Jason Finley is Callaway’s global director of brand and product management for golf balls, but even with that lofty title and decades of experience in the golf industry, he has no idea which ball you should play. However, when Finley talks with recreational golfers, which he does often, there are two things he hates to hear, and they might surprise you.
“The worst thing I can hear when I ask someone what golf ball they play is, ‘Oh, whatever I find,'” Finley said recently. “I don’t even care if it’s a Callaway ball or not, the best thing you can do for your game is to find a ball and play it every time.”
The other thing that drives Finley crazy is when golfers don’t pay attention to the ball being used during their club fitting. Even for tour pros, different balls react in different ways, even when you hit them using the same clubs.
“If I go in and you fit me for irons at some place today, and you fit me using a SuperSoft golf ball, and I walk in tomorrow, and you fit me with a Chrome Soft X golf ball, if you fit me into the same golf clubs, you’re a horrible fitter,” Finley said.
His advice is the get fit using the ball you play and do your best to practice with the same ball you play. Pros like Xander Schauffele, Jon Rahm and Rose Zhang certainly do.
But what ball should you play? With pro shops and specialty stores loaded with different types of golf balls, how are you supposed to find the ball that can deliver the best performance for your game? In this article, we will take a deep dive into the Callaway offerings, including the new offerings for 2024, and explain what makes every ball a little different and help you better understand Callaway’s golf ball stable.
Shop Callaway golf balls at PGA TOUR Superstore Shop Callaway golf balls at Worldwide GolfPrice and performance
Let’s jump right to what most golfers want to discuss: the relationship between price and performance. Do you get what you pay for when it comes to Callaway’s golf balls?
Three of the five golf balls featured below—the Chrome Tour, Chrome Tour X and Chrome Soft—have a suggested retail price of $54.99 per dozen, while the ERC Soft is $39.99 and the fifth ball, the SuperSoft, is $21.99 per doezen.
Chrome Tour, Chrome Tour X and Chrome Soft come with a urethane cover and it’s the cost of the urethane that drives up the price of the balls.
Off the tee, the aerodynamic properties of a ball’s dimple pattern are more important than the material it is made from, but around the green, Finley said, urethane allows the grooves of your wedges to create more spin. Ionomers, a less-expensive type of polymer that is also used in golf ball covers, are harder than urethane, so wedge grooves can’t bite into ionomer-covered balls as easily. As a result, ionomer-covered balls can slide up the face of your wedge slightly on approach shots, pitch shots and chips, resulting in a higher launch angle and shots that spin less and roll out more.
“How many times do you hear the 20-handicap say, ‘Well, I wanna spin it back like the pros do.'” Finley said. “Well, you have zero chance of doing that [with an ionomer ball]. I’ll pick on our own line—with a Supersoft, you’re just not going to be able to do that. There’s probably five humans on planet Earth that could get a Supersoft to do what even a Chrome Soft can do.”
So, when you buy a premium ball with a urethane cover, you are paying more money to have extra spin and control around the green. If $50 or more for a dozen urethane-covered balls is simply out of your budget, the most noticeable tradeoff you will see with lower-priced balls will be reduced greenside spin.
Shop all Callaway golf ballsCallaway Chrome Soft
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Construction: Three-piece, urethane-covered ball
Compression: 75
For comparison’s sake, we will use the standard Chrome Soft ball as a baseline. It debuted in 2015, so the 2024 ball, which is in stores now, is the sixth generation.
For 2024, Callaway made no changes to the Chrome Soft. It is designed for golfers who want a combination of more distance off the tee and with long irons, along with tour-level spin generation around the greens. In other words, a premium ball that could appeal to many golfers.
The Chrome Soft has a large rubber core (which Callaway refers to as a HyperElastic SoftFast core), a firm mantle layer and a soft urethane cover. Its overall compression of 75 is lower than many other premium balls, so golfers can compress it more easily, which can lead to reduced spin. Finley pointed out that while most golfers concentrate on backspin, a reduction in overall spin also means less sidespin, and that can result in less slicing and hooking off the tee and with long irons.
Chrome Soft’s urethane cover can easily be grabbed by the grooves of wedges and short irons on approach shots for increased spin and stopping power.
Shop Callaway Chrome Soft golf ballsCallaway Chrome Tour
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Construction: Four-piece, urethane-covered ball
Compression: 88
Chrome Tour is a new ball for 2024 and takes the place of the Chrome Soft LS, Callaway’s lower-spin offering that had been played by Xander Schauffele. It is a four-piece ball features a large rubber core encased in two mantles covered by a thin, soft urethane cover.
Callaway updated the HyperFast Soft core at the center of this ball to help golfers generate more speed and distance while the thin urethane cover is easily grabbed by the grooves of wedges and short irons to generate spin on approach shots, pitch shots and chips.
Among the premium balls in the Callaway lineup, Chrome Tour likely will have the broadest appeal. Off the tee, it creates speed and spin numbers very similar to the discontinued Chrome Soft X LS, but Chrome Tour has a lower compression (88) than Chrome Soft X LS (93). This gives players the rare instance of softer feel with more speed.
To make the ball more stable in flight, Callaway updated the seamless, hexagonal dimple pattern. Compared to the other 2024 premium balls, the Chrome Tour will feel softer than the Chrome Tour X, fly slightly lower off the tee and produce marginally less greenside spin. However, it will create more greenside spin than the new Chrome Soft and will feel firmer.
Shop Callaway Chrome Tour golf balls at PGATSS Shop Callaway Chrome Tour golf balls at WWGCallaway Chrome Tour X
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Construction: Four-piece, urethane-covered ball
Compression: 94
This ball is also new for 2024, although it is very similar to the 2022 Chrome Soft X. It is a four-piece ball has a large rubber core encased in two mantles covered by a thin, soft urethane cover.
As with the Chrome Tour, the X has an updated HyperFast Soft core for more ball speed. For that reason, Callaway said this ball generates about 1.2 mph more ball speed in driver tests than the Chrome Soft X it replaces.
The Chrome Tour X has the firmest feel at impact of any Callaway ball because it has the highest compression. It also generates the most spin off the tee and with irons, and produce the most spin around the greens. For this reason, many tour players and elite golfers who like to draw and fade the ball with their irons prefer the Chrome Tour X because it spins more than Callaway’s other premium balls.
From a distance perspective, Chrome Tour X will create slightly more carry distance than the Chrome Tour, but with a higher flight and steeper descent angle, so the overall distances will be similar.
Shop Callaway Chrome Tour X golf balls at PGATSS Shop Callaway Chrome Tour X golf balls at WWGCallaway ERC Soft
Price: $39.99 per dozen
Construction: Three-piece ball with ionomer cover and urethane coating. Available in White and Yellow with Triple Track lines
Compression: 72
There was no need to talk about the difference in price between the Chrome Soft, Chrome Soft X LS and Chrome Soft X because all three balls cost $54.99 per dozen. The ERC Soft is $15 less, and to reach that price point, Callaway needed to make some adjustments.
The ERC Soft is designed for players who want a low-spinning ball off the tee that feels soft at impact and that can provide good distance with irons. It is similar to the Chrome Soft because both balls are designed with three pieces (a core, mantle layer and a cover), and the balls should feel similar when you hit them because they both have overall compressions in the low- to mid-70s. According to Finley, the balls should spin nearly identically off the tee with a driver, but the ERC Soft should fly slightly higher and spin less with irons than Chrome Soft.
The biggest difference between ERC Soft and Chrome Soft, and the reason for the $15 price difference, is in the cover and greenside spin. While Chrome Soft has a urethane cover, the cover of the ERC Soft is made with an ionomer material that has been given a urethane coating.
“Compared to Chrome Soft, there will be some tradeoffs in terms of greenside spin and control,” Finley said. “The ERC Soft has our GRIP urethane coating, which is in service of getting the most out of [the ionomer cover] as we can.”
While the coating has no impact on full swing shots with irons or woods, it increases friction between the cover and the grooves of your wedges, so the ball slides up the face less and spins more than the previous ERC Soft.
However, Finley concedes, even with the urethane coating, the ERC Soft will not spin as much as a Chrome Soft on shots from 50 to 75 yards. Individual results will vary, but he estimates that golfers will produce about 300 rpm less spin on a 50-yard pitch shot with an ERC Soft than they would with a Chrome Soft.
Shop Callaway ERC Soft golf balls at PGATSS Shop Callaway ERC Soft golf balls at WWGCallaway SuperSoft
Price: $21.99 per dozen
Construction: Two-piece ball with an ionomer cover. Available in white, yellow, red, orange, green and pink
Compression: 38
The Callaway SuperSoft is a traditional, two-piece distance ball that targets budget-minded golfers who want distance and low spin. It has a massive core and a compression of only 38, so at impact, it will be the softest-feeling Callaway ball. That low compression also helps to reduce spin, so the severity of slices and hooks should be reduced and tee shots should fly straighter and longer.
The Supersoft is priced $18 below the ERC Soft per dozen and $33 less than Chrome Soft, and as you might suspect, the tradeoff for that lower price comes in iron spin and wedge spin. The ionomer cover of the Supersoft does not have the urethane coating Callaway gave the ERC Soft, so on approach shots, the ball may slide up the clubface slightly, creating a higher launch angle and less spin on short irons, pitch shots and chips. Supersoft will create significantly less spin around the greens than the urethane-covered Chrome Soft.
Shop Callaway Supersoft golf balls at PGATSS Shop Callaway Supersoft golf balls at WWG
