The Story Behind The Dunlop Tour JD Golf Ball

A little birdie told me that the new site could be up as early as tomorrow. Knock on wood of course… So I guess you want to know the story behind the Dunlop Tour JD golf ball. Well, it goes something like this… Dunlop and Maxfli used to be one and the same. Then one …

A little birdie told me that the new site could be up as early as tomorrow. Knock on wood of course…

So I guess you want to know the story behind the Dunlop Tour JD golf ball. Well, it goes something like this… Dunlop and Maxfli used to be one and the same. Then one day, TaylorMade (Adidas) came along and bought Maxfli… their way of getting back into the golf ball business. Makes sense to me. The Maxfli golf balls you see in stores right now are still made in the Dunlop factory and will be made there until either a) TaylorMade buys out the current contract they have with Dunlop or b) the contract expires. When Maxfli was purchased by TaylorMade, Dunlop was stuck with a bunch of old Maxfli balls. TaylorMade wanted to redesign the Maxfli line and had no use for the old golf balls. So what do you do with a whole bunch of old, assorted balls? You repaint and repackage them of course… and the Dunlop Tour JD ball was born. So what exactly do you get when you buy a box of Tour JD balls? A bit of everything… including the Maxfli Revolution, Maxfli A10, Maxfli A3, Maxfli M3 and the Dunlop Mobius. I love customer reaction to this ball… “Wow, these are great balls for the price”, “Why is a 3 piece ball so cheap?”, “These balls are very inconsistent!”… well ya, what do you expect? So is this really a bad thing? No. The balls listed above, with the exception of the Mobius, are all really good golf balls. Dunlop calls the Tour JD a “reworked urethane ball”. Dunlop customer service is actually quite open to talking about the ball. One Dunlop agent told me that this was their way of selling off any “seconds” or “blemished” balls. They make it very clear that they are not trying to mislead anyone with the Tour JD and I agree with that. The Tour JD is at a really good price too… why not take the chance and try a box? They might just surprise you!

Let’s talk about wedges. Knowing how to control your wedges can really lower your score. A reader writes to us for help in lowering the trajectory of a wedge. There are a few things that you can do to a wedge to bring down ball flight. Try adding some lead tape to the back of the wedge right up at the very top. This raises the center of gravity and can help lower ball flight. I weighted all my wedges like this a few years back when I lived in a really windy area. It really kept the ball down and they were a lot easier to control. Another option is to reshaft your wedges. I like the Tour Flighted Rifle or Project X shafts in my wedges. They both keep the ball low(er)…. especially the Tour Flighted Rifle. The Rifle Spinners are great wedge shafts too but I find they balloon the ball a bit too much for my liking. Some people like bending their wedges but I think that is the wrong approach. Most people bend a wedge to fill a gap… not to drastically change trajectory. A wedge is a wedge… it is designed to get the ball in the air. By the time you de-loft a wedge to where you like it, you might as well just chip with your 8 iron. Try a flighted shaft, fool around with some lead tape… find a combination that works and then stick with it!

Another industry employee writes in to mention that he has seen some problems with the Nippon steel shafts in the Callaway Fusion irons. He has had some customers complain about a drastic loss in distance and Callaway has replaced them with Dynamic Gold shafts. People like Nippon shafts because they are light… I have had a few long time graphite users switch to them because of their weight. I talked to Callaway and they said the Nippon was the shaft of choice for the Fusion because of it’s weight. I have had a lot of positive comments towards the Nippon steel shafts… both in Callaway and Cobra products. But everyone is different. It is nice to see Callaway reshaft the clubs for nothing though! That’s customer service.

We have had a few emails about Darren Clarke’s putter too. Darren has been using the Scotty Cameron Red X2 putter for a while now. Clarke’s version is black but from what I understand it is otherwise the same as the Red X. I will do some digging and see if I can find anything else.

Well that’s it for today. I hope to be writing you from the new site tomorrow but I guess we will wait and see!

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