Pinnacle will be another brand added to the best golf ball leaderboard. Being upfront here I have never bought Pinnacles.
I’ve played them over the years if I found them on the course or in the Clinton River behind the house I grew up in (Rammler Golf Course was on the other side of the river from my house). So there will probably be some sort of back story for each Pinnacle I play.
And I write all of my reviews for the brand here instead of separate posts. Like with all of my reviews I play one 18 hole round at Rackham Golf Course near my house in Huntington Woods. All of the golf balls played are either brand new or never been played.
Pinnacle Gold Long Drive Golf Ball Review
Rackham Golf Course
5-8-18 – White Tees
70 Degrees. Sunny. Breezy.
I’m really starting to learn a thing or two about my dad and his thought process of buying golf balls. The Pinnacle Gold Long Drive is probably the fifth golf ball of his I’ve played that is designed for distance. My dad was a big guy (6′ 3″ – 240 lbs) and didn’t need the distance. What he needed was a game.
If you’ve been following along with my reviews you’d pick up by now that I found a number of brand new (never played) golf balls in my dads workshop and have been putting them to the test. And that brings us to the Pinnacle Gold Long Drive.
There is no manufacturing date on the date box so I cannot say for sure how old these are. But after doing some searching it appears they were discontinued in 2007. That means these fifteen golf balls have been sitting around unused for 11 years.
The first thing I notice on the box is 10 thick dudes wearing the same shirts. It’s because the Gold Long Drive is the official ball of the Pinnacle Distance Team. It also the ball they used for the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship. That’s how you know these golf balls are old as RE/MAX no longer sponsors the World Long Drive Championship. That goes to Volvik now.
Right from the get go my expectations are a bit hampered because experience tells me that distance balls are fun to hit if you can swing really fast. I don’t. And that they really aren’t that great of a ball to play.
Reading the rest of its stats it claims to have a “Soft, high velocity core. Resilient, low spin Surlyn cover. 330 Icosahedral dimple design (whatever the hell that is).
And because of those the benefits you should receive are “High initial velocity for the longest distance possible. Low spin for straight ball flight. Long distance trajectory.”
Sounds great. Lets see what it can do.
Off The Tee – Hit 4 fairways. Hit zero draws. And for the first time in a while I sliced the ball. When I did hit it straight it got up in the air. I hit a high trajectory drive as is but the Gold Long Drives were noticeably higher.
Distance was average on the holes where I did not slice. Maybe one drive here or there ended up further down the fairway than normal.
After a couple of drives it became clear that I do not swing fast enough foe these. It sounds silly but I believe it to be true. I know this to be true because I drove the 8th green which would have been great but I was playing the second hole. FORE RIGHT!!!!
Fairway Woods & Hybrids – Same thing here. Just about every shot sliced which is not normal. I was just not generating enough speed to get the most out of the golf ball. It started to become comical.
Irons – Had 4 Greens In Regulation which is way under average. And I believe it starts with the driver. Due to my slices I had a couple of times where I had to punch out into the fairway.
But again, I do not generate enough club head speed to control them. Whats funny is I did hit both of the Par 3’s on the front nine which I rarely do. Not sure I was pissed off and swung harder as both went straight and did have a bit of spin on them.
Outside of those shots I found the Pinnacle Gold Long Drive much harder to hit with irons and control to be minimal. On almost every iron shot I was thinking “wonder where this ones gonna end up?”
Wedges – LOL. Just rolled off the back of the green. Never checked up. No spin. Did have one nice bunker shot with a lot of green to play with. It was a guessing game the entire day. To be fair, the course was not in great condition including the greens. They’re still brown-ish.
Putting – Crappy. 37 putts. Ridiculous. It was a horrible golf ball to putt with. Zero feel. Again, the greens were not great but that might have been my worst day of putting ever. Three 3 putts and two 1 putts.
Durability – Exceptional. I think I hit two trees and there is barely a blemish on it. It still looks brand new.
Score – 91. GIR – 4. Putts – 37. Fairways – 4
On the cover of the box it says “Distance Doesnt Have To Be Hard”. They’re right. You just have to have a swing speed of like 200 mph. That’s what it felt like to me. I had to swing so much harder to take control of the ball.
And that’s just not what I do. The one time I tried I duffed it 50 yards. Who knows, maybe if I could swing much faster the results would have been better.
But man, a 91. That is my worst score since I started reviewing all these golf balls. It might be the first time I’ve shot in the 90s in years. And I was feeling ok. Even worked out in the morning.
It’s hard to compare the Pinnacle Gold Long Drive to another golf ball because of how it’s designed. Best one I can think of is a less technical XXIO golf ball.
Maybe I’ll take a sleeve of these with me to one of the golf scrambles I play in the summer and let my buddy who swings very fast have a go with it on the long drive holes. For me, I see no reason to ever play this ball again.
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