Titliest Balata in range bucket OMG

[wkuo3]

Remembering playing with a couple of PGA professionals back in the days.

One in particular will start to exam his Balata Tour 100 after several holes. I asked why he needed to do that, the answer was he's looking to see if the golf ball is out of rounds to the naked eyes.

I asked what if the golf ball was out of round ? He looked at me and said, do you want them ? I jumped at it "hell yah " !

Back then a $ 3.00 Titleist is like $7-$8 today's money.

He got it for free from the sponsor and I pocketed half a dozen like new Tour 100. Felt like Christmas morning. Green fee was like $15.

[MattyO1984]

I found a Tour Balata and a couple of Titleist Professional's a few months ago and gave them a hit on the course. They were in a pretty poor condition and I am pretty sure that the winding in them would have loosened off but it was still good fun to hit them particularly wedge shots. The spin was crazy. Drivers were weird but I would put that down to the age of them making it pretty much impossible to do a fair comparison between them and a Pro V1.

[cardoustie]

I loooooooooved the old maxfli ht-100 liquid filled balatas

 

Memories of my university Golf days

[augustgolf]

Now...IF you ever find an old Maxfli Black - preceded the HT-100 by about 10 years +/-...that was a great ball.

 

Many of them would "explode" in their new packaging, leaving a really weird looking, lop-sided ball.

 

Not too many of those survived long enough to make it to the range

[No Gimmes]

I swear to god that I would be a better bunker player if we were still using balata balls. The amount of shots I catch thin is crazy. One bladed bunker shot with a balata and the ball is ruined.

I would either go broke quickly or find a way not to do it.

[Bonneville85308]

 

A friend gave me these from his grandpa's basement maybe 20 years ago, one day I'm going to take them out and try them instead of letting them rot on a shelf. I'm guessing they are from the early 1980s.

[NRJyzr]

I found a Tour Balata and a couple of Titleist Professional's a few months ago and gave them a hit on the course. They were in a pretty poor condition and I am pretty sure that the winding in them would have loosened off but it was still good fun to hit them particularly wedge shots. The spin was crazy. Drivers were weird but I would put that down to the age of them making it pretty much impossible to do a fair comparison between them and a Pro V1.

 

 

There are ball tests from 2001 out there that show the differences when the balls were new. That difference is nowhere near as large as many would have you believe.

 

If you compare the PGA Tour driving distance stat from 1999, when the vast majority were playing wound balls, to 2002 (or even 2001), when the vast majority had switched, the increase in distance for players in both seasons was less than six yards.

 

I find that interesting.