Mizuno RB Tour and Tour X Golf Balls

Product Information

Pinnacle Practice Balls In the driver portion of the test, the range balls performed admirably enough that we started to wonder if we were wrong about their usability in a fitting scenario. Their performance on irons (excessively spinny) and wedges (frighteningly not spinny) provided further evidence that you shouldn’t be hitting range balls during a fitting (or anywhere else … other than the range). That something is two Mizuno balls new to the North American market: the RB Tour and RB Tour X. And before you ask – no, the golf balls aren’t Grain Flow Forged. The notable exception was the ionomer-covered Pinnacle Practice ball we added to the test. It was the highest spinning ball on iron shots but the lowest on the wedge. This suggests there is a point where the cover has a more significant impact on spin performance but it’s closer to the green than you probably think. 4. Forget About Launch Angle, Trajectory is The Thing We touched on this last time but it’s worth mentioning again: As golfers, we’ve been conditioned to think about golf club performance in terms of ball speed, launch angle, spin rate and often distance.

Finding the right ball is a process so start with a few you think might work. If you’ve got a launch monitor, use it to trim the list. If you don’t have access to a launch monitor, our data should help you narrow the field. Test on the course and side by side. For the best comparison, don’t test more than two balls at a time. As expected, the list of top-10 fastest balls at 115 mph comprises mostly high-compression offerings, including the Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash, Maxfli Tour X, Srixon Z-Star Diamond, and the Titleist Pro V1x. For 2023, Srixon focused on changes to the core to further enhance the differences among the three models. All three cores get progressively firmer from the center to the outer edges, but they progress at different levels and to different degrees. BTW – if you have the opportunity to watch robots hit balls, this is something you can see with the naked eye. The Cobra King Tour irons have been proven on the PGA Tour already and will be in bags of better amateur players this year. The previous King Tour MIM irons were very underrated and offered great precision with a solid shape that many players liked. Cobra went away from the Metal Injection Molded construction and went with a five-step forging process for soft and solid feel.

The highest-spinning balls off drivers hit at 85 mph were the Kirkland Performance+ V3, PXG Xtreme, Srixon Z-Star Diamond, Inesis Tour 900 and Callaway Chrome Soft X. Faster soft options include the OnCore ELIXR (low 80s compression) and the Callaway Chrome Soft (mid 70s) Truly appreciate you breaking down the observations, some of which carried over from a couple years ago (soft is slow) but some that are really interesting (soft does not equal short). I appreciate the Tableau data to really dive into the findings (and hopefully find the ball that makes the most sense for my game). By nearly any reasonable compression comparison, the RB Tour X qualifies as a firm ball. Compression Comparison Chart

Testing took place in mid-July in Arizona. Testing was split between the CoolClub test facility in Fountain Hills and Scottsdale National Golf Club in Scottsdale. Golf Labs robots were used in both locations.We’ve stated it many times before, but it’s a message that can’t be worn out by repetition: OEMs are happy to share their own internal test results with us, but we’ve never seen any OEM test results in which the OEMs product doesn’t outperform its competitors. So yes, putting is a major factor, but I have adjusted to it and have found my new play ball. Not hurting my hand, giving great distance and accuracy, and now improved putting is obviously nice. (Nope, the BX is too hard for me and I feel it in my hands.)

Once again kudos and a tip of the hat to Tony and the rest of the MGS crew for another informative and enlightening ball performance test. I changed balls after the last ball test in 2021 to the Bridgestone Tour BX…. The result has been, or at least a happy coincidence of the change is a drop in my index number of over 3 points. I’m 69 years old with a driver swing speed of 84.5 mph and an 8 iron swing speed of 71.6 mph, nowhere close to the metrics described by Bridgestone for their ball selection recommendation. Without having had the ability to see hard data as provided MGS I might never have tried the BX believing that someone of my swing speed would see no benefit from the higher compression ball. For that I thank Tony and MGS…. RX: Slower-swing-speed players will like the soft feel yet greater resilience on driver shots. In our testing, this was the lowest-spinning ball of the four, but it still had plenty of spin on short shots. What I will say is the performance data went a long way towards validating what we’ve found to date in ball lab. It confirms what we’re doing is worth the effort. A lot of the stuff on the edges of the pattern was what ball lab suggested would probably be there. For some it was a single squirrely ball, for others it was more (though nothing nearly as crazy as last time around).Great examination. There is no perfect test for all speeds and conditions. We all have to be aware that the desert makes everything longer and everyone needs to consider it. But that said this gives us an excellent look into the characteristics of these balls. The ONE thing that can’t be read into these results are dispersion in various wind conditions other than thinking that more spin can mean more dispersion but dimple patterns have a huge affect on this. This can also have a great affect distance. For most of the last two decades the Titleist ProVs were usually longer downwind than the others, but they had more side drift than others of similar spin from Bridgestone and TaylorMade, the ProVs were also shorter into notable winds..