WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Bridgestone Tour B family of golf balls gets a boost in speed from a new mantle layer material that adds greater density to maximise the core’s resiliency. As has been the case for nearly two decades, the line-up will feature four models. There are the higher speed Tour B X and XS (for swing speeds faster than 105mph) with the former emphasising speed and the latter higher short-game spin. For average golfers, there’s once again the Tour B RX and RXS, with the former targeting players focused on distance and the latter offering the higher short-game spin.
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PRICE & AVAILABILITY: $89.99 per dozen. Available at retail from late February.
3 Cool Things
1. They shall know our velocity. The challenging area of the highest-performance balls, the multilayer urethane-cover models that offer the widest range of performance attributes, often is ball speed. The complex construction of multiple layers means getting low-spin distance without giving up the highest greenside spin and control can mean that maximising tee-shot ball speed and distance is the hardest thing. In other words, the simpler the construction the easier it is to focus on distance. But even the most accomplished players want a ball that doesn’t compromise distance. So achieving it means golf ball engineers need to find a way to squeeze more speed out of all the pieces that make up the ball – the core, cover and mantle. Chief among those, of course, are the large core and mantle layer. It’s the mantle on the Tour B balls for 2026 where Bridgestone’s engineers focused on finding additional speed.
The key was finding a new additive, what the company is calling “VeloSurge” to the mantle formulation that allows the cover and mantle to work together to produce more ball speed than past Bridgestone models.
“It took a tremendous amount of work to develop VeloSurge technology,” said Dan Murphy, Bridgestone’s president. “I’m confident saying this is undeniably the most advanced iteration of the Tour B golf ball we’ve ever produced.”
When asked last year about the early stage development of the new Tour B line, Murphy said he saw elements that led the company to test more with players pre-launch than it ever had. “Testing for us is a way to really illustrate that we’ve got something that’s significantly different.”
That’s also led to more appearances on tour for the prototype versions, which went by the names with the “VS” moniker, including a VS Black Proto that Chris Gotterup used in his win at the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier this week.
What jumps out in the new Tour B technology is the change in the density of the mantle layer. According to the company, making it more dense makes it more rigid, which will help infuse the core and the ball overall with more resiliency, or specifically, more speed. It’s a matching of the density of the core and the mantle to maximise energy transfer at impact.
The density increase in the mantle has a secondary benefit to increase the potential for distance. By pushing more of the ball’s weighting away from the centre of the core towards the outer edges of the ball increases the ball’s moment of inertia, which makes the ball more stable and consistent with its spin, particularly the desirable low-spin launch on tee shots.
2. Cover story. The Tour B family of golf balls will again feature impact modifiers in its urethane cover formulation to create more optimised launch and velocity. First introduced in the line in 2020 and called ReactivIQ, these elements optimise the contact force ideal for each kind of shot not only through the bag but for each specific ball and the target player for each type of ball. The impact modifiers, developed originally by Bridgestone’s tire division for different speeds and road surfaces, aim to deliver more spin on scoring shots while reducing spin off the tee. In addition, the latest iteration of Bridgestone’s injection-moulded urethane formulation seeks to enhance durability.
3. Mind your manners. Bridgestone’s Tour B line-up again will feature the cover markings known as MindSet to help reinforce a more consistent pre-shot routine. The MindSet pattern was developed with Bridgestone staff player Jason Day and his mental coach Jason Goldsmith, and follows the steps and thought process to calm the mind prior to executing a shot.
“He understood how critical pre-shot visualisation was to my game, but also knew I needed a more structured, complete routine,” Day has said. The markings involve a sequence of red, yellow and green circles to correspond to the three-step process of “identify”, “visualise” and “focus.”
According to the company, Bridgestone staffers Day, Gotterup, Kurt Kitayama and Boo Weekly will all compete using Tour B models with MindSet.
