New Golf Balls To Totally Improve Your Golf Game
Recreational sports equipment companies thrive on the notion that their products can make us better at sports. Nike has successfully made casual runners think their shoes are lighter, and thus more conducive to speed, than their competitors’. Under Armour has football players, and paunchy middle-aged rec hoops players, wicking away sweat more efficiently than ever. Tennis companies keep making those sweet spots bigger.* You get the idea.
(*Here’s a quick question, one Jerry Seinfeld has probably already asked at some point: Why don’t they make the whole tennis racket the “sweet spot”? You could never miss! Wait. Forget I wrote that. That’s brilliant. I’m putting a blog-patent on that.)
Perhaps no sport capitalizes on the “equipment can make you better” notion than golf. The stakes are higher in golf; the margin for error is smaller, and the equipment is much more expensive than any other popular recreational sport. Convince people a titanium driver can add 20 yards to your drive, and you’re going to make a whole lot of money.
If that’s true, Hae Cheon Choi and his colleagues at Seoul National University in Korea are about to get paper:
The team’s answer is to design a golf ball with grooves rather than dimples on its surface, arranged in such a way as to divide the ball’s surface into triangles. The grooves disrupt airflow in a similar way to dimples, so the ball still carries roughly the same distance, say the team. But the grooves cover a smaller surface area of the ball than dimples. That makes it much less likely that a putter might strike them in a way that sends the ball off at an odd angle. The end result is fewer putting errors, they claim.
Those types of balls sound illegal, but apparently they’re not; golf’s rules don’t mention surface texture as one of its ball standards. Which means I need to get me some of those balls. With this technology, I could totally get my average down to 65. On 18 holes. Sweet.
Subscribe to our RSS feed.
Follow us on Twitter.
Viewing 4 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
http://thatgolfplace.com/
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Clayton Garland, PGA, C.G.F.I.
Author of: Golf Fitness FOR MEN
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.