You have to give Top Flite points for trying. In spite of (or perhaps becuase of) what HAS to be a steadily delining market share, they keep churning out new ball designs. Last year it was the XL line. This year, it’s the D2.

The D2 apparently stands for dimple-in-dimple. There’s nothing official on the Top Flite website yet, but it seems that the ball has slightly larger dimples, with a raised “o” area in the center of each.

There’s a rumor floating around that the dimple in dimple design originally was slated to appear in Callaway balls because it was superior to the current hex system.My insider told me that he thought Callaway had invested so much in the hex design that they didn’t want to lose their identity.

On another, only slightly related not, I wonder about the fate of the Ben Hogan balls. It would be nuts for Callaway to give up on Top Flite (and with this new technology, I dont’ think they will), but can they manage three different golf ball lines at once?

Power Max KC2 425 Ti

New Year’s Resolution #5: Resolve To Be More Frugal

Golf doesn’t have to be expensive. You do not, for example, need to play with $40 a dozen balls, when there are any number of wonderful orbs available at half the price. My curent favorite is the Bridgestone E6. For $25 or less a dozen, you get a great feeling, three piece surlyn ball with plenty of spin.

GigaGolf offers great bargains on clubs. For example, the PowerMax KC2 425 Ti offers a supersized moveable weight driver for as little as $88.50. When ordering from GigaGolf, you can customize it to your specifications, and the clubs all come with a 30 day playability guarantee.

MaxFli’s latest offering is the MaxFli Fire, a three-piece ball for the price of a two-piece (under $20).

MaxFli says that the ball “is designed to combine blazing ball speed for exceptional distance with soft feel and outstanding greenside performance.” The secret, apparently, is the “HPG 1000 SpeedMantle”, which MaxFli says brings the COR (Coefficient of Restitution—the trampoline effect) up to .815. They say that SpeedMantle is 7% faster than the mantle materials used in most competitive balls, yet feels 24% softer.

I’m really looking forward to trying out this ball. I have been pleased with MaxFli’s recent offerings, especially the Black Max and Red Max.

NIKE Juice 312

Nike’s new Juice 312 ball is a two piece distance ball aimed at people with mid to low swing speeds. The name, obviously, comes from the fact that the ball has 312 dimples. (that’s on the low side—balls most commonly have 336.)

And the rest of the name?

It has “juice”, get it?

Nike’s sense of humor has never been subtle.

Nike says that the low dimple count, combined with the soft core offer good distance with “adequate” spin.

The “adequate” worries me.

PRECEPT XP3 Golf Balls-Orange

Here in Michigan, a lot of the guys I know switch to orange golf balls as soon as the leaves start to fall. As the backside of so many of the fallen leaves are white, anything that rolls off the fairway is hard to find.

It’s a good idea, but the problem for me always has been that the only orange balls I’ve seen are cheap off-brands that you find at places like Wal-mart. So I was happy to see that a major player in the golf ball industry is offering orange golf balls.

The XP3 is a two-piee ball with a surlyn cover and features Precept’s seamless cover technology.

I think that the HX Hot is the best hall out there for mid handicappers like me. It’s long and decent around the green.

Now, Golfsmith has a great deal on Callaway HX Hot logo overrun balls.  They’re just $18.99 a dozen.

You can read my review here.

TopFlite’s tour level ball, the Strata TL Tour has been marked down from $29.99 a dozen to just $11.99 a dozen at GolfSmith.