For the Physics majors

Assume a ball is balanced in saltwater where eventually, the lightest side floats to the top. Mark the light top.

Move to the tee box. With a driver, would you rather compress the light side with the driver face, or the heavy side? Does one transfer more energy to the ball? Or would it matter?

Bryson is that you?

I'd like to see the answer...

Operating under your assumptions, I'd throw that ball out and find a ball that is balanced.

But, that's not a fun answer. Assuming (and I'm not sure this is a valid assumption) that the "lighter" side will compress more, depending on swing speed, you might want to hit the lightest side (slower swing speed) or the heavier side (faster swing speed). Although, it's hard to imagine that the difference in compression would vary enough within a single ball to result in any significant difference in compression. The pro move would be to tee it up with the light/heavy sides aligned in such a way as to impact left-right ball flight.

so the heavy side will always want to go to the bottom as the salt water test shows. The same applies in the air the ball will always want to have that heavy side down and if it is not 100% on the right axis will wobble until it gets there. By right axis I am referring to the point with while rotating the heaviest side is on every revolution pointing straight to the ground. The wobble will cause right to left movement.

To your question distance wise assuming the ball perfectly struck and zero wobble (you lose distance of shots curving)

it would be negligible as the mass of the ball will be off my a gram or two. Per the conservation laws striking the heavier side would result in more force, but again this is negligible.

> @Warrior42111 said:

> so the heavy side will always want to go to the bottom as the salt water test shows. The same applies in the air the ball will always want to have that heavy side down and if it is not 100% on the right axis will wobble until it gets there. By right axis I am referring to the point with while rotating the heaviest side is on every revolution pointing straight to the ground. The wobble will cause right to left movement.

> To your question distance wise assuming the ball perfectly struck and zero wobble (you lose distance of shots curving)

> it would be negligible as the mass of the ball will be off my a gram or two. Per the conservation laws striking the heavier side would result in more force, but again this is negligible.

Thanks!

So the saltwater test measures the lightest side of the ball up but does not tell you the perfect spin axis.

And the Check Go measures the perfect spin axis (to eliminate wobble), but does not tell you which side is heaviest/lightest.

Note, the lightest point per saltwater is not always on the perfect spin axis, but it's usually close.

For my Mevo, I've got to put a metallic dot on the ball opposite the face (i.e. nearest the target). I will put it on the Check Go spin axis nearest the lightest point measured by saltwater, so the face will contact the spin axis at the heaviest point....

Surely the fact that one side floats face up has nothing to do with it being the 'lighter' side. What the experiment shows is that the Centre of Gravity is slightly offset from the centre of the ball. Hitting the light or heavy spot will accentuate the 'wobble' of the ball, while keeping it straight. Hitting a position 90 degrees around the circumference will make the ball veer towards the 'heavy' side.

> @Philomathesq said: The pro move would be to tee it up with the light/heavy sides aligned in such a way as to impact left-right ball flight.

[Per this video](

Heavy side toward you = fade

Heavy side away from you = draw

Heavy side up = high ball flight

Heavy side down = low ball flight

> @CougarRed said:

> > @Philomathesq said: The pro move would be to tee it up with the light/heavy sides aligned in such a way as to impact left-right ball flight.

>

> [Per this video](

>

> Heavy side toward you = fade

> Heavy side away from you = draw

> Heavy side up = high ball flight

> Heavy side down = low ball flight

This does not seem very useful if you do not quantify the imbalance.

FWIW I spin balanced a dozen TP5x and six Srixon Z Stars (not XV) yesterday on a Check Go. This morning, I floated them in epsom salts, using dish soap to reduce friction.

All of the balls had a "light side," i.e. floated to the same spot. Five of the 12 Taylormades floated almost exactly on their spin balance line. None of the Srixon's did. The Srixons also seemed to be slower on average to rise to the "light side."

I wonder if the farther the epsom "light side" is from the spin balance line, the more balanced the ball actually is. That is, if you get a "light side" directly on the spin balance line, then off center weight mass is more pronounced and affected the Spin Go result.

I did practice some 9 foot putts, one with a TP5x with the "light side" directly on the spin balance line, and one where the "light side" was not near the spin balance line. I lined up each putt where the spin balance line was on the target line. My goal was to get the ball rolling end over end on the spin balance/target line.

It was much easier for me to get the ball rolling end over end on the spin balance line when the "light side" matched up. When the "light side" did not match up, the ball did not roll on the spin balance line much at all and I missed more putts.

I'll test some more Srixon Z Stars this weekend, along with some Srixon Q Star Tours and some Maxfli Tours (which come spin balanced).

> @"j.b.newton" said:

> Bryson is that you?

almost spit out my coffee reading that!

Out of 36 Maxfli Tours...

17 where the Check Go spin balance axis matched the Maxfli pre-marked CG line AND the "light side" of the ball was within a couple of dimples of the Maxfli pre-marked CG line.

10 where the Check spin balance axis matched the Maxfli pre-marked CG line but the "light side" of the ball was a good bit away from the marked CG line and even close to one of the "poles" if you will.

9 where I could not get the Check Go spin balance to match the Maxfli pre-marked CG line after several tries.

I think I would line up the heavy or light side with the point that I intend to hit the ball. You know on the tee with the spot facing the club face. The ball is balanced around the axis that goes through the light side and heavy side. It's hard to say what strange things might happen during impact if the COG wasn't in line with the contact spot.

I think Bryson quantifies the imbalance by adding weight to the light side spot until the ball no longer unbalanced. If it takes too much weight, he discards the ball.

If you're thinking about this, you're thinking about the wrong thing.

> @CougarRed said:

> Move to the tee box. With a driver, would you rather compress the light side with the driver face, or the heavy side? Does one transfer more energy to the ball? Or would it matter?

It will not matter to compression or energy transfer. May have a tiny effect on center of rotation and aerodynamics.

As Pete said, the side that sorts upward while floating is simply the opposite side of the cg. This knowledge won't be especially beneficial beyond left/right bias. You seem to be defining north/south bias. Assuming the ball has any rotation along the topspin/bottomspin axis, and only along that axis, the bias should be negligible. The reason is golf ball cores and mantles are designed to be concentric. The likelihood of the core ending up flush against the cover on either side of the ball is zero, assuming quality control eliminates balls out of standard.

Assuming core and mantle layers are poured or encapsulated in stages, the non-core layers should be fairly consistent in distance from cover to core.

The idea that ball flight will be impacted by this bias in a useful (is "a" grammatically correct there?) manner is very unlikely. You would essentially need to hit the ball with a spin rate low enough to bias the 1.68" ball over a 9000" distance for a 250-yard hit. Effectively, you would need the ball to float through the air to translate the bias into higher or lower significant trajectory.

I remember when the first v1s came out, there was something called "seaming." Even Nicklaus did it, which was to hit a lower ball flight you seemed the ball towards the target, and to hit higher, you did the opposite.

> @CougarRed said:

> Assume a ball is balanced in saltwater where eventually, the lightest side floats to the top. Mark the light top.

>

> Move to the tee box. With a driver, would you rather compress the light side with the driver face, or the heavy side? Does one transfer more energy to the ball? Or would it matter?

Starting a bit snarky,but the opposite would be 180° rotation... Which still aligns the seam parallel to the ground.

The best explanation, I can come up with is a frisbee. If you launch it horizontally, it will travel straight and much lower than if you launched it vertically. If you rotated the frisbee and flipped it like a coin, it would travel an even shorter distance.

The original Pro-V1 balls must have possessed a bulge of some sort at the seam. That isn't the same as the cg described in this thread.

> @cavemeister said:

> I remember when the first v1s came out, there was something called "seaming." Even Nicklaus did it, which was to hit a lower ball flight you seemed the ball towards the target, and to hit higher, you did the opposite.