No piece of golf equipment can have more of a profound effect on your game than the golf ball you play. Consider this: When Justin Thomas wanted to test the about-to-be-released 2021 version of the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x, the company sent Fordie Pitts and J.J. Van Wezenbeeck, two of its highest-caliber PGA Tour promotions managers, to oversee Thomas’ golf ball testing at his home course in Florida. Bridgestone has done the same thing with Tiger Woods and other brands routinely do this with their elite staff players because any change to a ball can alter how it flies, how it spins and how it behaves on the course.

Most low-handicap players are sensitive to the differences between golf balls, but many mid- and higher-handicap golfers still think that one ball is the same as another – except when it comes to price. This article aims to help you understand how golf balls are made, how they are each slightly different and to help you discover which golf balls should help you get the performance traits you are looking for to improve your game and lower your scores.

What are the rules governing the size and shape of golf balls?

The United States Golf Association (USGA) and the R&A govern the rules pertaining to golf balls, and manufacturers send them new balls for testing before they are made available to the public to ensure the balls conform to those rules. Here are the basics:

• The diameter of the ball must not be less than 1.68 inches (4.27 centimeters).
• The weight of the ball must not be greater than 1.62 ounces (45.93 grams).
• Golf balls must be spherically symmetrical.
• Under test conditions established by the USGA and the R&A, golf balls are not allowed to exceed a Maximum Initial Velocity limit of 250 feet per second (170.5 mph), with a 5 feet-per-second tolerance. They must also stay below an Overall Distance Standard that combines carry distance and roll (320 yards). Therefore, when they are tested by the USGA and R&A using robots in an indoor testing facility, a golf ball’s speed is capped.
• You are not allowed to deliberately alter a golf ball (scratch it, scuff it, cut it, etc.), but making an identifying mark on the ball using a felt-tip pen is not considered altering it. In fact, it is encouraged, so golfers can identify their ball more easily.

What are the rules governing numbers and the marks golfers make on their balls?

There are no regulations limiting how you mark your ball or how many markings you apply, as long as the original markings the manufacturer made can be discerned. If you want to mark your golf ball with a dot, your initials, an arrow or even an apple with the Pi symbol next to it, go ahead.

Nearly every ball sold in stores has a number on it, typically a 1, 2, 3, or 4, but there is no rule stipulating that golf balls must have a number.

Some brands have used this as an opportunity to add fun characters to golf balls or add visual technologies. For example, Callaway’s Truvis balls have a pattern of pentagons. TaylorMade has diamond-shaped pieces on its Pix balls, and its MySymbol program lets golfers add scores of different images ranging from animals to food items to flags. Corporate logos have been added, legally, to golf balls for promotion use for decades.

How are golf balls made?

Modern golf balls are all “solid core” balls, meaning there is a large rubber core inside the ball. Solid core golf balls became popular starting in 2000 with the introduction and immediate popularity of the original Titleist Pro V1. It was not the first solid core ball, but at that time, most elite golfers were still using “wound balls,” which featured cores made of long pieces of rubber that were tightly wound together to create an energetic, bouncy sphere.

“The core is made mostly from polybutadiene, a synthetic polymer rubber material,” said Titleist’s Derek Ladd, the company’s senior project manager of research and intellectual property. “Polybutadiene is resilient, meaning that it recovers quickly when a stress is applied to it [such as an impact with a golf club]. The more resilient the golf ball core, the higher the energy return [ball speed] when a force is applied to it.”

The precise manufacturing techniques that brands use to make balls involve many proprietary machines and methods, but the rubber cores start off as a mixture that resembles cake batter. It is cut into small pieces that look like D-size batteries and placed in molds that are heated and put under high pressure. The process makes the cores perfectly round and much firmer, but they are still bouncy.

Two-piece balls are then given a cover that is usually made from Surlyn or another ionomer. These polymer materials have resins and other stabilizers in them that are also used in the dental industry and as sealants.

After the cover is added, the balls are painted, the numbers and logos are applied, and then a clear-coat material is sprayed over the ball to keep it from getting stained and to help keep the graphics in place.

If a manufacturer is making a three-piece golf ball, a casing layer (which is also referred to as a mantle) is added over the core before an ionomer or urethane cover is put on the ball. Four-piece balls may have a dual-core construction, with a small core encased in a larger core, or a dual-mantle design that features one core, two mantles and a single cover. TaylorMade is the only brand that offers a five-piece ball, with the TP5 and TP5x both having one core, three mantles and a urethane cover.

Do colored golf balls perform differently than white golf balls?

Depending on the virtual rabbit hole that you choose to go down, you might read claims white golf and their yellow and multi-colored counterparts perform differently. According to manufacturers, that’s simply not the case.

“Colored balls do not perform any differently than white balls. You will notice the same results on a launch monitor,” said Jake Donohue, a product analyst for Srixon. “Colored balls are strictly a cosmetic difference and offer advantages when it comes to visibility. Color balls stand out in low-light situations, which allows for rapid spotting and overall quicker rounds. They also make it easier for players to focus on the ball during their swing to allow for more consistent contact. Yellow, specifically, has become the color of choice for a lot of amateurs and even some professional players in recent years.”

Peter Malnati won the 2024 Valspar Championship in March using a yellow Titleist Pro V1x. “I started using it in Minnesota at the 3M Championship last summer,” he said on the eve of winning. “The reason I switched to it is because my, at the time, three-year-old who is now four, liked them. And so, he’s kind of over it now, but it still makes me think of him, and that’s worth a smile or two, which is worth a lot out there for me.”

The box says the ball is low-spin off the tee but high-spin around the green. How is that possible?

This comes down to how your swing speed’s energy is applied and how the ball is made. When you hit a ball with a driver, which typically has a loft between 8 and 11 degrees, you are striking the back of the ball near the equator with a club face that is nearly vertical. “A tee shot applies a large impact to the ball, causing notable deformation, so the hardness of the entire ball affects the amount of spin” said Donohue. “By designing our ball soft on the inside and harder around the mid-layer, the ball compresses and rebounds effectively, resulting in lower spin. On the other hand, shots around the green involve less force, where spin is largely influenced by the ball’s surface deformation. A soft urethane cover easily gets into the grooves of the wedge, increasing spin.”

Put another way, with a driver the energy from your swing goes through the cover, through any mantle layer present and into the rubber core at the center of the ball. The dimples on the ball help to improve its aerodynamics and give your shot lift, but nearly all of the energy from your swing creates forward thrust for more distance instead of creating spin.

But when you hit the same ball with a sand wedge, things change. You are swinging a shorter club, so your clubhead speed is lower, but the high loft of a 56-degree sand wedge means the face makes contact below the equator of the ball, so your shot will naturally have more spin. However, the amount of spin you can generate can vary significantly based on the ball’s cover material. Balls with an ionomer cover tend to slide up the face of your wedge at impact, resulting in higher launch with lower spin, while the grooves in your sand wedge can bite into a soft, urethane cover more easily, so shots come our lower and with more spin.

So, a urethane-covered ball can keep spin rates down and efficiently turn swing speed into distance off the tee while enhancing spin on shots hit around the green.

What do you get for your money when you buy premium golf balls?

Golf balls range in price from around $20 per dozen for some two-piece, ionomer-covered balls to around $55 per dozen for three-, four- and five-piece, urethane-covered balls. LA Golf recently began selling a four-piece ball on its website for $69 per dozen.

Part of the range in prices can also be attributed to the different prices for raw materials. Premium golf balls that come with a premium price tag nearly always feature urethane covers and state-of-the-art aerodynamics. Urethane costs more to use than ionomers, and developing next-level aerodynamic patterns and dimple designs can take R&D teams years to build.

“If anyone is serious about this game and this is your thing, I can’t imagine a reason why you wouldn’t use urethane,” said Mike Fox, TaylorMade’s senior category director for golf balls. “We’re not talking about a mile an hour, we’re talking about 3,000 rpm of spin. You are not going to find a larger delta in performance in the game. I don’t think I can harp on that enough.”

As technologies mature and work through a brand’s product family, they often can be found in less-expensive balls, but if you want top-of-the-line performance, you are likely going to spend at around $40 or more per dozen.

So how do I find the perfect ball for my game and budget?

The best way to test golf balls and discover which is right for you is to get several three-ball sleeves of different balls and head to the practice green at your local golf course. As pros know, the biggest differences between golf balls tend to emerge around the green and on short game shots, so hit a series of chip shots, pitch shots and other shots while trying to notice how the balls behave. Which seem to spin the most and check the fastest? Which balls feel the best to you coming off your wedge, and which are the most predictable? If you have access to a launch monitor, even better.

After that, compare the balls on iron shots and woods from the fairway, paying close attention to the flight each ball creates and how far. they go. Finally, hit tee shots with your driver and try to compare performance.

At the end of this exercise, you should have a good feel for which balls perform best for you around the green, from the fairway and off the tee, which is how pros test balls–from the green back to the tee.

At the end of this exercise, you should know which golf ball performs the best for you and is your ideal golf ball.

Article originally appeared on: Golfweek.usatoday.com