Callaway Golf Company featured UMSL College of Optometry Professor Carl Bassi in a new video about the Triple Track Technology putting system that Bassi tested through trials with laser-embedded golf balls. (Photo courtesy of Callaway)
A new video produced by the Callaway Golf Company takes viewers onto the campus of the University of Missouri–St. Louis and inside the process of the creation and testing of the Triple Track Technology putting system.
Callaway licensed Triple Track and has imprinted it on two of its new lines of golf balls: the ERC Soft, which went on sale Feb. 8, and the Chrome Soft X, which hit shelves Friday.
The story started around 2010, when St. Louisan entrepreneur Ray Barrett drew three parallel lines on his golf balls to help him see them better off the tee, but he found the lines were making more of a difference in his putting game. He consulted UMSL College of Optometry Professor Carl Bassi to see if there was a scientific basis for the phenomenon. Through a series of tests involving laser-embedded balls on a practice green, Bassi helped Barrett determine the optimal length, width and color of the lines – as well as the space between them – to harness a person’s vernier acuity: their ability to see discrepancies in alignment among line segments. Bassi’s testing found that, at 10 feet, golfers who lined up their putts with Triple Track aimed about 12 percent better than those who didn’t.
“This is the kind of project I like personally,” Bassi said in the video. “Coming up with creative and new ways to attack very practical kinds of problems that may be happening.”
A team from Callaway shot the footage for the video over a two-day stretch in February, just after the release of the ERC Soft. It features Bassi teaching class in Marillac Hall, doing interviews in the Patient Care Center and giving a rundown in his office of the product testing he conducted, complete with the laser-embedded prototype ball.
The video, which Callaway posted on its site to coincide with the release of the Chrome Soft X, also includes scenes from around campus and St. Louis. The Chrome Soft X with Triple Track is a version of the ball Phil Mickelson uses on the PGA Tour. Mickelson won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am using the ball in February and finished in the top 20 at this year’s Masters Tournament on April 14.
“Just the aim is one of the things that’s most important for many of the elite golfers,” Bassi told his class in the video. “They don’t need to worry about stroke. Their stroke is so well practiced that it’s going to be the same. It’s going to be this very repetitive thing that goes on. What’s going to be different is the way the ball is aimed and aimed properly.”
