As we played the National course on Tuesday, I wasn’t just studying the beautiful rhythms of Tom Fazio’s routing on the Cove and Bluff nines, I was messing around with golf ball performance evaluation. This is a very helpful trick, by the way, if you ever want to get a real good read on a new high-performance golf ball. What I do is start the round with a ball that comes from the “pure distance” end of the product spectrum. We writers get balls of all kinds handed to us, including the ones that are built for pure carry and roll and usually not so high-priced in your golf shop or local superstore. So, for about seven holes, or as long as I could stand not dipping into my supply of Callaway HEX Black Tour balls, which I’d never before tried, I played the red-hot distance bullet ball. Then I switched to the HEX Black, and paid close attention to whether there was any distance loss. And no, there was none. In fact there may have been a touch more length with the Callaway HEX Black. So, with that decided, it was time to simply enjoy this golf ball, for all its sure-footedness on touch shots, its very pure roll and its wonderful overall feel. I actually don’t have that many of them, and I was keeping the two I used in play even after they took a scuffing on a sand shot and some other misadventures. Really, a ball with everything in its performance portfolio.
