Idle Speculation About Golf Ball Construction And Marketing

Is this just a coincidence or is there some technical reasoning behind it?

I've noticed that the companies most invested in marketing "a different ball for every [driver] swing speed" also happen to be companies whose balls have TPU covers. Bridgestone, Srixon and Callaway (correct me if I'm wrong) use thermoplastic urethane while Titleist and Taylormade use cast thermoset.

TM has dabbled in swing-speed-specific balls like the Project (a) but never really built their entire marketing strategy around "fitting" balls based on driver clubhead speed to the extent that Bridgestone and Srixon have. Callaway is slightly different, they just pitch soft, soft, soft, soft, soft (while providing their Tour players with firmer balls). Even Dean Snell (cast thermoset with the regrettable exception of the short-lived MTB Red) poo-poo's the whole compression versus driver speed thing, so he fits the pattern too.

Is it easier to make a "soft" ball with a TPU cover maybe? Or am I just reading too much into a totally coincidental pattern?

You're reading too much into it. It basically comes down to this: almost everyone prefers a softer ball and as you swing faster, the compression of a ball that feels soft goes up. Compression probably has no tangible benefit for slow swing speed players except for making their irons go a little further. But the companies know that if you were hitting something harder and you move to something softer, you will prefer it. They also know that as you swing slower you need a lower compression ball to keep that same feeling. So they market balls on swing speed so that everyone is playing a ball that feels good. They know that hardly anyone is actually going to get fit with a launch monitor for their ball. They also know that any performance differences are going to be small enough to be hard to spot on the course (strike is king after all). So most people are going to buy a ball on feel.

So it's just a random pattern that the companies choosing to heavily market "soft" use one cover construction while the companies that choose to market other characteristics use another?

I guess what I'm asking is, if you set out to market the heck out of "soft" is there an advantage to using TPU for the cover?

Probably all just happenstance, this is a very small number of companies after all.

Wilson kind of invented the soft ball (they just weren't the ones to market it first) and they use cast urethane unless I am mistaken.

Soft came about because these companies started doing focus groups and everyone preferred the feel of a soft ball (assuming you didn't tell them you lost performance).

Yeah, I didn't mention Wilson because I wasn't sure what kind of covers they use nowadays.

The original FG Tour was the first "Tour" type ball I got really good results with, must have been nearly a decade ago now. The Pro V1's at that juncture didn't seem to really give me the distance and height on my shots that FG Tour did.

I think it was around then that the "Tour" ball market evolved to the current point where the balls that work for elite players also work very well for weak-hitting duffers. As late as 2009-2010 I felt like I needed to choose between best spin (Tour balls) and best distance and trajectory (usually 3pc Surlyn balls that weren't total no-spin rocks).