Did Callaway drop the ball with the Chrome Soft X release?

[klbcec]

Knowing Titleist has their loyalty deal in March, and that Bridgestone, TM and Srixon will follow suit with free dozens, did Callaway screw the pooch with such a critical ball for the company by releasing it in late April or early May?

Cannot understand this decision.

[jeffyjeffmn]

To be quite honest it wouldn’t have mattered. I bought 4 dozen last year and I noticed quite a few blemished balls in my batch. Then the my golf spy report came out and I ended up giving away two dozen. I won’t buy another Callaway ball for the foreseeable future. I have Callaway clubs but went back to Titleist and even have a couple dozen Srixons in the closet.

[herbert7890]

they have horrible quality control issues with the 2020 X, from what people are saying. THus, is making production extremely hard. I suspect they will be as bad as the 2018 version was, in terms of non-centered cores and quality. (lets not even bring the soft aspect, numbers speak by themselves in that one)

[noodle3872]

The new Callaway balls are leaps and bounds better than the last generations. They have QC tighter than ever. The X ball is very limited right now because the coronavirus shut down the plant and distribution. Not sure there’s enough of the X ball out there in golfers’ hands to say there’s a durability issue given most US courses are just opening. I’ve traded PM’s with Jason Finley on another site. He has expressed his frustration with the delay getting the ball to the market late due to the virus all the while knowing the new balls are going to be judged very critically. I’ve got 8 rounds with the 2020 CS in the books and 3 with the 2020 X ball. Both balls are fantastic balls. They are equal to or better than any premium ball on the market in my opinion. Prior to gaming them I tested them on a GC Quad and in my club’s short game area. They are darn good balls!

[jeffyjeffmn]

"They are equal to or better than any premium ball on the market in my opinion."

 

well unfortunately that was the prevailing opinion of the ball a little more than a year ago and I was severely unimpressed and disappointed. I hope for their case the new balls are much better but I will be more than happy to wait for concrete evidence and a little more than one opinion. I will jump ship right back to the CS ball if it is better, but again I will wait for proof and not a couple people on the internet.

[GoGoErky]

Did he talk about how the production of them had issues and it caused the initial delay from being released with the CS and how they weren’t going to be released til May before the virus shut everything down?

[awtryau89]

That other site is trash due to the owner being a dumb**. The other other site has already found serious QC issues again with the new new CS. They say its better but still not up to the quality of true premium balls.

[BigBlue7]

Supposedly they had manufacturing issues, which is why the launch was so late

[GoGoErky]

Yup. Could only make enough for their tour staff.

i wonder how far behind the shutdown put them considering they were expecting to be released right about now.

[herbert7890]

yep, now they are changing the story to make it seem it was the COVID 19, when 1 month before COVID they already had annuanced the delay.....callway is still up with its old lie tricks it seems. But will buy a sleeve when it comes just for curiosity I guess, but I expect it to be like 2018 version, soft, slow with the driver.

[towncryer]

Regardless of why Callaway is so late with the X ball, they have invested A LOT of money in getting their factory in Chicopee, MA up to being state of the art and beyond. The ball report from that other website (who banned me on IG) made Callaway look really bad...my understanding was that Callaway knew about the issues with their balls prior to the report and started upgrading the Chicopee plant before it came out.

Here's my point. The other website was defensive and whiny when any other website did their own follow up tests and questioned in any way their findings. Anyone in research who doesn't subject themselves to peer review and scrutiny of their peers is a failed researcher. I'd never buy (or not buy) anything based on what that website tells me.

 

[03trdblack]

Quality control issues or not, nothing Callaway has made since the original Hex Chrome has performed well for my personal game. Chrome soft is mushy and goes no where and Chrome Soft X spun too much for me.

[golfdad907]

Curious to know, what kind of "proof" are you seeking and rely upon?

[Carolina Golfer 2]

Ummm..The site that that did the real ball survey actually had it's methodology vetted by several major ball companies. Not just sending out random free samples to website members. Bit of a difference in validity.

Also the site didn't make Callaway look bad, the ball did that itself Callaway execs actually visited the HQ of the site after the study and THEN announced it was undergoing a major QA and production upgrade.

[Stanks]

Ya I don’t know what you guys are talking about. 2020 chromesoft X is fine. Works great.

 

[GoGoErky]

You have data comparing it to other balls you hit? Saying something is great means nothing. Like any piece of equipment it’s player dependent. But the fact that Callaway has production issues with the ball when trying to mass produce it and die the shutdown haven’t been able to work on it and also golf ball guts showed the 2020 CS has the same issues as the previous version with off center cores I wouldn’t say anything is fine at this point

[herbert7890]

Also to the ones doubting the "Major ball test", please also look at the results of another independent test from Today's Golfer, who were able to reach the SAME EXACT RESULTS in regards to the callways chromseoft vs other tour balls. It was the shortest of them all........ So its multiple tests arriving at the same conclusion, not just a single source.

[towncryer]

Their methodology might have been vetted, but their presentation of data and interpretation of their data were beyond flawed. You can have good data and botch how you present it. I love that you can sort all the data on their website and look at the numbers and make up your own mind. I think if you take the time to look at their data, you'll see that the Callaway balls didn't do as badly as it was presented via their social media. Callaway's initial response was unwise, I think. But hey...they dumped 50 million in Chicopee to save face and do a better job.

My only question is this...if you go through the data, plenty other balls look like garbage. Why didn't they get attacked on social media?

Again...that other website seems (at times) like they have either an axe to grind or a sponsor to prop up. They can talk until their blue in the face about their lack of bias and their noble pursuit of getting "the truth" for us hard working consumers...but I don't buy it.

 

[GoGoErky]

the attacks on social media came from the Callaway fan boys trying to defend the ball and Callaway’s response which was typical Callaway reaction. Yes the chromesoft performed well on irons and wedges but when it came to driver it wasn’t as good.

Whether you like the the spy site or not they are one of if not the only site that is doing detailed testing of products and presenting the stat behind it with thousands of balls hit by numerous amateurs. Does their tone rub people the wrong way? For anyone looking to be offended or finding a flaw yeah it probably does. But anyone who is interested the data is there for them to make their own decisions and play what works for them at the end of the day

 

[PureDivots]

Chrome soft has always been the shortest ball I've ever played. Would take alot for me to give them a chance again.

[VNutz]

I agree with the last 2 paragraphs in particular. I'm no Callaway fanboy by any means, and I've never liked the Chrome lines, but in the ball test I felt like they really went after Callaway, and rightfully so given what they found. However there were other manufacturers that had balls with similar significant deviations that were kind of glossed over without getting the same criticisms.

[Stanks]

Yeah, my data is I play enough to know what a ball should and how far it should go and what it does. Do I have foresight, quad, hawk, etc etc etc. no. I’m assuming you don’t either. I’ll be the guy that says CSX is as good as TP5x, ProV1x, Tour Bx and all the other balls in that category. I’ll call a spade a spade and say that it’s just personal preference. 50 RPMs +/- on a wedge shot will not make me publicly oust a company like some of the nuttos on here.

I don’t really care about MGS and their study. They lost all credibility when I saw there test and then challenged them on Instagram which was replied to with anger and a block.

And no, I’m not a callaway fanboy. I have nothing in the bag from them. I’ll play whatever I get but am no loyalist.

If we stop and look at all the anger directed towards chromesofts, it all came after the golf ball study. And none of you knew the cores were off center prior to that. Funny how things change.

The new ball is good. But you’ll have to judge for yourself after you actually play with a dozen yourself and not take someone else’s word for it.

PS: Rick shiels little ProV1 / chromesoft/ Zstar / TP5 video from a day or two shows that the chromesoft is miles away from any other ball and insanely short ?(sarcasm)

[QuigleyDU]

This is only partly true. I would not call them quality control issues. That to me is saying things are being missed along the production line. That is not really the case. The truth is the ball is extremely hard to make and they are having production issues. To me there is a difference. One is lack of care, the other is tuning a production line for mass production. They can produce them well in small batches, it is when they try to produce a lot of them things fall apart.

I do not believe you will see huge issues in quality. You will see some of course. There are always some tolerances and failures with in a few percentage points.

[johnnythunders]

I do not visit the other sight nor read their reviews anymore. They are total bs, if you post anything they don’t like about their test or ask hard questions Tony instantly responses telling you why you are stupid and they are not. The sound like our supreme leader. They Had a promising launch using “real people” to do their tests, they had names and handicaps and player profiles, like Golf magazine used to do. Maybe you believed their reports, maybe you didn’t, But now like Golf magazine, this approach had proven to be too expensive to produce content. It’s all about low cost content production, not quality.

You want to know of if this or that is true. Get off your couch and go test Yourself for your swing and your game. Not someone else’s. And don’t get fitted unless the person has a real verified ability to actually fit you and not just sell you cool clubs.

For my game, I find cromsoft to be short and expensive, if i’m going to play expensive it’s titleist prov1x. Since i’m 68 with a 87 mph driver speed I like a soft ball so my fibromyalgia behaves. They are all about the same but Callaway supersoft and Wilson duo spin + work nice for me.

[storm3]

Callaway's $50 mil investment was not in response to MyGolf$py's findings. As mentioned in their podcast (don't recall which episode), Callaway stated that they were a couple of years into a 5 year, $50 mil plant investment when they visited. My guess is that little to none of that was initially earmarked for QA (majority is likely focused on building expansion, modernization, and automation improvements to expand capacity and reduce human labor), although that may have changed after the bad publicity.

As for Callaway taking more heat than the other big 5 ball OEMs, likely for a few reasons: 1) From a ball speed standpoint, the regular Chrome Soft was a consistently low performer vs the other big 5 flagship balls (expectations are much lower for the smaller and DTC oems). 2) find it cut it examples were more drastically off centered vs the other dual core offerings on the market (granted dual core designs by nature have a greater chance of the inner core being off centered). 3) Harry's flamboyant marketing strategy over the past 5 years (he also had a few issues on these forums in the past).

[YoungBorra]

the chrome soft x will be fine - and it's going to be a solid ball. let's give it a chance and see what happens when it finally comes to market, shall we?

[ASN21]

The hucksters paradise will say anything from Callaway is god like. They are sponsored by them and run shill events every year to come in and pump their products. I trust M-G-S ball reviews and opinions not the hucksters...

[herbert7890]

100% this. And it correlates we what most people found personally with them (2018 version at least), Non Centered Cores (super bad), soft compression (short with driver, where distance is wanted' and bit longer with irons, where distance is not really wanted). They had it all wrong with the creation of the Chromesoft series. The only thing they had right was the marketing with the truvis patterns, which I guess speaks loud on how good marketing can override actual attributes.

[awtryau89]

100% agreed. See my comment. The owner is an absolute douche canoe.

 

MGS is arrogant but I do trust them

[YoungBorra]

You should trust yourselves - let's see what happens when the X ball becomes available before we rush to conclusions off of other people's opinions.