Tiger Woods will be teeing up with a new golf ball in 2017, after the 40-year-old former world No.1 signed a deal with Bridgestone Golf.
Woods will be playing Bridgestone’s B330-S ball as he bids to get his professional career back on track following an 18-month injury layoff.
The brand switch comes on back of Nike Golf’s decision to exit the golf club and golf ball market back in September, which freed up Woods, along with every other Nike staff player, to find new equipment sponsors.
Woods has become the first player in the Nike stable to sign an endorsement contract with another equipment company. Precise details of the multi-year deal weren’t released, but Corey Consuegra, Bridgestone’s senior director of marketing, has said that Woods will play ‘an instrumental role’ in the development of future Bridgestone golf balls’, as well as feature in some of the brand’s future marketing campaigns.
Woods is understood to have conducted a series of trials with a number of different golf balls from all the major brands over the last few months, but played with a Bridgestone ball at the Hero World Challenge earlier this month, where he shot 24 birdies over 72 holes.
Woods’s new ball features a multilayer construction with soft urethane cover. The B330 family has a gradational core – a firmer outer region wraps around a softer inner core — for power and lower spin on full shots. But the B330-S spins marginally more from tee to green than its sister product, the B330.
Bridgestone currently occupies third place in golf ball market share behind Titleist and Callaway.