70% of All Golfers Play The Wrong Golf Ball

there is only one piece of equipment you use on every shot in

golf

the

ball

and you are probably

play

ing poorly this is smart

golf

welcome to the smart golf podcast Dominic thanks for having me this is great it's great to see you go thanks for being one of the first people to I met and show a friendly face, absolutely thank you very much, you are a Bridgestone Golf and Bridgestone are many different products,

ball

s, bags, clubs, all the right camera, you don't want to focus. balls in this conversation, if you don't mind, because you claim that seven out of ten, if I hit right, seven out of ten

golfers

play

the

wrong

golf ball, right, expand on that, okay, so Bridgestone golf was the number...a ball in golf we essentially have a program that has 26 teams that go all over the United States and basically prepare people for the right golf ball and what I mean by that is we actually test any product that you're playing so you can be another manufacturer, we put you through our system and really test your ball speed, your launch angle, your back spin, your side spin and find out exactly what element of the product is helping or hurting your game, ok so maybe compression is too hard maybe you don't don't need a urethane casing to turn around the greens so essentially we point it out and sorry to interrupt but what would make compression really that essential if you don't can?

I mean, on the

golfers

side, golfers shouldn't have a ball that's been this good if you can't swing it fast enough to compress a ball properly, it's just that there's really only one place for that ball to go. and that's spin up and off the face in turn and create more backspin and then what that's going to do is exaggerate or accentuate your lack so a lot of the most popular balls on tour are really too hard for amateur swing speeds they're actually giving up distance or giving up accuracy because they're not fully compressing it now in a robot all golf balls are compressed the same way sure because they're also getting hit in the center of the stick, okay, with a completely square face, it will react if you look at it by changing the amount of energy. that you actually put on the product or you put it on the back of the golf ball, well we've through our research we've found that seven out of ten golfers don't actually play the right product as much as we want to be the robot our swings are so inconsistent or exact that we're not necessarily robots and that's how we can achieve these results so we've based these statistics on three hundred thousand adjustments that we've done across the country and we have so many different types of swings we have the scratch golfer we've got the guy who hits the hyphae we've got the girl who swings low shot a wide variety of shots to come in and say ok Tire Bridgestone you've given us access to your nine hundred engineers here's all this data we need we need to correct or that we need to adjust what we do what we create next for consumer law and we're very excited because that gives us a real tool to use to help the average golfer so that's essentially what ball adjustment is for You know that the most popular ball in golf exists, right?

We the big tee, but aren't they designed more for Tour players? they are high end the pro v1 the pro v1x whatever if you break down the construction of a product it is not necessary the label on the outside of the product is the compression is it the number of pieces of the product how is it the type of covering material it has the product, so I don't necessarily see the product as a brand or who plays it on tour. I see it as you know, similar to how you would see an extra rigid shaft or a rigid shaft or a regular shaft or it's its product on how it breaks down into its core elements, so I'll concede that you know the ball out or whatever you call it.

I don't understand why they would call a provisional ball, right? It's like why would you call it pro-v that's to me that sounds like provisional I don't want a ball that's going to be provisional what ball I'm going to hit direct so why would you call it anyway but but look I'm waiting though , you know what I'm saying is basically the golf ball is as much a piece of equipment as the driver as the iron as the putter, so the equipment is geared at the same level that they're extra stiff. the shafts are meshed at your eight and a half degrees lofted the drivers are meshed to the extent of your game so why spend all the time getting in shape to get your irons your driver your wedges correctly and then go ahead and just Ve to the shelf and choose what is there.

I was on your website last night. I love the line that Paula Kramer said about you. in game every shot it doesn't sound but essentially it has to fit as much as anything else has to fit on your back it has to fit your game but now you have people too many people will just walk into a store and buy some sticks off the rack without swinging it's like oh my friend plays one well and we talked a long time ago on the podcast we focused on the idea that if your friend, if you borrow your friend's stick and hit it and he likes the weight for that club of his because they are so inconsistent from club to club that when you go to the store and shop when you may not be hitting the same way you did your friends club but the balls , on the other hand, people aren't adjusting because they should be adjusting because they don't know what ball to play, they shouldn't play a ball because Spieth is playing it, you should be playing or you know, hey I mean your game might require a product that is security oriented. beats the game type but you'll never know until you really go and get in shape and see the differences and understand you know what's best for your game it could be the fact that we're going to take you out of a line type on tour ball and we're going to put you on something less expensive it's more suited to your style of chipping on the Greens maybe you're not a high spender player on the Greens if you want a hit and run type of product we have that product as well so we have nine different offers where we can really tailor it depending on all your different requirements you to the green nine different offers on golf balls right can you go can you give me a brief summary of your nine different offers yes so we have the you 3:30 there are 4b 3:30 models so two models are designed for swing speeds above 105 two models are designed for swing speeds below 105 and then within each model you have a swing version like so which if you want distance or you want more spin both have urethane covers but depending on if you want more of a check and run or a check and stop product or maybe a ball that's going to soak up a little bit more spin plus they feature a 12% softer cover on the S model of that product um you can probably cut into a little grid what I'm talking about yeah right and then you have the E Series which is more of a series of performance, it's more trajectory based, you've got a designed model. for higher flights a two piece urethane model a very unique product that will really increase the carry distance not always the best choice for players who have a lot of driver side twist because every time the carry distance increases , it increases spin and a player who has a lot of side spin, if you give him a product that has more spin, he's going to exaggerate more to the left or to the right and when we're being equipped for a ball, are we being equipped with our driver? or the driver of all the clubs? we use for tuning because that will show us the biggest spin or your biggest miss and it's also the club that you're going to swing the fastest with so we need to have a snap line or baseline of essentially where it is your swing speed to try to match that with your compression as well go on i'm going to go on here but the e6 model is really our horse it's a three piece ball with multiple layers i love that ball amazing amazing product I think 28% of golfers. which we tuned through the ball feed program it actually fits the e6 model as you can see you know that being a soft compression it's really designed to leave some recoil side spin as you know most of the golfers have too much backspin and have too much side spin for the ball to have been really successful for us and then we have the e7 model which is actually designed for pure distance all ball speed just max distance addict type product type there mm-hmm and then we have something lower end product higher value product the fixed ball f IX ball mm-hmm and then we have the female precept also the precept is percept is bridgestone is Oh like I didn't know that before 2005 we were precepts and then in 2005 we launched Bridgestone brand and then wrapped the precepts model in the Bridgestone portfolio if you want so if we wanted to go to our local big box retailer or Clubhouse and there's a club fitter there we should have it fit us for golf balls or I mean if this is well trained specifically we have a dietary system that we use that is designed exclusively for ball fit.

Many retailers may recommend golf balls, but our science is our methodology and it is our knowledge. We understand how it works and how we compare it. I would recommend going to bridgestone golf com go to the fitting tab find out where the nearest event will be at the moment it's peak season for us and then our ball fitting program so that's great it's a great time to dust off those clubs . out find what ball suits your game and get out on the field and have some fun and the club fit is you're moving a tour thing and how many of them do you have at any given time right now the regular season we have twenty teams that go all over the country so in Sunbelt season we'll have teams in Southern California, Texas, Florida as you know they go down in the sun months if they want and keep the ball alive so Wow Wow and so what is the latest thing to come out and why is it so exciting that we have this new coating on our balls?

The four miles I told you about. cool little prop here to show you i want you to take these two golf balls and rub them together huh and let's see if the genie comes out we'll see your reaction on camera here so hold on so i need to rub these together se they feel sticky though yeah it's hard to rub them off you know what it is it's a magnet at first like there's no trick they're right up your sleeve essentially it's a self repairing cover ok it's a coating that rubs off covers. the top of the golf ball is called a slip pres it's ok and essentially what it does is when you hit it it hits the ball with the driver the ball is actually going to be stable they stay put like so what it's going to do is allow the ball to compress a little more, right, okay, when you compress the ball longer, the better, you won't have as much backspin, you won't have as much side spin, right, I was going to say, does that create less spin especially with the driver because now it's more of a sweeping shot when you get into the wedges and irons because of the downstroke angle of attack you're actually creating more friction you'll get more spin so let's spin more to the driver turning the irons and then it has the cool feature that it actually self-heals on self-repair because it's that sticky self-repairing malleable malleable surface and it does this you know someone gave me a box of balls on vacation and I said ok thank you.

I really appreciate this. It's strange to receive a gift that you know I'm going to lose. Yeah sure, but sometimes you can get three or four rounds out of one ball. how is that possible but you can the key is never to think wow i still haven't lost a ball today because that's a kiss of death the next hole you're losing them the next shot is you know don't even think about it it's one thing to say out loud but don't even think about it but this stuff stays sticky all the time yeah it's a really amazing process it's amazing over years to actually put that coating on the golf ball This is another example. here's a traditional coating we've used in the past this is the new new coating if you want to scratch the traditional you'll see how easily it wears off okay let's see if we can do this on the chamber here and take the golf balls , if you want, okay, thank you, okay, so this is the traditional, a traditional coating that I'm doing with a little brush here, okay, it makes a lot of noise and the coating is all scratchy mm-hmm, okay, I'm going to here, look closely, even without my glasses, I can see that he's not scratching quite right and he's gone and gone. they wear out but they are very interesting that's cool that's cool so thanks for bringing accessories you're welcome no problem T accessoriesfor me maybe for you very cool you want to talk about any of the other non-golf- ball related products that are Bridgestone for a moment no I think we covered weather I think we covered heat topics you know our show ball feed is obviously our main differentiator, our biggest point that you have a lot of players that are in your user pool, right?

I mean he's on tour yeah Matt Kuchar Brandt Snedeker Hudson Swafford paula creamer Stacy Lewis Fred Parejas we just signed a huge rising star Bryson Dee Shambo oh yeah I tried every product on the field and he basically said that Bridgestone has the best product and I want to play that, so how does that work for you guys? came to you how are you doing? Bryson is willing to be unique in terms of, well he's unique in terms of how he approaches his decision making, I think he's more analytical, he actually took every golf ball in the industry and tested it. he tests it with the old epson salt tests to find out where the break even point is he tested our product and said it was the best.

Many people don't understand this, but we actually hand inspect every golf ball that leaves our plant. we don't do a math test or a five hundred test or anything good, we actually hand inspect every single golf ball and what impact does that have, uh, on the price of the golf ball, it doesn't have an impact on that. just that we actually have a way to find some defect instead of selling it as X out or seconds we actually have a very precise recycling process sustainability process that we have to take that product when we filter it back into the actual manufacturing process so it doesn't affect the actual cost of the ball because we're sustainable we're recycling the product it's not it's not considered waste because it goes back to it's not Bryce T Shambo the guy who plays the single-length in his whole club, he's a single- length, yes, he has a very interesting history, so for those who don't know Bryson, I highly recommend you go and see Bryson D Shambo and Bryson D Shambo D Shambo. right yeah he just got here so he came up to you and he said I want to play these balls.

I tried them and usually in my own way. I say it clearly. He has this mind that he doesn't view golf like most people. do it if he's playing one length irons yes he has his own philosophy which is great it's a son's approach but he's having success with it which is amazing he's a great guy and just doing great work, so we are very proud. having him on the team, obviously, but anyway, great, yeah, thanks a lot for spending a little time. I hope we can spend more time this weekend and I want us to see his product in action.

Absolutely, thank you very much, I appreciate it. thanks buddy yeah anytime click the link below to subscribe to our free weekly golf smarter podcast interviews on golf smarter calm