Golf Ball Compression

Since the beginning of golf, golf ball compression have been widely debated and discussed among golfers. As technology have advanced into the modern age, golf balls have become better than before. Just through technology alone, the evolution of golf ball has wiped out most of the hard core and old Balata wound golf ball out of the market. Today, majority of the golf balls are soft core low compression golf balls. Till then, golf ball compression really mattered but now, it is no longer the case.

Back then, if a 70 was put onto a golf ball, it would be termed as a women's golf ball. Now, low compression golf balls take up majority of the market. You can have 4 piece compression golf balls like Pro V1x in the mid 90s and TP Red in the mid 80s. Compression numbers cannot be used to determine your golf ball selection anymore.

Golf ball compression can now be generally differentiated into two types. They are the core compression and the overall compression. In general, core compression is normally the main reason for the feel when you hit a driver on the golf ball. The reason is because the club face fully compress the core upon impact and that is what causes the feel on a full swing.

For overall compression, it refers to the amount of deformation undergone to the whole golf ball when it is being subjected to a compressive force. This is typically important in generating the feel, spin and also the energy transfered from club face to golf ball.

Taking a deeper look, golf ball compression cannot be used to determine the feel of the golf ball. Take the Wilson Staff Zip golf ball for example, with a zero compression core, the golf ball feels completely different from that of a Srixon Soft Feel. Both golf balls have a golf ball compression of 55. Hence compression does affect feel but it cannot be used to determine feel today.

In fact, it is used more in the lab to design the golf ball such as C.O.R, sound, spin rates and velocity. It is more of the interaction of the layers that produce and determine your feel than normal golf ball compression.

Let us not look just on the numbers but beyond them to determine which golf ball suits you best. Every single material that makes up the golf ball have it's own property that will contribute to the energy transfer, spin, feel, velocity, launch angle etc. With the technology nowadays, multi-layered golf balls are used to control the deformation to push the feel, velocity, spin, launch angle and other distance factors into another level. It is indeed quite a revelation in today's golf.