ATLANTA — In common golf vernacular, Bridgestone Golf seems to have striped one down the middle.
The Tour B330-RX golf ball, introduced by the Covington, Ga.-based equipment manufacturer at the World Amateur in Myrtle Beach, S.C., two weeks ago, is having more trouble staying on the shelf than it is staying in the fairway, according to local retailers.
The ball, designed as a result of the company's niche ball-fitting program, is built for players with average swing speeds. It's engineered to deliver the same results for spin, control and feel that better golfers with faster swing speeds can get from the Titleist Pro V1, the most popular ball on the market.
"I've had a chance to play it and it does what they say it does," said Heath Hamlin, a national buyer for the PGA Tour Superstores who carries a 6 handicap.
The key, according to Bridgestone, is the ball's core, which is softer in the middle and gets firmer toward the edge. The core makes it easier for golfers with slower swing speeds to compress the ball, which means more distance and better feel, along with more control.
When debuted at the World Amateur, golfers — limited to one dozen apiece — snapped up the 100-dozen allotment in 41 minutes. Another shipment of 100 dozen was rushed in the next day and sold out in less than an hour. The ball retails for $43 a dozen.
"To sell 100 dozen in as short an amount of time as we did is the most amazing thing I've seen in all my years in the industry," Bridgestone's Dan Murphy said. "I'm glad that our message of finding the right ball based upon performance, not popularity, is resonating so well with golfers."
The balls debuted at local stores Wednesday. Most locations had established a lengthy waiting list, and some, like the Edwin Watts location in Birmingham, were sold out before receiving their shipment. Murphy said the company has sold about five times the number it would on a typical launch. Bridgestone owns about 9 percent of the golf ball market, but Murphy expects it to rise as high as 20 percent in a few years.
"When people call and ask where their product is and we tell them it's been shipped, they've been asking for the tracking number," Murphy said. "When they ask for the tracking number, that's a good sign."
The Titleist Pro V1 is the most popular ball on the PGA Tour, but it is designed for players with swing speeds between 105-120 mph. The B330-RX is designed for the average player, who usually has a swing speed between 85-105 mph.
That's why you won't see any advertisements with any of Bridgestone's stable of PGA Tour players such as Fred Couples, Stuart Appleby or Charles Howell III. The message: This is a ball for Bobby, not Boom-Boom.
That's because Bridgestone learned, after conducting 10,000 ball fittings, that 75 percent of the golfers had a swing speed of 105 or less, but more than half were playing a high-performance ball. That hastened development of the B330-RX.
Jeff Hull, the 2007 Georgia PGA Player of the Year, was part of a recent special ball-fitting day at the University of Georgia Course. He tested the ball and came away impressed.
"A lot of people try to play a Tour ball and they're not quite strong enough to hit it. And if you can't compress it, you actually lose yardage," Hull said. "The Bridgestone ball is great for the better player who doesn't generate enough speed to hit the Tour ball."
Stan Awtrey writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: sawtrey AT ajc.com