Why yellow balls can speed up play

As a recent convert to yellow golf balls, I have indicated to at least one manufacturer that using them could speed up play and, as a consequence, they should offer golfers who use them a special discount.

Traditionally there’s a perception that only golfers with a high handicap, fearful of losing their wayward-driven golf balls in the rough, use other than the orthodox white balls.

Also there’s a belief that coloured golf balls are more the domain of the ladies who lunch after a social nine holes - preferring the yellow, pink and orange hues to match their distinctive outfits.

I spoke with a very useful eight-handicap golfer from Germany this week, an experienced golf writer who had just switched to using a yellow ball to great effect, playing three shots under his handicap at demanding Stoke Park.

He agreed that on the continent golfers are less conservative in their choice of golf balls than we are in the UK.

However, he said that coloured balls could be the future. “I just love the yellow ball,” he said. “It’s definitely more fun to play. I don’t care what colour it is as long as it performs - and the Titleist NXT Tour S yellow ball definitely performed for me.”

On Tour only a handful of players have been tempted to use the yellow ball in tournament conditions the most high profile being Vijay Singh and Tim Clark using Srixon’s  Z-Star X Tour yellow in 2010 to coincide with its launch.

Both claimed its green-yellow hue added improved visualisation when putting but a combination of injuries and loss of form saw them return to traditional Z-Star models. Its main achievement so far, however, is a hole in one by Jim Furyk during the pre-Masters Par-3 tournament.

Srixon further claimed that by tapping into the psychology of hitting each shot and the calming effect at address, its yellow golf balls incorporate the science of visual perception with the psychology of colour effect on the human brain.

“Science has proven that yellow is the most visible colour in the visual spectrum and psychology has correlated green with calming and stress relief,” said a spokesman back in 2010. “That’s why Srixon has combined the two colours based on these findings to tap into the player’s mind and expand the benefits of playing a better ball.”

At Titleist, Golfmagic had an exclusive interview with head of ball development Bill Morgan. He told Golfmagic that many of Titleist’s customers preferred a coloured ball.

“It was a choice of public opinion,” he told us. “In the US, golfers tend to prefer softer, different coloured balls - and 75% want yellow. So that’s what we’ve done with the NXT Tour S and DTSoLo.”

Whether Europe has similar tastes is yet to be defined.

Feature continues. Click here as we go over the pros and cons of using a yellow ball.

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