TaylorMade TP5 And TP5x Performance Stripe: A Stripe You Can Hide

Performance Stripe trades TP5 and TP5x’s full 360-degree alignment wrap for a partial side stamp you can rotate out of sight.

Stripes on golf balls aren’t going anywhere. A growing stack of internal studies says there’s a real alignment benefit and the brands have clearly noticed. But before we go any further, let’s set the table. If putting breaks down into three elements (reading the green, aiming to your target, making the stroke), a stripe is built to help with exactly one of them. We’re talking about aim. Full stop. Nothing printed on a golf ball reads the break for you and no stripe has ever made the stroke on its owner’s behalf. Who knows? Maybe the first AI-designed golf ball will help with that.

Until then, what you might find interesting about TaylorMade’s new TP5 and TP5x Performance Stripe is that, in a world of increasingly bold designs, the company is actually rolling things back a bit.

A subtler stripe

The Clear Path Alignment stripe TP5 players already know is a full 360-degree design that wraps the whole ball. Performance Stripe is more of a sidestamp enhancement than a true stripe.

Because numbers are fun, TaylorMade says the Performance Stripe design creates a sidestamp that’s 75 percent longer than what you get on the standard TP5 side stamp (20 millimeters) and 52 percent longer than the TP5x version (23 mm). It gives you a bit more to look at than standard white and yellow models, while remaining significantly smaller than the full-wrap stripe treatment.

I suppose the practical implication is that you have options (sometimes). Because the stripe only covers part of the ball, you can orient it for alignment when you want the help or tuck it out of sight for a clean look on the tee and on the green. (In between, you get what you get but that’s true of any side stamp.) If the approach sounds familiar, it’s the same basic idea behind Titleist’s AIM stamps: a line for the golfers who want it; deniability for the ones who don’t.

Whether that line meaningfully moves your make rate is still the part you’re asked to take on a little faith. More than one ball manufacturer has run tests and determined that alignment aids provide a benefit. Take that for what it’s worth but the premise isn’t far-fetched. As I’ve said, I genuinely believe longer, wider stripes are useful alignment aids, so I’m inclined to trust that the data is real.

What’s under the paint

The stripe is the headline but it isn’t the only change. Both balls get new Microcoating which TaylorMade describes as a more precise process for controlling how paint is applied to the cover. The goal is a more consistent outer layer which in theory lets the dimple pattern do its job the same way shot after shot and ball after ball. It’s not something you’ll feel standing over a putt but it should go without saying that consistency is more than a little important.

Where I land

I’ll admit I usually give TaylorMade grief for playing it straight with stripes. This is a company that put flamingos on a golf ball, and pickles on a golf ball, while its TP alignment graphics tend to show up dressed for a board meeting. In this case, though, the restraint is the point. A loud, colorful stripe would undercut a design whose entire pitch is that you can make it disappear when you want to so I’ll keep my “give me some color” complaint in my pocket for once.

The honest caveat is that the optionality only goes so far. You get the clean look if you set the ball up for it but the in-between orientations are whatever the ball hands you. For a lot of golfers, that trade is more than fair. For others, a stripe is a stripe.

Pricing and availability

TP5 and TP5x Performance Stripe come in six-ball packs priced at $29.99. The six-ball pack is worth a beat of its own. Premium balls are almost always sold by the dozen so this is a different way to buy in. I’ll let you run the per-dozen math yourself.