There’s Something Familiar About this New Callaway Chrome Soft Golf Ball Pattern.

Callaway has dropped a new version of its popular Chrome Soft golf ball and something about it sure looks familiar.

The design of the new Chrome Soft 360 Yellow Stripe bears more than a passing resemblance to TaylorMade’s Tour Response Stripe. I’m guessing you didn’t need me to point that out.

Neon yellow? Really?

Not Callaway’s first stripe

For what it’s worth, the new 360 Yellow Stripe isn’t Callaway’s first foray into the world of stripes.  

360 Triple Track, which is basically just an unfilled stripe, has been in the lineup for a while.

The 360 Fade pattern available on ERC Soft is a stripe. The same is true for Supersoft Splatter, which, as the name implies, features a stripe pattern filled with splatter.

Callaway has been making versions of stripes for a while; this new one just happens to be a bit more overt than the others.

I suppose there are a couple of ways you can look at this.

In a year when Callaway seems to be going out of its way to establish itself as a L.A.B. knockoff brand, blatantly borrowing from the TaylorMade catalog suggests a systemic lack of originality.

It’s equally true that Callaway and TaylorMade are engaged in a decades long tit for tat. This is just the latest volley in the back-and-forth between the industry’s two biggest rivals.

In that respect, it’s just business as usual.

For additional context, it’s worth mentioning that Truvis came before pix, and while I haven’t seen the new Chrome Soft in person yet, there’s a voice in my head (it sounds a lot like a Callaway guy) telling me that the print quality is better (TaylorMade’s pattern is pixelated) and that the stripe is more reliably centered (probably).

The bottom line

As with everything else in golf, there comes a point at which who did it first ceases to matter, and frankly, a stripe on a golf ball hardly qualifies as one of the game’s biggest innovations.

Once again, it is what it is.

My hope is that Callaway’s foray into wide stripe alignment provides cover for everyone else. I’ve said it before – I believe wide patterns are extremely helpful on the putting green. If borrowing a bit of inspiration from a competitor kicks the door open for others to put better alignment features on their golf balls, I’m all for it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get any pattern you want on whatever ball you choose to play?

Availability

The Callaway Chrome Soft 360 Yellow Stripe is available now.