Golf balls have always been one of those areas where I have struggled to decide how much I should be prepared to spend.
I understand the argument for playing a premium golf ball. It is the only piece of equipment I use for every shot, and at my level I should be capable of taking advantage of some of the additional control offered by a better ball, particularly around the green.
The problem comes when I look at the price.
A dozen Titleist Pro V1s currently cost more than £50 at full retail price, and however good they may be, that is a significant amount of money for something I am going to hit into trees, bunkers, occasionally water and, every now and then, somewhere I simply can’t find it again.
There is another issue at the moment. The ground is extremely hard and fast, which means balls are running farther after landing, disappearing into places they wouldn’t normally reach and getting marked up more quickly. Paying close to £50, or even more, for a dozen balls becomes difficult to justify if they are being lost or damaged before I have had enough golf from them.
My instinctive budget is probably somewhere around £30 a dozen.
The question I want to answer is whether that budget is realistic for the performance I actually want, or whether spending more on a premium golf ball would make enough difference to my game to justify the extra cost.
Rather than continuing to guess, I’m going to test it.
Does the Golf Ball You Play Really Matter?
I’ve played quite a few different golf balls over the years without ever becoming particularly loyal to one.
I have used Hogan balls and liked them. I also liked the Mizuno MP-S when I played it, and more recently I have spent quite a lot of time using Srixon.
Budget played a part in that. I used the Srixon Soft Feel because it was affordable and, for a while, I wasn’t convinced I needed anything substantially more expensive.
I’ve also used Titleist Tour Soft and liked it, while one of Titleist’s cheaper balls did very little for me. At the other end of the market, if somebody had asked me before starting this experiment what I thought the best golf ball was, I probably would have said Pro V1 in one of its versions.
I’m not sure I could have given them a particularly good reason.
Titleist has spent decades establishing the Pro V1 as the benchmark premium golf ball, so there is a reasonable chance that some of my assumption comes from reputation and marketing rather than anything I have actually proved through my own golf.
TaylorMade TP5 would probably have been somewhere in the conversation as well, although I couldn’t have confidently told you whether I should be playing TP5 or TP5x.
That seems like a good enough reason to stop guessing.
Do Premium Golf Balls Stop Faster on the Green?
My thinking changed when PGA Professional Chris Tyson showed me something very simple on the golf course.
I had been using Srixon Soft Feel partly because it represented sensible value. Chris demonstrated how differently it behaved around the green compared with a Srixon Z-Star.
The Z-Star stopped more quickly.
This wasn’t a launch-monitor number or something I had read in a golf-ball test. I could see the difference happening in front of me, and it mattered because stopping the golf ball quickly is something I actually want from my short game.
I don’t automatically use my highest-lofted wedge for every short shot. I am quite comfortable playing lower shots with my 46 or 52-degree wedge, but when I choose a particular landing point I want to have confidence in what happens after the ball reaches it.
If one ball consistently releases farther than another, I need to account for that.
Once I had seen the difference for myself, choosing a ball entirely on price became more difficult.
How Do I Choose the Right Golf Ball for My Game?
One thing this process has forced me to do is decide what I actually want rather than simply asking which ball is “best”.
The longest golf ball isn’t automatically the best golf ball for me.
I have enough driver distance when I am swinging well, and I would happily sacrifice a small amount of distance from the tee if the trade-off was noticeably better control with my irons and wedges.
My priorities are therefore fairly clear.
I want a ball that gives me predictable flight and reasonable dispersion with the driver, but I don’t need to win a longest-ball competition. With the irons I want predictable carry and enough stopping power to attack a green with confidence.
Around the green, spin becomes even more important. I prefer my wedges to stop relatively quickly, particularly when I have selected a landing point and want the ball to react predictably after the first bounce.
Putting feel matters because putting is one of the stronger parts of my game, although I don’t think I need the softest golf ball available simply for the sake of softness.
Then there are two less glamorous considerations that matter enormously to a weekend golfer buying his own golf balls.
Durability and price.
If a ball performs beautifully for six holes but the cover looks battered after a couple of wedge shots and a bounce on a firm path, that affects its value. Equally, a ball that is marginally better than everything else but costs nearly twice as much needs to demonstrate something I can genuinely use before I’m going to keep buying it.
My ideal answer would probably be a ball around £30 a dozen that gives me most of the performance of the premium alternatives.
Whether that ball exists is part of what I want to find out.
Srixon Z-Star Diamond vs Z-Star XV: Which Suits My Game?
Chris suggested that I try the Srixon Z-Star Diamond.
I trust his judgement. He is my coach, knows my golf and has watched me hit considerably more shots than somebody making a recommendation from a specification sheet.
There is, however, some important context.
Chris sells Srixon golf balls.
That means Srixon is what he has available to show me. I regard his recommendation as which Srixon ball he believes would suit my game, rather than a claim that the Z-Star Diamond is better for me than every Titleist, TaylorMade or Callaway alternative.
Those aren’t the same thing.
It doesn’t make his recommendation any less useful, and it gives me a very good reason to include the Diamond in this experiment. I simply want to be clear about the context rather than presenting it as an independent comparison of the entire golf-ball market.
Chris actually gave me a Diamond to try.
Unfortunately, I lost it before I had enough time with it to form any meaningful opinion.
That probably illustrates the financial problem with golf balls rather well.
Are Used Golf Balls Worth Buying?
I have already tried one obvious way of reducing the cost.
I bought second-hand Srixon Z-Star XVs.
In theory, that seemed like an excellent compromise. I could play a premium urethane golf ball without paying the new price every time I needed another dozen.
Unfortunately, the batch I bought didn’t feel right.
They seemed to have very little life in them. I don’t know their history, so I can’t say why. They may have spent time underwater, they may simply have been heavily used or there may be another explanation entirely.
The important point is that I didn’t know.
That uncertainty rather undermines the experiment if I’m trying to decide which golf ball actually performs best for me. Comparing a brand-new ball with a used ball of unknown history doesn’t tell me whether the model is different or whether the individual ball has simply had a difficult previous life.
For this test, I want new golf balls.
What Does the 2026 MyGolfSpy Golf Ball Test Tell Us?
The timing of this experiment is useful because MyGolfSpy has recently published its 2026 Golf Ball Test.
Their mid-speed driver test is conducted at approximately 102 mph, which is close enough to my own driver speed to make the results particularly interesting to me.
I don’t intend to repeat their test.
They have the equipment, controlled environment and ability to measure differences that I simply don’t have. There would be little value in me pretending that hitting a handful of golf balls at Cumberwell constitutes a more scientific comparison.
What their data can do is help me narrow the field.
Instead of buying random golf balls because I recognise the name on the box, I can use independent testing to identify balls whose characteristics appear to fit what I want and then find out whether I can actually see or feel those differences when I play golf.
That is where I think Weekend Golfers can add something different.
MyGolfSpy can tell me what happened in controlled testing.
I can find out whether any of it matters to me on the golf course.
Pro V1 vs TP5 vs Chrome Tour vs Srixon Z-Star
At the moment, I intend to test five balls, although one of them will effectively act as my reference point.
Srixon Z-Star XV is the ball I have been using and therefore gives me something familiar to compare against. For the proper comparison I will use new balls rather than the second-hand examples that disappointed me.
Srixon Z-Star Diamond earns its place because Chris believes it is the best fit for me within the Srixon range. MyGolfSpy has previously positioned the Diamond between the standard Z-Star and the firmer, longer XV, which makes it an interesting option given my preference for additional control rather than simply maximum distance.
Titleist Pro V1 is the obvious benchmark. Titleist currently describes it as a mid-flight ball with very low long-game spin and high short-game spin, which on paper is an attractive combination for what I want. It is also expensive enough that it needs to prove why I should pay for it.
Callaway Chrome Tour is the data-led candidate. When I first looked at the MyGolfSpy results, it appeared to offer a very interesting combination for my game and was initially the ball I thought might prove the best fit.
TaylorMade TP5 gives me another premium tour-ball alternative and is particularly interesting because I have considered TP5 before without ever really knowing whether the ball genuinely suited me or whether I was simply attracted to another established tour-level product.
I don’t know which one will win.
That is rather the point.
Should You Choose a Golf Ball for Distance or Spin?
Distance matters.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that driver distance suddenly becomes irrelevant simply because somebody reaches single figures. If I can hit a shorter club into a green, that is normally an advantage.
What I don’t want is to optimise the golf ball around the occasional longest drive.
When my driver swing is working well, I already have enough distance for the golf I play. I would rather have a ball that finishes a few yards shorter from the tee but gives me more predictable behaviour when I hit a 7-iron into a green or a 52-degree wedge from 60 yards.
My priorities become increasingly important as I get closer to the hole.
If one ball gives me another four yards with driver but releases eight feet farther after a wedge lands, I suspect I know which difference is going to matter more to my score.
The test needs to reflect that.
How to Test Golf Balls for Your Own Game
I don’t want this to become a laboratory test because I don’t have a laboratory and pretending otherwise would make the results less useful rather than more.
I want to test them as a golfer.
That means using the shots I actually play and looking at the things I actually care about.
With the driver, I’ll look at flight, useful distance, dispersion and confidence rather than simply recording the single longest shot.
With a mid-iron, I want to compare trajectory, carry and how quickly the ball stops after landing.
With the 46 and 52-degree wedges, I’ll play the controlled approaches and lower-flight shots I use regularly and pay particular attention to the first bounce and rollout.
The 58-degree wedge will tell me more about short-game reaction when I deliberately need additional height and stopping power.
I’ll also compare the balls with the putter, where sound, feel and distance control matter to me more than measurable spin.
Finally, I’ll pay attention to durability. The current hard conditions are particularly useful for that because they are exposing golf balls to more punishment than usual.
Where practical, I also want some of the short-game and putting testing to be blind. If somebody else can identify the balls as A, B, C and so on without me knowing which is which, it will be interesting to discover whether the preferences I think I have survive once the logo disappears.
Are Expensive Golf Balls Worth the Money?
Price is obviously part of this experiment, but I don’t want it influencing the performance test before I’ve decided which golf ball I actually prefer.
If I know one ball costs nearly £50 a dozen while another costs closer to £30, it would be very easy to expect more from the expensive ball or, perhaps equally, convince myself that the cheaper one is “good enough” because I would rather pay less for it.
I therefore want to separate performance from value.
The first question will simply be which golf ball performs best for my game. I’ll consider driver flight and dispersion, iron control, wedge spin and stopping power, putting feel and durability without giving the price any additional credit.
Only once I’ve formed an opinion on performance will I put the prices back into the equation.
That could leave me with two different winners: the best-performing golf ball and the golf ball I would actually buy.
For me, that distinction matters. I buy my own golf balls, I lose some of them and the current hard conditions can damage them surprisingly quickly. A premium ball doesn’t need to be dramatically better in every area to justify costing more, but the additional performance needs to be something I can genuinely use.
If a £50 ball gives me noticeably better wedge control, behaves more predictably into greens and lasts longer, I may decide the extra cost is justified. If it gives me another three or four yards from the driver but otherwise performs much like a ball costing £30, I suspect I will keep the £20.
There is also the possibility that the cheaper ball gives me 90 or 95 percent of the performance of the winner. That would make the decision more interesting because the technically best ball might not represent the best value for the golf I actually play.
My ideal outcome would probably be to discover a ball around my £30-a-dozen budget that gives me everything I genuinely need. If the testing tells me that I need to spend more to get the wedge control and consistency I want, I’ll have to decide whether that difference is worth paying for.
That is ultimately what I mean when I ask whether expensive golf balls are worth the money.
I’m not asking whether a £50 golf ball is technically better than a £30 one.
I’m asking whether it is better enough to make a difference to my golf.
Which Premium Golf Ball Do I Expect to Win?
Recording this before the test is important because otherwise it becomes very easy to rewrite my expectations afterwards.
If you had asked me before any of these conversations which golf ball I thought was best, I would probably have said Titleist Pro V1, while admitting that its reputation may have influenced me more than my own evidence.
Chris would point me towards Z-Star Diamond, with the important qualification that he sells Srixon and was recommending from the range available to him.
My initial interpretation of the independent test data made Chrome Tour particularly interesting, although I was placing more emphasis on driver performance at that point than I am now.
Once I properly defined what I want from the golf ball, particularly my preference for quicker stopping wedges and my willingness to give up a little from the tee to get it, the answer became less obvious.
That’s exactly why I want to test them.
Which Golf Ball Is Best for My Game?
There is a temptation with golf equipment to keep reading until I find somebody who confirms what I already wanted to buy.
I’m trying not to do that here.
I have recommendations from a coach I trust, independent robot data, my own experience with several golf balls and some fairly strong preconceptions about brands such as Titleist.
All of those things are useful inputs.
None of them gets the final vote.
I’ll buy the balls, test them with the shots I actually play and try to separate what I genuinely experience from what I expected to experience.
Then I’ll look at the prices and decide whether the performance I prefer is worth paying for.
Perhaps I will end up spending £50 a dozen.
Perhaps I’ll discover that my £30 target is perfectly realistic.
Perhaps the ball I expect to win won’t win at all.
Whatever happens, the second part of this experiment will contain the results.
For now, I know what I’m looking for and how I’m going to test it.
The next job is simply to let the golf ball answer the question.