Day 6 of 7 straight days of golf equipment reviews!
I’ve had 7 different types/brands of golf balls in my review queue. The Dunlop Loco Tour D is the first of the 7 I’ll be covering in my upcoming reviews.
The Dunlop Loco Tour D is Dunlop’s “premium” golf ball. It’s meant to compete with the ProV1’s and HX Tours of the world, and compete it does. Up until recently John Daly played this ball on tour. Now he’s with Maxfli.
Not much can be found online about any Dunlop golf balls. In fact if you go to www.dunlopgolf.com you won’t find a single golf ball, just other equipment. As it turns out licensing issues currently have Dunlop split into a golf division and a “sports” division. The sports division is where you’ll find the golf balls for now. That will change in the future.
Technology
The Tour D is a three-piece ball with 95 compression. (I didn’t know they were putting a number on compression anymore..).
The cover of the ball consists of a very thin urethane cover. The thin cover helps increase spin.
The Tour D has a 432 dimple pattern. This pattern provides the player with a slightly lower, more penetrating ball flight.
On the course
My friends gave me some grief because I was playing a golf ball made by a “tire company.” But they stopped giving me grief a few shots into the round when they saw how well the ball performed.
I found the performance of the Tour D to be very similar to that of a regular flavor ProV1. The ball is plenty long, but not quite as long as the longest distance balls.
The Tour D ball spins very well with short shots and you have a ton of control and feel around the greens.
Crisp iron shots feel great. You can really feel that “95 compression” compressing on solid irons and drives.
In the wind the ball performs very well thanks to that 432 dimple pattern.
Critic’s corner
The main problem I have with the Loco Tour D golf ball is the cover. After a few holes and some crisp shots the cover started actually flaking off. This is not shearing like can happen with many balls, the cover is simply coming off. Since the cover is about a zillionth of an inch thick, I didn’t find the flaking issue to have any bearing on the performance.
Conclusion
The Loco Tour D is an excellent golf ball. The performance and feel is superb.
If you want “premium” performance at a price of about half of what other premium balls cost, this is your ball. List price is just over $30/dozen and most stores have them for $29.
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