Hey, Nike said today on the news that those balls Tiger uses are not regular golf balls but are specially made for him of special materials & we cannot buy them. Is this cheating?
Is it cheating ? - it depends.
Here is an extract from The Rules of Golf, as approved by The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland and the United States Golf Association
There is nothing in the rules that states that if you manufacture a ball meeting these specifications you must make it available to everyone. I would be interested to know what additional performance they could provide without affecting the size, weight, symmetry, velocity or distance.
Russell
Russell,
Don't differing dimpling patterns affect spin rate? If they make it spin more, he can get more bite on his irons.On extreme closeups of Tiger’s ball on greens, the Nike swoosh is always square to the camera. I know Tiger, and the camerapeople to a lesser extent, don’t have the time to position the ball or themselves respectively to cater to Nike. Or do they?
Or is it a matter of it being shown only when it’s dead on?
gigi
I don’t play Nike’s (but I will when I find some - and I don’t mean in stores!), but most golfers always position their ball a specific way on the green. Folks’ reasons differ, but some are, they want it to roll along the seam, which would be the hemisphere if the logos are the poles. That would have the swoosh perpendicular to the path of the putt. Which should make it visible on perpendicular camera shots.
Other folk use the logo to help show the line, in which case it would be on top of the ball as the golfer looks down on it.
Still others feel striking the logo conveys the most solid impact.
You may remember earlier this year or last Greg Norman disqualified himself because he was using some balls which had not yet been approved.
lurker
What I read was that his balls were slightly harder than what the public buys. Which means you and I probably couldn’t compress the damn things.
Oh, so maybe he’s playing 110 or 120 compression? Just so long as he’s not playing the illegal balls. I understand they are frequently the size of the old English style balls, with a smaller diameter.
I didn’t assume you were saying he had smaller than normal balls…
Use those slightly larger than normal Magnas?
Tiger switching to the nike ball just shows ya that it REALLY doesn’t matter what ball you use, your game isn’t going to change that much. The only thing that really will effect your play is the ammount of spin. The less spin, the longer the ball will fly.
Most pro’s can get the clubhead speed up there so that the high spin doesn’t matter on the drives, but can take advantage of the spin with thier short game.
As an aside, they can make balls that will add 50 yards to your drive, but they are not legal for tournament use. I say sell those bastards in pink and orange so those that just hit the ball around for fun can use them!
CandyMan