What’s the story?
In his most recent blog post, Tiger Woods confirmed that he has been playing a Nike ball made by Bridgestone all these years while he also said that he continues to tinker with ball-wood combinations in search of the right one.
“WHAT PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE IS THAT BRIDGESTONE MADE THE NIKE GOLF BALL FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS,” WOODS SAID. “IT’S A GREAT BALL AND MAKING THE SWITCH WASN’T THAT HARD.”
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He covered a wide range of topics including battling flu over Thanksgiving, playing golf with the President – elect: Donald Trump, his performance at the Hero World Challenge, golf course design philosophy and his views on injuries in the NFL.
In case you didn’t know...
Tiger Woods recently signed a multi-year deal with Bridgestone to play it’s Tour-B330S golf ball with the ‘Tour B’ logo which is an exclusive ball available only on Bridgestone’s website. At the time of signing the contract, he said that the ball was reacting identical with how he wants to play and that he had settled on the Tour B330S ball after extensive testing of a variety of balls.
It was further revealed that Tiger’s camp had contacted Bridgestone Golf for samples of the B330 and B330S ball immediately after the news of Nike’s exit from the hard goods industry. He eventually settled, after evaluating the two balls for a while, on the B330S ball since it has a softer cover than the B330 and it allows him to play the short game shots that he he envisions.
The heart of the matter
This amazing revelation confirms a long-time industry rumour that Tiger Woods was playing a Nike golf ball which was made by Bridgestone. Tiger Woods has been the face of Nike golf for years and his public disclosure of this information has removed all doubts that the people ‘on the inside’ had about Nike golf balls; atleast during the company’s early days in the golf ball market.
This certainly explans why he decided to put the Bridgestone Tour B330S ball immediately into play upon his return to competitive golf after a 14-month injury layoff and his eventual multi-year contract to play Bridgestone golf balls.
What’s next?
Tiger has confirmed his participation at the Farmers Insurance Open, the Honda Classic, the Genesis Open and the Dubai Desert Classic in the upcoming weeks which means that he will have had enough tournament rounds under his belt as he looks to make a tilt at a fifth green jacket at the Masters in April.
Also Read: Tiger Woods to play PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines
He continues to test equipment from different manufacturers to find the right weapons out of “what’s out there”. It will be interesting to see what equipment he shows up with at the Farmers Insurance Open which begins on Jan 26th . We will continue to closely follow his equipment changes througout the season as he look to get back to his former best.
Sportskeeda’s take
Nike wasn’t the first and surely won’t be the last equipment company to outsource it’s golf ball production operations to another company but Tiger Woods’ public revelation of this information comes as a big surprise to all golf fans.
A wide variety of golfers on tour are known to be playing golf clubs manufactured by Japanese manufacturers like Miura in the name of their own equipment brands but such revelations have neve been made in the past.
Tiger Woods looks like he has enough confidence in his game now to be talking about winning every tournament that he enters. It’ll be interesting to watch how his official comeback unfolds in a stretch which will see him play in back-to-back weeks on two occasions prior to the Masters.
Also Read: Tiger Woods to compete in Dubai Desert Classic
Tiger Woods’ competitve return is the biggest talking point of the early season and it remains to be seen if he can build on the flashes of great golf that we saw from him at the Hero World Challenge earlier in December, 2016.
