I Made One Simple Gear Change And Started Holing Every Short Putt (And You Can Too With This Prime Day Deal)
Joel Tadman made a switch in the visual appearance of his golf ball in an attempt to reverse his fortunes on the greens and it worked almost immediately!
Many of us are tinkerers when it comes to our golf equipment, constantly changing things to find the secret to lower scores. I usually like to keep my kit consistent but after a particularly barren spell on the greens, I decided to try the TaylorMade TP5 Stripe ball and the results blew me away.
Why am I telling you this? Well because it highlighted a crucial mistake I was making on the greens. It’s also on offer this Amazon Prime Day at 16% off, so it’s the perfect time to cash in and start knocking in more putts.
After a couple of very frustrating rounds on the greens I decided to actually film myself hitting some putts and what I saw completely shocked me. Now obviously when you’re stood over the ball you’re trying to aim the putter at your intended target, so on a straight putt I’m trying to get the small line on my L.A.B Golf DF3 putter lined up with the middle of the hole.
This is exactly what I thought I was doing, that was until I watched the video back and noticed I wasn’t doing that at all. In fact I was aiming significantly right of my intended target and pulling the ball back online.
So I needed some visual feedback or assistance on what straight or perfect alignment actually looked like and the TP5 Stripe is the perfect solution. The vivid cues train your eyes to see what straight actually looks like and you then have the framework to match your putter’s sightline to it. It feels like cheating, frankly, but it’s allowed under the Rules of Golf and nearly every tour pro uses a line of some sort on their ball to help them.
I put it in play on the course and the results were immediate. I got so frustrated with how I was putting during a competition that I started using it mid round. It was the 11th hole I believe where having holed nothing up until that point I then nonchalantly rolled in a 15-footer for birdie with about 18 inches of break, followed by a 9-foot putt for par on the following hole. Clearly, there was something in this.
I’ve stuck with it ever since and it has been working really well. I only use it from around 12 feet and in - anything outside of that there are too many other variables that negate its effectiveness and it’s harder to see if it’s pointing where you want to from further away.
It still looks off sometimes so I’m still learning to trust it, but it has undoubtedly simplified my approach in that my sole focus is to line up the line on my putter with the lines on the ball and hit the ball along it, especially on short putts where the pace control is almost automatic or subconscious.
Another added benefit is that the TP5 is an excellent all-round golf ball that even back-to-back Masters champion Rory McIlroy recently switched to. So if it's good enough for him...
TaylorMade has since released a new version of the TP5 and TP5x Stripe ball for 2026 but I think many golfers would benefit from the wider, for visually obvious stripe on this previous version. Don’t forget you can use it off the tee too!
