WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Tour Edge launches its first golf ball, the Exotics, with a focus on improved consistency in the wind. The three-piece entry features a cast urethane cover, which is designed to work with a high-resiliency core to yield lower long-game spin and maintain high short-game spin.
PRICE: $40 per dozen. Available for presale. At retail on Oct. 28.
3 Cool Things
1. Airing it out. The Tour Edge Exotics, a three-piece model with a cast urethane cover, uses an energetic larger core design (1.52-inch diameter) with a cover featuring a 318-dimple pattern that aims to maintain consistent flight in the wind. “The design brief started with a clear goal: deliver superior performance in the wind without sacrificing spin around the greens,” said Matt Neeley, vice president of research and development. “Better players are increasingly looking for stability and consistency in challenging conditions, and we set out to solve that.”
The core features high-resiliency rubber construction that mixes speed with reduced spin in the long game. The interior mantle layer between the core and cover helps to reduce the long-game spin, while providing the stiffness for the thin urethane cover to yield higher spin on the shortest shots. Through the dimple pattern and core construction, the ball is designed with a medium-high flight but maintains higher spin on approach shots.
2. We have to ask … why? Golf needs another golf ball in the marketplace like Dan Campbell’s Applebees needs another dipping sauce-app combo. But for Tour Edge, a company now in its 40th year and with a reputation for straddling the line between affordable entry-level clubs and unique technological leaps, the golf ball business has been in its sights for some time, said David Glod, founder and CEO.
“This is a monumental step for Tour Edge,” he said. “After four decades of relentless innovation in golf clubs and bags, we’re applying the same commitment to performance and quality to golf balls. The Exotics ball reflects everything our brand stands for, including tour-level engineering, meticulous testing, and premium materials to meet golfers’ demands.”
Almost as importantly, it’s another way for the company to get in front of a new audience. “People are going to ask, ‘Why Tour Edge, and why now?’” said Tim Clarke, president at Tour Edge who came to the company 15 months ago with more than two decades of experience at Wilson in among other things, the golf ball business. “This launch gives our loyal customers another way to benefit from Tour Edge, and creates an exciting first touchpoint for other golfers to experience our performance.”
3. Price wars. The Tour Edge Exotics ball looks to make a mark not simply with its performance attributes, but with its price. At 15 or more dollars cheaper than the leading brands, it will live in the marketplace at a spot where only a few major manufacturers urethane cover balls exist, and only then as secondary offerings behind models played on tour. Its price is more in line with that being charged for multilayer urethane cover offerings by direct-to-consumer brands like Vice, OnCore and Seed. Said a company spokesman, “More golfers are recognizing that exceptional results can come from smaller savvy brands. While some traditionalists still equate price with quality, we remain committed to proving otherwise.”
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
