Golf

Callaway Chrome Tour and Chrome Soft golf ball: 5 things to know

Chrome Tour is a brand new addition to Callaway’s ball lineup for 2024.

Callaway Golf

Realizing not everybody has the time to devour countless content material on gear launch day, we’re making an attempt one thing totally different and providing a contemporary model of our detailed tech write-ups that hits the excessive factors. Here’s what you want to know about Callaway’s Chrome Tour and Chrome Soft golf balls coming to retail on Feb. 2.

What’s in a reputation?

The most evident change to Callaway’s flagship golf ball is the addition of 1 phrase: Tour. Even with a rise in utilization throughout the board, Jason Finley, Callaway’s world director of brand name administration for golf balls, admitted the Soft title didn’t at all times land with the higher participant — a key goal for the producer heading into 2024.

“One of the areas we definitely view as our biggest opportunity is with the better player,” Finley stated. “We’ve finished an amazing job with Super Soft and Chrome Soft — simply trying on the share you possibly can see that — however one space that we’ve unperformed, in our thoughts, is with the higher participant. There’s slightly little bit of hesitation to the Soft title with the higher participant — and that’s a part of it.

(*5*)
Callaway’s Chrome Soft Yellow with 360 Triple Track expertise.

Callaway

“But we’ve gotten better Tour adoption of our products in recent years. If we’d had this conversation four or five years ago, we would’ve had maybe half our staff playing our golf balls. Their confidence in our products has grown since then, to the point where everyone but one staffer is playing the ball.”

Chrome Soft will stay within the lineup, however Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X will exchange the earlier Chrome Soft X and Chrome Soft X LS fashions that have been marketed for higher gamers with extra pace. With a brand new title comes a large number of building adjustments to key parts, together with the core, inside and outer mantles, cowl formulation, and aero bundle.


Callaway 2024 Chrome Soft 360 Triple Track Golf Balls

$54.99

Chrome Soft is better for everyone, from amateurs to major winners. Now with our proprietary new Precision Technology, the Chrome Soft Golf Ball is longer through the bag while providing the signature soft feel that golfers love.


Golfers will initially choose up on the title change, however as they’ll quickly discover out throughout subsequent testing, there’s extra to Callaway’s Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X than a easy rebranding.

“In these new golf balls, it’s been a complete overhaul on every component inside of the ball,” stated Eric Loper, Callaway’s senior director, golf ball R&D. “It’s those little details that really matter when a player opens the box and looks at the ball. Ultimately, we want them to feel like they are playing a premium product because it is.”

Precise precision

Callaway calls it Precision Technology, a three-headed monster anchoring Chrome Tour and Chrome Soft. At the middle of the design is a proprietary core system that includes a brand new rubber and base polymer, with particular substances, that give Callaway’s ball staff the flexibility to push the bounds of efficiency at focused compressions.

“The core is a primary component to how the golf ball is going to perform,” Loper stated. “It enables us to manage spin rates through the bag, it changes the feel of the golf ball, but ultimately the core is designed to give us ball speed, particularly driver ball speed. If you have a slow core, you’re going to have a slow golf ball, so we set out to make our core much faster than we have before, capitalizing on what we’ve done in the past and building on that.”

callaway chrome tour golf balls
A take a look at the duvet and core building of Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X.

Callaway

Enveloping the core is a reformulated tour urethane mushy cowl that provides a brand new degree of short-game spin to photographs from 50 yards and in. Callaway’s inner robotic testing confirmed Chrome Tour X, for instance, added 250-300 RPMs on the shorter photographs in comparison to Chrome Soft X, however the quantity jumps to anyplace from 300-600 RPMs when actual golfers enter the equation. It’s a big quantity that ought to make golfers get up and take discover.

“We had to change the substructure to give us those low spin rates off the driver and irons,” Loper stated. “By utilizing a softer cowl, it makes the ball really feel softer which the most effective gamers have seen after just a few photographs, they’ve seen on the 15-20 yard shot the ball goes to launch decrease and chew greater than it has earlier than. It’s centered round softer covers.


Callaway 2024 Chrome Tour X Golf Balls

$54.99

Chrome Soft is better for everyone, from amateurs to major winners. Now with our proprietary new Precision Technology, the Chrome Soft Golf Ball is longer through the bag while providing the signature soft feel that golfers love.


“Even with an iron shot, if you have a better connection with the ball and the club face where there is less slippage, you get more consistent launch conditions. So it does result in a reduction in variation from a launch perspective and from a downrange dispersion perspective.”

Hex marks the spot

callaway chrome tour golf balls
Look intently and you’ll see the brand new spherical dimples on the duvet.

Callaway

The aero bundle on a golf ball hardly ever garners the eye it deserves, however Callaway’s hoping to flip the script with one thing it’s calling “Seamless Tour Aero.”

“Each ball will have a uniquely designed aerodynamic pattern, and it’s completely different from anything we’ve ever done, bringing our aerodynamics into a completely different zone,” Loper stated.

Callaways’ hexagonal dimple design stays a key a part of the aero bundle, together with one thing else that received’t instantly stand out: a strategically positioned spherical dimple that provides consistency all through the flight.

“By managing each dimple, it enables us to focus on the ball flight from start to finish, where the ball starts off fast but as it approaches the ground the speed has significantly decreased,” stated Loper. “This has led us down this path of developing an industry first, it’s a combination of Callaway’s hexagonal surface geometry with strategically placed spherical dimples that provide stability through the entire ball flight. We’ve ended up with model-specific patterns that maximize distance and improve stability over the entire ball flight, which the player will see in a variety of conditions.”

To make sure the aerodynamics matched the launch properties, Callaway developed in-house computational fluid dynamics to present a visible of the circulation across the ball, which is vital for drag and elevate.

“It helps us understand what the flow is doing over each dimple,” stated Loper. “It’s something that we’ve benefited from by merging with Topgolf, we’re utilizing a 9-camera Toptracer system that gives us the ability to track the ball from start to finish with high-level resolution. This has helped us validate this performance downrange with over 10,000 shots to capture real-world results, to ensure that this pattern is going to deliver the performance that we expect for the best players.”

Pick and select

callaway chrome tour golf balls
There’s a mannequin for every golfer within the new Chrome Soft and Chrome Tour ball lineup.

Callaway

With three totally different fashions within the lineup, golfers will little question need to know which one is true for his or her recreation. According to Loper, Chrome Soft “is in the same general space as it currently resides in terms of feel, and we’re giving that ball more distance for player benefit.”

The Chrome Tour X “is in its same general feel space because that’s what most of our Tour players are using, and we have increased the greenside performance as well as a Seamless Tour Aero package that helps give it a more penetrating ball flight. That’s for the player who likes to have more spin on their irons and wants to be able to take spin off when they want to and have more workability.”


Callaway 2024 Chrome Tour Triple Track Golf Balls

$49.99

Chrome Soft is better for everyone, from amateurs to major winners. Now with our proprietary new Precision Technology, the Chrome Soft Golf Ball is longer through the bag while providing the signature soft feel that golfers love.


Chrome Tour is the beginner within the trio and includes a barely softer really feel than Chrome Tour X with a decrease spin bundle. As Loper famous, “it’s designed for players who want to go after the ball and don’t feel like they have to pull back on decreasing their spin rates.”

Visual advantages

callaway chrome tour golf balls
Callaway’s Tru Track expertise is a visible choice on the Chrome Tour X ball.

Callaway

One of the earliest adopters of visible expertise, Callaway plans to broaden the checklist of choices in 2024 with Tru Track, Triple Track and 360 Triple Track on Chrome Soft, Chrome Tour and Chrome Tour X.

“What we’ve done in that space and the offerings we have have obviously matter to our business,” Finley stated. “We’ve led the way there and seen others jump on board. The goal is to continue to stay ahead of that.”


Callaway 2024 Chrome Tour X TruTrack Golf Balls

$54.99

Chrome Soft is better for everyone, from amateurs to major winners. Now with our proprietary new Precision Technology, the Chrome Soft Golf Ball is longer through the bag while providing the signature soft feel that golfers love.


Finley hinted another things are at the moment within the pipeline for ERC Soft and Super Soft however for the second, it’s all about providing game-changing visuals on its Tour-level merchandise.

“That space is too large for us to not support with as many resources as possible,” Loper stated. “It’s incredibly important and we want to continue to grow it and make sure golfers are seeing benefits from the visual technology we’re providing.”

Want to overhaul your bag for 2024? Find a becoming location close to you at True Spec Golf.

JWall

Jonathan Wall

Golf.com Editor

Jonathan Wall is GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com’s Managing Editor for Equipment. Prior to becoming a member of the workers on the finish of 2018, he spent 6 years overlaying tools for the PGA Tour. He could be reached at jonathan.wall@golf.com.


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