The Ballnamic App by Ping is a ball-fitting app that crunches data from your input and Ping’s testing to offer recommendations of the five best golf balls you should be playing based on your level. It isn’t tied to a brand or even year of a golf ball and costs $39 for the fitting for one year, with the ability to adjust your preferences and inputs up to five times during this time.
No matter how you look at it, $39 could be a deal or a waste of money. The Ballnamic app has got many golf enthusiasts talking in recent times. I have tried lots of balls over the past couple of years of getting more into golf, and, to be honest, I didn’t have much confidence that I’d benefit from the app but was interested in what it would suggest.
So, I considered it a good opportunity to document my entire process of using this app and share with you what you should know about the Ballnamic app from a consumer perspective.
The American sports equipment manufacturing company Ping has always been an innovator in the golf industry. Ball fitting isn’t new, but the way Ping applied their vast amount of ball data toward online fitting through the Ballnamic app is impressive. Let’s begin with how the app works:
How Does the Ballnamic Ball Fitting App Work?
- Website: https://ballfitting.com/
- Price: $39
- Purpose: A virtual ball fitting tool
Ballnamic is a web-based ball-fitting tool that uses your swing data and performance preferences to match a specific ball for you.
It allows you to answer a series of questions about your games, such as swing characteristics and launch conditions, and the website recommends a series of balls, each with a specific score on a 100-point scale, to determine the best match for you.
Marty Jertson, Ping’s vice president of fitting and performance, told Golf Digest, “One of the most exciting advancements is that we decouple and approximate a ball’s initial launch conditions with its aerodynamic performance.”
So after you input your swing information, launch conditions or yardages with the driver and 7-iron, and playing preferences (trajectory, feel, short-game spin preference, etc.), you will receive a report of the top five best-matched balls on a 100-point scale.
The Ballnamic fitting database includes 45 multilayer urethane balls, including Snell, Srixon, TaylorMade, Titleist, Kirkland, Maxfli, Bridgestone, Callaway, Cut, Mizuno, OnCore, Vice, Volvik, Wilson, and XXIO. But it’s constantly being updated.
Here’s a step-by-step process for using the app to get my ball fitted:
Using the Ballnamic Fitting Tool: A Step-by-Step Review
The ball fitting process on the Ballnamic website is a six-procedure data input journey.
- Your profile
- Driver
- Irons
- Wedges
- Finishing touches
- Result
I’ll walk you through the steps and how I got my golf ball recommendations after inputting details on these areas on the website.
Step 1: Your Profile
On the profile section, you have to input your handicap, your current ball model and year, and your zip code, which will tell you your typical playing temperature and altitude to provide the most accurate fitting.
Step 2: Driver Details
On the driver’s detail page, the tool will require your launch conditions, including the ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, height preference (mid-high trajectory), and wind performance.
One thing I love about this section is that you can choose if you don’t know your launch conditions.
Step 3: 7-iron details
The Ballnamic tool asks for the ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, and steep landing angle on the iron details. If you prioritize stopping power, consider selecting a more vertical landing angle. But a shallower trajectory preference may be more ideal on soft greens.
Step 4: Wedge details
You must first choose how much you want the wedge to spin. And, if you play bump and run chip shots, the high greenside sound is likely unimportant. But the tool gives you the option to choose that. I recommend you choose high importance if you play on a firm and fast green. All the same, you can’t go wrong with a moderate option.
Step 5: Finishing touches
In the final section, you get to choose your ball’s softness and firmness preferences and your price preference.
The waiting time to get a result is very short. In a few seconds, you get a list of five golf balls, ranked on a scale of 0 to 100 percent, matching the data you’ve inputted about your gaming characteristics.
Step 6: The Result
As you can see in my case below, the Titleist ProV1X is the best for my game, with a 95.4% match, followed by the Callaway Chrome Soft X, with a 92.9% match.
Also Read: What are Black Level Golf Balls?
Is the Ballnamic Fitting Tool any help?
While the value that pings bring to the industry with the Ballnamic fitting tool can’t be ignored, the virtual aid has faced its fair share of criticism. Prominent brands like Titlest have their own free version of the ball fitting tool, and people tend to compare them with Ballnamic.
For example, people have expressed how generic the questions on the ballnamic fitting process are.
Credit: Reddit r/golf
But there have been contradictory testimonies of how the tool’s recommendations have helped people change their yards for the better.
In my case, I’m satisfied with the recommendation the tool gives me, and it has substantially helped my game. While others may argue that it’s a “different strokes” situation, the Ballnamic delivers value, and I like that it’s not tied to a particular golf ball brand.
If the pricing is steep, you can peer with other golf buddies and pay about $10 each. That way, you all maximize the tool’s value while everyone gets a fitting since it lasts for a year, and you can adjust your preferences and inputs up to five times during this time.
Ballnamic pros and cons
After testing the Ballnamic web-based ball fitting tool, here are the few pros and cons I noted:
What I like about the tool
- The process is straightforward to use.
- It produces quick results.
- Brand-agnostic ball fitting
- The data is proven and substantial.
- It’s an affordable option to get a proper fitting.
- Backing of a reputable brand in the golf industry
What I don’t like about the tool
- Since it has a 24-hour work window, it can experience data overload.
- Ballnamic currently supports the U.S. only.
- They only test balls of 3-piece construction or greater at a price point of $20 or higher. (They update the database of golf balls at least twice a year based on the timing of commercial launch dates, so that’s good to know.)
Final Remark
Many of us only do ball fittings when a ball brand offers a free fitting. It is not always easy to find a true brand-agnostic ball fitting. I have observed that many stick with the popular ProV1 because it’s an option you “can’t go wrong with. But is it truly the best ball for your particular game?
Ballnamic introduces a matrix that includes most ball models and can dial specific details into your swing. Reviewers like myself and other golf enthusiasts have offered various ball reviews or tests.
While there are mixed reactions to the performance of this tool, we have to admit that nothing on the market currently compares to it. $39 may be the cost of a dozen golf balls. But by plugging in your game specifications and paying that amount, you can learn which golf balls are best for you.
I’m pleased with the results because I can now play a different ball than before the fitting. And it’s a tool I can recommend to any golfer.
What do you think about the Ballnamic app? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comment section.
