Wednesday, July 21, 2004 | 9:41 a.m.
These ain't your great-grandpa's gutties.
Today's golf balls come in all colors, covers and other factors that can confuse the average golfer walking into a store to pick up a new dozen for a weekend round. Indecision can paralyze a player who does not know his or her game well enough to choose between balls designed to enhance distance or control spin.
Those are just the surface layers of making a choice -- peeling away deeper onion layers like two-piece vs. three-piece make it even more difficult. For many amateurs, it's just too much.
"It's irrelevant to me," said Paul Bania Jr., a 21-year-old Boulder City resident. "A ball's a ball, really."
The Pro Golf franchise in Henderson carries 64 different models of ball, stacked in a long shiny row of bright color and aggressive marketing running through the middle of the store. Owner Wayne Haddad stocks everything from the Molitor Titanium Power at $8 per 15 balls to the $40-per-dozen Nike One ball hawked in Tiger Woods' commercials.
"The ball Tiger Woods plays or the ball Phil Mickelson plays on tour may be the entirely wrong ball for you," Haddad said.
Haddad, who plays the Nike TA-2 SPN to counter some of the Valley's hard greens, stocks all levels of golf balls, trying to keep a wide selection at the $10, $20 and $40 prices to satisfy most needs. Of course, some players are only satisfied with the balls they see the pros playing with on the weekends.
"You get a lot of people that aren't that good at golf, but they want a really good golf ball, though," Shane Haddad said. "I don't know why. I try to steer them away from them, but you're not change their minds."
On an average day such as last Thursday, golfers to suit all of those needs wandered into the store.
On the high end is a discriminating player such as Monty Brown, 35, of Phoenix. Brown is a 0 handicap who can tell the difference between a good ball and a better ball just by hitting it. Although he has played other balls, Brown regularly uses the Titleist ProV1x, one of the most popular models in the market. Through March 2004, the ProV1 line accounted for 18.4 percent of all balls sold in pro shops and golf specialty scores, according to Golf Magazine.
Titleist introduced the ProV1 at the Invensys Classic in Las Vegas in 2000. While Brown prefers that pricey ProV1x -- selling at Pro Golf for $40 a dozen -- he understands that many people do not experience the benefits of the four-piece ball designed for low-handicap golfers with high swing speeds.
"For somebody that like's an 18 handicap, it's probably not worth 45 bucks a dozen," Brown said. "Golf technology has changed so much in the last four or five years that you basically can't get a bad ball. It's more on price and advertising."
Some casual golfers recognize that. Paul Bania, Sr., is an average player who has sworn by lower-end Top Flite balls for as long as he has played. He has no interest in trading up to a better ball because he does not believe it will help him lower his scores.
"I'm not as good a golfer to where switching balls is going to do anything for my game," Bania Sr., 54, said.
The Haddads both try to ask customers what kind of golfer they are to help guide them to the right ball. As a general rule, average players will need balls that reduce spin to help keep them straight. Better players will move toward balls that can enhance spin for better control of the ball around the greens.
The best of today's three and four-piece balls do a great job of lessening spin on hard-hit shots off the tee and fairway woods, while enhancing it with short irons and wedges through technology. But for players who wouldn't know the difference between balata and salami, just about any of the shiny packages in the store can make for a fun afternoon.
"For 99.5 percent of the people playing golf, they can play anything," Brown said.
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