Despite the success over the past few years with the Chrome Soft franchise, Callaway has upped its pursuit for the title of ‘the number one ball in golf’ with the launch of the Chrome Tour golf ball range. While the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls have long been widely considered the pinnacle when it comes to premium golf balls, there have been some serious contenders emerging more recently.
TaylorMade continues to impress with its TP5 franchise and the Srixon Z-Star balls can't be ignored, while younger brands such as PXG released its Xtreme golf ball and LA Golf broke into the premium category for the first time too. Despite the Callaway Chrome Soft X picking up a major championship by way of The Masters thanks to Jon Rahm’s exceptional play, the brand has been busy behind the scenes working away at what it is calling ‘the new gold standard’ - a family of golf balls that it hopes will rival some of the best golf balls already on the market.
What’s The New Technology?
Hyperfast Soft Core
While every layer of the golf ball is compressed through impact, it’s the core of the ball that mainly determines ball speed as well as how that ball is likely to perform. The new Hyperfast Soft core has been designed to give as much speed as possible to the new Chrome Tour and 2024 Chrome Soft golf balls. This has been achieved through a new rubber system where a new base polymer has been combined with a mixture of other ingredients to give the golf balls the right amount of compression for as much speed as possible.
Seamless Tour Aero
Callaway has always been synonymous with producing golf balls with hexagonal dimples, however the new Chrome Tour golf balls will feature a cross-over dimple pattern of both hexagonal and spherical dimples to create an industry-first dimple design said to maximize the stability of the ball in flight with all three new balls. Each has been designed with a certain amount of launch and drag in mind, so the player can concentrate on making a solid swing, without having to manipulate the window of trajectory too much. The Chrome Tour has been designed with stability in mind and to promote a repetitive ball flight, whereas the Chrome Tour X has been designed to be a little easier to move the flight around and control the flight of the ball a little more.
High Performance Tour Urethane Soft Cover
The new cover has been designed to offer a softer feel with plenty of spin and consistent spin. While the ball needs to spin lower and within the right window when it comes to the longer clubs in the bag that produce more speed, such as the driver and fairway woods, it needs to spin much higher with the wedges and scoring clubs to offer maximum control. The new softer cover will see the ball come off the wedges lower than the previous Chrome Soft range and with more spin, which ultimately means more control. A softer cover ultimately creates more friction between the clubface and ball and therefore less variation when it comes to spin and launch throughout the bag.
What Are The Models?
Chrome Tour
The Chrome Tour is the headliner as it were of this new impressive ball family. It’s been designed to produce consistency across the board offering tour-level performance throughout all areas of the game. This ball has been designed to produce fast ball speeds with high levels of greenside spin. The gold packaging is based on the ‘new gold standard’ slogan Callaway has paired with this ball, insinuating that this should be your go-to ball when it comes to looking for a new premium golf ball.
Chrome Tour X
The Chrome Tour X golf ball has been designed for those seeking not only speed, but complete control and workability of their golf ball. For those of you who like to visualise and execute various shots and ball flights on the course, then the Chrome Tour X is the ball for you. Jon Rahm is one of the Callaway Tour Staff players that will be introducing this ball to his arsenal as he sets sail on his debut season with LIV Golf.
2024 Chrome Soft
While there are two new balls within the 2024 launch, the Chrome Soft ball remains firmly within the Callaway lineup due to its extreme popularity. That said, this ball has seen some refinements made but will still offer that tour-level performance with a soft feel that both amateurs and professionals liked so much. The high launch and low spin combination from the tee alongside the soft nature of this ball when greenside will likely see this ball remain just as popular as it has been over the past few seasons.
What Callaway Says
Eric Loper – Sr. Golf Ball R&D Director
"Chrome Soft is in the same general space as it currently resides in terms of feel, and we’re giving that ball more distance for player benefit. Chrome Tour X is in its same general feel space because that’s what most of our Tour players are using, and we have increased the greenside performance as well as a Seamless Tour Aero package that helps give it a more penetrating ball flight. That’s for the player who likes to have more spin on their irons and wants to be able to take spin off when they want to and have more workability. The Chrome Tour is a new space for us where we’re making the ball slightly softer than Chrome Tour X but not that much softer, and it does have lower spin. It’s designed for players who want to go after the ball and don’t feel like they have to pull back on decreasing their spin rates."
Pricing And Availability
On Sale: 2nd February 2024
RRP: Chrome Tour, Chrome Tour X, Chrome Soft all $54.99/£55 per dozen
