Inesis is a very interesting golf manufacturer. Sitting under the umbrella of Decathlon, a value sports equipment behemoth, with 2080 stores in 56 countries, it has been making some waves in the value golf equipment market in recent years. I was recently sent the Inesis Tour 900 ball to test so I took it out onto the course to see what it had to offer. Looking to sit amongst the best balls in golf, it has some stiff competition…
In terms of the tech, the Tour 900 is a three-piece urethane-covered ball. Inesis has lowered the compression slightly from its previous iteration, dropping to 95 from 100 which should have the effect of softening feel. A new faster core has been added to boost ball speed and a thicker Surlyn mid-layer has also been implemented in search of more distance.
My first impressions were strong. The Tour 900 features an “ice blue” color on the cover, which to the naked eye is still essentially white, but the subtle hint of a blue tinge makes the cover very sharp and comparable to the best premium balls. I also enjoyed the solid black line on the side of the ball. As someone who does use a line to help me on shorter putts, this is a handy addition that negates the need for messing around with marker pens pre-round.
However, the look of the ball is far less important than its performance characteristics, so I took the Tour 900 out for 9 holes at Saunton Golf Club, before hitting the pitching area to see what it could offer me. The most notable positive for me was the feel which I found to be extremely soft and particularly enjoyable on and around the greens. On greenside pitches, the Tour 900 seemed to just stay on the clubface for a fraction of a second longer than some of the other best soft feel golf balls, which I found both a nice sensation and also useful in terms of control. There were none of those jumpy strikes that I sometimes see on more value-orientated golf balls and the levels of spin were exceptional. Similarly, with the putter, the feel off the face was lovely. Very subtle and a very muted sound at impact.
Further up the bag, the performance was less comprehensive. The extremely soft feel and high levels of spin did translate to some significant distance drops in my testing. On my FullSwing KIT launch monitor, I found it to lag behind my gamer TaylorMade TP5x ball by around 6 mph on average with driver and 3-4 mph with 7 iron, which coupled with some fairly high spin numbers translated to a not insignificant reduction in distance output.
I should say however, that I am a fairly high-spin player in general and seek out golf balls that reduce spin, so this is not the ideal profile of ball for me. Lower speed and spin players would probably see some far better results than me in the long game with the Tour 900.
Flight-wise, other than the high spin number and slightly reduced speed, the Tour 900 was a very stable golf ball and distance numbers were consistent which is the mark of a well-constructed ball.
The Inesis Tour 900 ball will be retailing for 35 euros per dozen and is available to purchase from the Inesis website.
