a tricky thing to quantify, when golfers open a box of Chrome Tour or Chrome Soft, Callaway wants them to feel like they’re experiencing a more premium product.
Precision Technology 2.0
All of this is meant to build on the Precision Technology that Callaway introduced with ’22 ball. At that time, Precision Technology spoke to the investments Callaway made to its factory which now is to the level where it believes it has the industry’s leading manufacturing process.
That assessment is sure to be hotly debated. But the point is that, with the ’24 balls, Precision Technology has spilled onto the golf course where Callaway says golfers should expect more consistent results, regardless of which of the three balls they choose.
Let’s examine the individual Chrome Tour and Chrome Soft models in detail.
Callaway Chrome Tour
The Chrome Tour represents Callaway’s first attempt to stand toe-to-toe with the Pro V1 since before Chrome Soft existed.
Its gold box is meant to signify that Chrome Tour is different, that something has changed.
Like Chrome Tour X, Chrome Tour is a four-piece (dual-mantle) offering but it trades the high compression of X (and the X LS whose spot it the lineup it now occupies) with a combination of distance and softer feel.
Chrome Tour is based on the Chrome Soft X Dot–a prototype Callaway made available to PGA Tour pros. Callaway’s Dot was softer and higher spinning than Chrome Soft X LS and accounted for 30 to 40 percent of Callaway’s play on Tour.
Relative to Chrome Soft X Dot, the Chrome Tour offers improved aero and, in Callaway’s estimation, compares favorably to the Pro V1.
In Callaway’s testing, Chrome Tour was about .5 mph faster than the Pro V1 and faster still compared to TP5. That’s based on Tour-level head speed so, while average golfers aren’t likely to see quite the same advantage, faster is faster.
Perhaps the larger point is that golfers who played the Chrome Soft X LS aren’t going to lose distance with the Chrome Tour.
Callaway Chrome Tour X
Apart from the core-to-cover performance enhancements (kind of a big deal), other than the name, the Chrome Tour X should feel familiar.
It’s still Callaway’s highest-spinning golf ball and it remains one of the fastest (and longest) balls on the market.
With the Tour X, Callaway is setting its sights on the Titleist Pro V1x, over which it says it has a 1.5 mph speed advantage.
Again, that’s at Tour speed, but Callaway is confident nearly everyone will see the difference.
“These ball speed gains are real, they’re noticeable and they’re significant,” says Eric Loper, Callaway’s Senior Director of Golf Ball R&D.
Callaway is equally confident the Chrome Tour X wins the greenside spin battle. Here, the advantage is about 300 rpm higher than Pro V1x.
To hammer the point home, Callaway had us hit Chrome Tour X and Pro V1x side by side. We saw more speed off the driver and more greenside spin with the Chrome Tour X.
Golf ball fitting and, by extension, finding the right golf ball, is about more than speed and greenside spin but if you have an advantage in both, it’s certainly not a bad place to start.
With access to launch monitors being what it is, there isn’t any reason golfers can’t test for themselves.
“No games,” says Callaway’s Jason Finley. “Just go hit them. We have not lost.”
If nothing else, it further suggests the Chrome Soft X and now the Chrome Tour X deserve a bit more of the retail market than they have now.
Chrome Soft
Chrome Soft isn’t going away. The familiar red box is still going to be on store shelves but, with this season’s emphasis on Chrome Tour, you’re going to hear about Chrome Soft a bit less this time around.
Compared to the Chrome Tour offerings, with its significantly lower compression the three-piece Chrome Soft is better suited to lower-speed players or golfers needing significant spin reduction.
As Callaway puts it, it’s for the aspirational player looking for a Tour quality ball.
We’ve talked at length about the ball speed penalties that come with high-speed players playing a softer golf ball but with the new Chrome Soft, Callaway says they’re a bit faster than where they’ve been. That, coupled with aerodynamic improvements that produce a higher apex, makes for a ball that’s about three yards longer (based on mid-140s ball speed) than the prior generation of Chrome Soft.
Callaway says Chrome Soft compares favorably to competitive offerings like the TaylorMade Tour Response and Titleist AVX.
Visual Technology
Chrome Tour and Chrome Soft golf balls will be available with a variety of lines and patterns. I’ll let the chart convey the details.
More to Consider
It’s not lost on Callaway that unseating the long-standing #1 Ball in Golf won’t happen overnight. In fact, the thinking is that for anyone to surpass the market leader, everyone is going to need to nibble away until the market finds balance.
It’s also not lost on Callaway that it’s fighting 70 years of history. For golfers to establish new loyalties, it won’t be enough for Chrome Tour to be good. It has to be demonstrably better.
In a sense, Callaway is fighting uphill in two directions.
On one side, it needs to convince elite and even just better golfers to try Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X head-to-head against what they’re playing now. Callaway believes the advantages will prove undeniable. Loyalties among that particular demographic run deep and, to date, relatively few have shown interest in a Callaway Tour ball.
On the other end of the spectrum, golfers who struggle to hit greens often find it difficult to recognize the performance benefit of any particular golf ball. “I’m not good enough to tell the difference” is something we hear often.
For both types of golfers, Callaway believes Chrome Tour (X) and Chrome Soft represent the best available option but if the message doesn’t resonate, whatever performance advantages exist won’t much matter.
With that, expect Callaway’s messaging to be significantly different than in years past with the gold box and Tour performance dominating the conversation.
Will that be enough to pique golfer’s curiosities?
PS. Need balls now or don’t want to spend full price on the latest? The 2022 Callaway Chrome Soft family of golf balls has been reduced to $45.
David
2 weeks ago
I switched from chrome soft to chrome tour 3 rounds ago. Two of my best rounds this year with chrome tour. What I noticed was the run on the tour was more than tge soft.