Different Continents, Different Names, Same Ball?

For the last couple of years, my go-to ball has been the Wilson Staff Duo Golf Ball. It is billed as the lowest compression ball on the market and I have found that for this slow-ish swinger, it’s longer than anything else I play.

They have the added advantage of being relatively cheap.

I was intrigued, then, when I came across a press release from Wilson’s UK office that discusses a new ball called the DX3 Urethane. Within the text of the release, it said that the DX3 was the “latest addition to the revolutionary DX line – which also includes the 29 compression DX2 Soft and the 35 compression DX3 Spin.”

Interesting. The DX2 Soft and DX3 Spin  in the United Kingdom have the same specs as the Duo and Duo Spin in the US. They are almost certainly the same ball. I wonder, then, why the different name in the UK? Does Duo have some connotation in the UK that it does not have here in the States?

There’s a quote variously attributed to Winston Churchill or George Bernard Shaw: Americans and the British are one people separated only by a common language.

Since the DX line is the DX line is the equivalent of the DUO, I wonder if the DX3 Urethane ball is in store for us Yanks. It is touted as the world’s softest urethane ball, with a compression of 55.

“The DX3 Urethane has been designed specifically for the Feel player,” said Doug Wright, Global Commercial Director of Wilson Golf. “Thanks to its multi-layer construction, better players can also expect Tour-quality spin and control on the greens as well as great distance.”

I hope it comes to the States — under whatever name. I’d love to give it a try.

The existence of one ball with two names makes me wonder if there are other golf products out there marketed under different names. Do the TaylorMade lines have different  name in England or in Germany?

Thing One, my twenty-year-old, tells me that video games often have different names in different countries. He also says that seemingly identical video games may have different features.

That also makes me wonder if manufacturers offer equipment with different features in different places. Are there Callaway clubs exclusive to Europe? A few years ago, I spotted boxes of TaylorMade golf clubs in Costco that I did not recognize. A search of the TaylorMade site turned up nothing. As far as I could tell, it was a set of TaylorMade irons made exclusively for Costco. Similarly, for years, Wilson had sets of clubs designed exclusively for department stores such as K-Mart and Target. If there are different clubs for different retail outlets in the US, why not different clubs for different countries.

Different product names — and even different product features — make sense in a global market. Since the fairways of my home course are  concrete hard and fast in the summer, and the greens are all open in the front, I want a set of clubs marketed for sale to the Scots.