The 2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x golf balls are all about dedication. As in, TaylorMade is dedicated to being a much bigger participant than it already is within the golf ball market.
That dedication comes with a price ticket: a cool $100-million funding in its golf ball enterprise.
A giant chunk of that went to purchasing the Nassau ball plant in South Korea outright. The deal provides appreciable capability to TaylorMade’s ball-making equipment. There’s additionally the South Carolina plant, which places solid urethane covers on Nassau-made cores. And TaylorMade owns a significant stake within the Foremost ball plant in Taiwan.
The corporate has additionally made big investments in golf ball R&D over the previous three years and has constructed a state-of-the-art indoor take a look at vary at its headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif. Moreover, TaylorMade has fully remade its out of doors take a look at space, with Trackman items lining the vary to seize efficiency knowledge at each stage of ball flight.
Why all that funding? There are two key causes.
First, TaylorMade is a strong, albeit distant, third in golf ball market share. It’s properly behind Callaway and never even in the identical space code as Titleist. And in the case of market share, to cite Ricky Bobby, in case you ain’t first, you’re final.
However possibly most significantly, TaylorMade has excessive hopes for the 2024 TP5 and TP5x golf balls as a result of, at the very least in response to MyGolfSpy’s testing, the earlier fashions merely weren’t superb. The 2021 TP5 mannequin was, actually, the shortest ball in any respect three driver speeds examined.
Can $100 million make a distinction? All of it is determined by whether or not TaylorMade actually has found out the right way to make a soft-feeling but quick golf ball.
2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x: Telling the Story
My second favourite poem that isn’t a limerick of questionable style reads as follows:
When you’ve got a factor to sellAnd go and whisper in a properly,You’re not as apt to get the dollarsAs he who climbs a tree and hollers.
For TaylorMade to make its $100-million golf ball funding repay, it wants a narrative to holler from the tree tops. Luckily, that’s one thing TaylorMade is excellent at.
Sure, expertise and efficiency are a given, like jacks or higher to open in poker. However the story TaylorMade tells and the way properly it tells it’s going to decide if it could actually sustain with, and even shut the hole with, Callaway or Titleist. Whereas TaylorMade’s ball gross sales have grown dramatically (176 % between 2017 and 2021 in response to Golf Datatech), taking a bigger chew out of the Callaway and Titleist apples can be a troublesome activity. Grabbing market share from Bridgestone, Srixon, Wilson and different legacy ball makers could be a neater carry.
Make no mistake. TaylorMade is coming after all of them. And it has a narrative to inform.
And that story begins the place kind and performance intersect with efficiency and persona.
Sound, Really feel and Pace
“Usually, golf balls are white, spherical and sit on the bottom,” says Michael Fox, TaylorMade’s Senior Director of Golf Ball Product Creation. “Nevertheless, the market is shifting. Golfers wish to specific themselves in each product that they use with out sacrificing efficiency.”
As for climbing the tree and hollering, TaylorMade thinks it has a reasonably compelling story to inform with the brand new TP5 and TP5x and all their customized permutations.
In an ideal world, we’d all play golf balls that felt like marshmallows however flew like bullets. Mushy really feel and distance, nonetheless, are mutually unique. If you would like smooth really feel, decrease the compression. It feels nice however you lose ball velocity. To get that ball velocity again, you make it firmer, but it surely begins to really feel like a rock.
Merely said, you’ll be able to’t make one higher with out hurting the opposite.
TaylorMade, nonetheless, thinks it has cracked the code with one thing known as “Pace Wrap.”
“We’ve created a brand new expertise and a brand new materials that’s by no means been used earlier than in golf,” says Fox. “It permits us to create a product that’s considerably sooner with a greater really feel and a softer really feel.”
The Pace Wrap materials was co-created by TaylorMade and Dow Chemical compounds. In easy phrases, the fabric permits TaylorMade to manage sound with out affecting velocity so it’s nonetheless agency with out sounding or feeling harsh.
“It adjustments the density of the core,” says Fox. “When you might have a much less dense core with this new materials, there are longer distances for sound to journey and also you get a decrease audible product.”
In impact, whereas the brand new 2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x golf balls will nonetheless have an identical compression because the 2021 fashions (88 and 93, respectively), they’ll truly really feel softer because of a extra muted sound.
5 Layers of Soundproofing
Whereas Hogan mentioned it greatest (“…a sense that goes up the shaft, proper via your palms and into your coronary heart”), really feel is de facto about sound. Whether or not it’s a click on, a clack or a smush, the mind “hears” really feel.
TaylorMade has been making five-piece urethane balls for the reason that Penta in 2011. These balls featured a core, three mantle layers and a urethane cowl. Nevertheless, these three mantle layers had very comparable compressions and stiffness gradients, which made them basically one layer that’s thrice as thick.
“What we’ve completed now could be make every of those layers fully totally different,” says Fox. “Now, every of those supplies goes from a core compression of 5 as much as a firmness compression within the 90s. With that enormous of a velocity gradient, these layers are really performing like fully totally different merchandise.”
Every of the three mantle layers is progressively firmer. Within the softer, spinnier TP5, the delta is 53 compression factors. With the firmer TP5x, the delta between the layers is 71 compression factors.
So, in idea, whenever you hit the motive force and activate that core with a compression of 5, you’ll get a high-launching, low-ish spinning shot. It received’t be as little as the lower-compression Tour Response for instance, however decrease than the 2021 TP5 fashions.
“With wedges, you’re solely interacting with the super-firm exterior mantle and super-soft cast-urethane cowl,” explains Fox. “That’ll create extra groove interplay and extra spin across the inexperienced.”
Will You See a Distinction?
That’s the $100-million query, isn’t it?
There are variations you’ll be able to measure with a launch monitor but it surely’s typically exhausting to quantify and even discover a one- or two-mile-per-hour ball velocity distinction on the course. That’s one of many key causes golfers fall again to really feel as a choice. It’s one thing you’ll be able to actively expertise.
“’Noticeably higher’ is a means larger bar we set for ourselves once we design product,” says Fox. “Give somebody a brand new TaylorMade ball and so they fly a inexperienced with their 6-iron, the following time they’ll know to membership all the way down to a 7-iron. You’ve now modified that sport.
“That’s a ‘noticeably higher’ product.”
TaylorMade is making an effort to assist golfers get into the fitting golf ball for his or her sport. The TP5 is the softer of the 2, however it is going to spin extra off the motive force, irons and wedges. The TP5x, alternatively, is firmer however spins much less throughout the board than the TP5. On the brand new 2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x packaging, you’ll discover a small QR code. That can take you to a fast, 12-question survey that can inform you which ball is best for you.
Moreover, you’ll see TaylorMade rolling the “solid urethane however not fairly Tour-level” Tour Response ball into the becoming equation. Tour Response was TaylorMade’s best-performing ball in MyGolfSpy’s 2023 ball take a look at. It’s a softer-feeling, lower-spinning different to the TP5 and TP5x, and it’s cheaper.
Each pix Tells a Story
The 2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5X pix balls are additionally getting a little bit of a facelift. TaylorMade says its most prolific pix-playing PGA Tour execs, Tommy Fleetwood and Rickie Fowler, are large pix followers. The massive change for 2024 is a little bit of a shapeshift, because the pix insignia goes from what TaylorMade calls its orange and black Movement Triangle to an orange and black Movement Diamond with a silver-gray filling. The black alignment line can be getting noticeably longer.
“This enables us to place extra orange onto the product, which makes it simpler to see,” says Fox. “It additionally creates additional separation between the black on the surface of the diamonds and the black centerline for simpler and clearer suggestions because the product rolls.
“For us, visible expertise is a big part in bringing emotion into the sport, but additionally serving to golfers play higher.”
And to convey extra enjoyable into the equation, anticipate TaylorMade to supply limited-edition specials all year long, whether or not it’s a pix U.S.A. mannequin in crimson, white and blue or as much as 22 totally different faculty and college logos. You may as well anticipate to see a personalised possibility via MySymbol, so you may make your personal.
2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x Golf Balls: Worth and Availability
Has TaylorMade cracked the code and decoupled really feel and distance? Effectively, in case you learn between the traces, they’re fairly positive they’ve cracked the sound and distance code. That, nonetheless, could also be sufficient. Based mostly on the earlier fashions’ displaying within the MGS ball take a look at final 12 months, TaylorMade has appreciable floor to make up, which lends a sure urgency to its $100-million funding in its ball program.
Additional testing can be wanted however, on the very least, a firmer, sooner, extra aerodynamic ball that feels (all proper, sounds) softer definitely appears to be like like a number of steps in the fitting course.
These 2024 TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x golf balls hit the streets and the World Extensive Net at present in white, yellow and the brand new pix mannequin for $54.99 a dozen.
For extra info, hit up the TaylorMade web site.
