Gear: Srixon Q-Star Tour golf balls
Price: $34.99 per dozen (at srixon.com)
Specs: Three-piece, urethane-covered golf balls available in white and yellow
In the Srixon golf ball stable, the Z-Star and the Z-Star XV hog the spotlight because those are the balls used by Tour pros like 2021 Masters winner Hideki Matsuyama and four-time major winner Brooks Koepka. However, at $44.99 per dozen, they are out of reach of some players who want distance off the tee, soft feel, and plenty of spin around the green. For those players, Srixon has offered the Q-Star Tour, a three-piece ball that shares many technologies with the Japanese brand’s most-premium offerings, but at a slightly lower price.
Wednesday, Srixon released the fourth generation of the Q-Star Tour, opting to make incremental changes to a ball that has proved to be popular for several seasons.
Like its processors, the 2022 Q-Star Tour is a three-piece ball that has a soft, FastLayer core in the center. It gets progressively firmer toward the outer portion, which according to Srixon, makes it play like a ball with numerous layers for more speed off the tee and with long irons.
The core is encased in a firm mantle layer, which is in turn surrounded by a soft, urethane cover. While the 338-dimple pattern is designed to make the ball more stable in the wind, it is very thin to allow the grooves in wedges and short irons to grab it more efficiently and help golfers generate more spin on approach shots, chips, and pitches.
Srixon gave the Q-Star Tour the same SpinSkin with SeRM cover coating on the Z-Star and Z-Star XV to further enhance short-game performance. The coating does not affect the ball on shots hit with woods and long irons but compliments the urethane cover around the greens for increased control.
The Q-Star Tour has always had a lower compression and softer feel than the Z-Star and Z-Star XV, so it has always felt softer than those balls. While the compression has not changed with this update, 72, the mantle layer is slightly softer, so the overall feel is softer.
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