Pat:
Sandy Weill on CNBC for an hour tonight at 9:00 PM and Midnight eastern.
Back to the balls. Go back 15 years when "players" used the Tour Balata. Hacks used the "Rock Flite". Outdrive a "player" with a distance ball - I preferred the 480 Interlok, affectionately known as "the marble" and rumored to be a "hot combo" when struck with a metalwood - and they always said, "you were using a hard ball."
Today? Everyone is using some variation of a distance ball.
Simple proof? Ask the ballmakers in the late 80s what they could have done to make longer balls and they would have said, "hotter centers and harder covers, but good golfers don't want this." Ask the same question today and you'll see that there isn't that much distance to be picked up over a Pro V1, Hogan, Srixon (with the Danish flag to boot!), or other top-of-the-line ball with distance modifications.
I ask you again, where will the increase in yardage come from? 15 years ago you would have been able to say, "if they could come up with a ball that wasn't so hard but employed the distance ball design (essentially describing the Tour Edition that, ironically, spun too much - the precursor to the Strata), I think they'd be able to make longer balls."
Today you are left with, "I dunno how, but I think they will." I've asked a lot of knowledgeable people and they are reduced to speculation. THIS WAS NOT THE CASE in 1988. The ball manufacturers KNEW how to make longer balls. (They did in fact make them, but catered to a different class of golfer that was more concerned with durability than playability.)
The funniest thing to me is that golfers who steadfastly refused to play anything but a Titleist Tour Balata or Titleist Tour Professional are now perfectly content to play a Titleist Pro V1 that doesn't spin anywhere near as much as they were convinced they needed it to. Funnier still is the Lady Precept. A VERRRRY low compression (73, I'm told) ball with a rather hard cover, everyone now realizes that any ball when properly struck from a fairway to a somewhat receptive green will hold.
They finally have a ball to get us the distance the Strata guys were getting.[/color]
--Brad Faxon, paid to play Titleist, on The Golf Channel about the Pro V1 less than two months after Mickelson's infamous "greatest advancement since steel shafts" quote.
Titleist had such a lock on their staff that many of these Touring professionals had no idea how inferior wound balls were until Titleist made the Pro V1 themselves.