Do You Have The Balls for Golf?

When I first started this game almost 20 years ago, I never thought it mattered which golf ball you would play. To me, a ball was a ball. That was it. No one golf ball was better than the other, especially since I lacked so much fundamental of play – I can’t even hit the bloody ball, let alone decide which ball is better than the other. If it’s got dimples, I will hit it. That sounded a bit crass.

Over the first few years, from picking up random balls off the road, I developed an affinity to one brand in particular: MAXFLI. I just loved the font over the ball and teeing up with the bold MAXFLI word made me feel comfortable for some unknown and unscientific reason.

Look at that. That’s absolutely smashing.

I would use REDMAX as well and then later on, the MAXFLI REV and Fire series but by then the logo/font had changed to this stupid font

Which is kind of ugly, because X in golf means you didn’t finish the hole and you gave up because you suck. Having such a huge emphasis on the X just makes me super uncomfortable over the ball, like a premonition that this ball is going to go OB – which invariably it does.  The previous logo with the A being the emphases was well done.

By and by, I couldn’t source the MAXFLI balls anymore as my second hand ball seller, Mr Selan from KRPM slowly moved his way into the next life selling balls to angels playing golf up in the great unknown. I used to order 100 Maxfli balls in batches from him. Also, he told me that MAXFLI was getting more rare and suggested I move on to another brand like Wilson. He passed his business to his son, I believe, before I also faded from the scene around 10 years back as I stopped playing on Saturdays due to my young family.

I continued using random second hand balls after that, using whatever I still had in my cache of Maxfli and others. I opted to store my Maxflis more when I found out how difficult it was to get them. A few years back, I started using the Inesis 500 balls just because they were cheap and brightly colored. I was using an Inesis 500 soft ball when I shot 80 at the Mines a few years ago. However, after a while I noticed an alarming distance decrease whenever I used it, compared to other balls. It was then I began to take it more seriously – whether the ball I was using was indeed suitable or not.

I found a seller from LAZADA after that “Sports Direction” selling used Srixon Z star -XV and Z Star for around RM38 for 10. Which is a very good deal as these balls were excellent golf balls and I began using them – sometimes he had a Q-Star or TriStar in there and I used it with noticeable improvements around the driving and greens.

But they shut shop about a year back so I had to source out my balls again. I decided to just get new balls moving forward. I started with the cheaper ones like Srixon Soft Feel and Bridgestone extra soft because they come in Yellows. Played very well with them, I highly recommend the Soft Feel, for some reason, it flies incredibly straight. The Bridgestone one was surprisingly good around the green, but for driving, Srixon was very good.

I then purchased The Titleist Velocity ball which was basically the successor of the NXT.

It was touted as the longest golf ball ever and boy were they right. The Velocity was amazing to play with for a distance ball. Because I generally hit the ball short of green and try to roll it in, I didn’t need a high spin ball. I needed a ball to get down the fairway 230-250 meters. The only problem with Velocity was the price tag. At more than RM11 PER BALL, I was cursing everytime I lost the damn ball. I lost 2 at Sungai Long and One at KGNS. It’s frustrating because it was so expensive and I would be going all around looking for it.

I then purchased the Callaway Warbird which, at around RM6.50 per ball which made a bit more sense to the game I play. It’s still pretty long but for some reason I just feel the Velocity was further by a bit. Either way, both doesn’t come close to Srixon Soft Feel for straight flight.

So now, I would have a Srixon Soft Feel and one of the distance balls (Warbird or Velocity) with me. If the hole did not have hazards or was not narrow I would take up the distance balls. For holes where losing the ball may be a higher percentage, or a par 3, I whip out the yellow Srixons.

Either way, check these balls out , because as a hacker, I would strongly recommend against buying stuff like Pro V1 or Pro V1x until we get our game down to single handicap.