Scratch By 50: Does The Ball Matter For A Golfer Like Me? 

Graham Averill will turn 50 this year and he’s freaking out. Instead of buying a motorcycle or getting a tattoo, he’s decided to try to get really, really good at golf. He started this project in March as a 13 handicap attempting to reach scratch in a year. He is now an 11.2. Welcome to his midlife crisis. 

I’m not allowed to have nice things. Never have been. Buy me something nice and I’m just going to break it or lose it. My parents told me as much when I was young and the lesson has stuck with me well into adulthood, especially when it comes to golf. Since picking up the game a few years ago, I estimate I’ve sent roughly 2,000 balls into the woods at various courses around the country. Fortunately, I followed my parents’ advice and stocked up on the absolute cheapest balls I could find: Top Flite XL Distance. Sure, golfers make fun of Top Flite (not-so-lovingly referred to as “Rock Flite”) but at less than $20 for a 15 pack (buy two boxes for $30!) and with promises of “maximum distance,” how could I possibly pass up that kind of a bargain? 

One of the happy side effects of getting better at golf is you lose fewer balls. Most days, I’ll play the same round with a single ball. This new phenomenon has me wondering if I finally, maybe, deserve an upgrade. 

MyGolfSpy does amazing golf ball analysis but what does all of that data mean for an 11 handicap who just wants to find more fairways and stick more greens? Does the ball really matter when I’m still working on some core elements of my game? 

I decided to find out so over the last few weeks, I incorporated a variety of balls that did really well in our annual ball tests. It was painful to shell out $60 for a dozen Titleist Pro V1s when right down the aisle they were basically giving away shiny new Top Flites but I did it for the sake of journalism. I also tracked down a jumbo box of Kirkland Performance+ and a couple of different Callaway options. And during a recent trip to Florida, I hit Vice Pro almost exclusively. 

I’m not really concerned about maximizing my distance right now. Sure, it would be nice to get another 10 yards out of my drives but I’m more focused on hitting more greens. Or, I should say, I’m more focused on sticking more greens. I’m tired of watching my ball land in the center of a green and then wander 20 yards off the back. So I want a ball with more spin so I can start trying to stop it in the vicinity of where it lands. 

The Top Flite XL I’ve been using hasn’t even made it into the extensive annual Ball Test from MyGolfSpy but I know that TF has an ionomer cover and there wasn’t a single ionomer ball that performed well greenside in the most recent MGS ball test. Ionomer balls are typically the most budget-friendly as opposed to the urethane cover of pricier options but, according to the Ball Lab data, they don’t spin as well. 

I know getting a ball to stick has a lot to do with the golfer’s swing and even the club they use but I’m looking for every advantage I can get out of my equipment so I want to see if the ball I game will help. 

Anecdotally, the answer is “yes.” Over the last few weeks, I’ve watched as these “higher class” balls stick to more greens. For example, during my latest mid-week nine-hole round, I hit five out of nine greens in regulation and landed an average of four feet closer to the pin on approaches than a scratch golfer. I still gave up two strokes on long approaches but that’s a big improvement from previous rounds. 

But is that improvement because of the ball I’m using? Or am I hitting more greens because I’m getting better at approach shots in general? Probably a little bit of both. But to get really scientific about it, I hit my home course last night and did some experimenting with balls. 

I walked the course and hit a brand-new Top Flite XL and a brand-new Titleist Pro V1 into the greens from a variety of different spots. Instead of just using the final resting place of the ball for evidence, I brought a small launch monitor with me to get hard spin data on each ball. 

For example, there’s a 135-yard par-3 that plagues me. I often hit the green but then watch the ball roll off into the distance. Tonight, I tracked both gap wedge shots with the launch monitor, looking for spin discrepancies. Same club, same hole, same swing. Would the spin rates be different? 

In a word, yes. With the gap wedge, I carried the Titleist Pro V1 126 yards and watched it check and roll backwards three or four feet. Then I hit the Top Flite 129 yards and watched it land and roll several feet away from the pin. According to the launch monitor, the Titleist had a backspin of 5,307 rpm while the Top Flite had a backspin of 3,675 rpm. 

Those numbers told me the ball matters but only so much. I’m still not getting the ideal spin from these balls with my wedges. The lack of spin in my shots is likely because of some impurity in my strike. But even with that less than perfect swing, I get more spin out of the better ball and that better ball is sticking to more greens. 

I swing my irons in the low 90s and my driver in the low 100s which puts me in the high end of mid swing speeds—plenty fast to get some spin on the ball, assuming I strike it well. 

I still have some work to do before I find the Goldilocks ball that’s perfect for my swing speed and overall game. In theory, I should take this experiment further and try to match the ball with my swing speed—but the ball experiments I’ve been doing have been enlightening and encouraging. Even though I still have a mountain to climb in terms of the technical aspects of my swing, the ball I play absolutely makes a difference. And it’s obvious to me that I don’t have to wait for that work to be complete to upgrade the ball. 

Turns out my parents were wrong; I can have nice things. 

Dig deeper into one golfer’s struggle to get better at golf in middle age and read last week’s Scratch By 50 where Graham details his hour-long practice plan. 

Scratch by 50: How I Started Practicing Better