What Golf Ball Should I Use?
Which golf ball should you be using during your round of golf? This is a question we get asked all the time from golfers on our email newsletter community.
And today we’re excited to share our tips and thoughts on the best golf balls to use.
I’m Nick, a scratch golfer who likes sharing tips and drills online with thousands of members in our email newsletter as well as our training program memberships.
If you find today’s review on the best golf balls to use for practice and for tournament rounds, then please help us out by hitting the Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest share button you see floating on the screen.
Read: Best Golf Balls 2019 Review
Best Golf Ball to Use During Practice Rounds
If you’ve ever played a round of golf and analyzed your golf ball at the beginning and at the end, you’ll notice it changes.
The cover on the golf ball tends to scuff and you’ll likely see threads coming off of it as well if you look closely. Not to mention, it will be dirty with mud and grass stains.
So the question is…
Should you use the same golf ball during practice as you do for competitive golf rounds and tournaments?
There are both pro’s and cons:
- Pro – you get comfortable and skilled with the same golf ball in practice and competition
- Pro – your distances are more consistent
- Pro – no adjusting on the greens with your putting and chipping
- Con – the nice expensive balls can get damaged / ruined during practice
- Con – the nice expensive golf balls can get lost
If you practice golf a lot on the chipping green and out on the golf course, you’re going to damage the balls. That’s just part of the game.
What I recommend, is dedicate some money to buying a nice set of Pro V1 Titleist golf balls that you’ll use as long as you can for practice.
12 balls come in a Titleist box. See if you can use them for multiple months without losing them to water and out of bounds golf shots! (:
They’re especially important to use around the greens to gain feel with your wedges and putter.
So if you fear losing them on tee shots during practice rounds, I recommend hitting a low priced, cheap golf ball instead off the tee.
Then switch out the nicer, more expensive golf ball for your approach shot or wedge shots and finish off the hole with it.
Start with this list if you decide you want cheap practice golf balls instead to use during practice rounds:
As mentioned above, you should ideally practice with the same golf ball you’re going to use during competitive rounds.
This is easy to do on the practice greens with chipping and putting. But on the range, you’ll have to hit crappy range balls.
Out on the golf course you can switch back and forth between good balls and cheap golf balls if you worry about damaging the expensive golf balls or losing them.
Best Golf Ball to Use for Competition and Tournaments
For tournaments and competitive rounds of golf, it’s a good idea to use higher quality golf balls. These golf balls are usually more expensive but are worth the extra money.
Here are the best premium (expensive), high quality golf balls:
- Titleist Pro V1 X
- Titleist Pro V1
- TaylorMade TP5 X
- TaylorMade TP5
- Callaway Chrome Soft X
- Srixon Z Star XV
- Titleist Tour Soft
- Titleist AVX
I’ve personally tested the Titleist, TaylorMade, and Callaway golf balls and can say with confidence the Pro V1 and AVX balls by Titleist are the top two.
In terms of spin, you get a little more spin on the TP5 golf balls by TaylorMade. But overall distance plus spin control on the greens I still feel Titleist has the superior golf ball.
Callaway’s Chrome Soft ball is nice and has a cool design but I wasn’t in love with the sound it makes off the clubface nor the hardness it feels like on the face.
Even though they use the word “soft” in the name for marketing to sell more balls, I feel like Titleist and TaylorMade make the softer feeling golf ball.
Overall, you can’t go wrong between the AVX, TP5, and Pro V1’s. All 3 are great and only the professional tour pro’s will notice a major difference in spin rates and distances.