What Can Pink Do for You? Bridgestone e6 Soft Lady

Bridgestone’s new e6 Soft Lady features pink stamping to entice female golfers. But don’t assume it’s ladies only.

By Tony Dear

Take your eye off the ball, or rather the ball line-up, for a moment and you quickly lose touch with what’s available. Bridgestone’s roster of golf balls evolves quickly, and it welcomed another newcomer last week when the company unveiled the e6 Soft Lady – the third ball in the e6 family launched early last year.

The mid-price e6 Soft and e6 Speed replaced the old e5, e6, and e7 models, and focused primarily on feel and distance. Both were three-piece designs with ionomer covers, a mantle layer, and large cores.

Bridgestone’s ball-fitting expert Adam Rehberg said the e6 Soft took the best elements of the original e6 and e5 – low driver spin and soft feel, while the e6 Speed combined the e6’s easy-launch with the e7’s distance capabilities resulting in faster ball speed and increased carry distance.

Like its predecessors, the new e6 Soft Lady is designed to reduce sidespin, enabling golfers to hit more fairways and give themselves more scoring opportunities. It shares exactly the same technology and performance characteristics as the e6 Soft, but has pink stamping and comes in a pink box to appeal to more female golfers. And unlike its stablemate the two-piece Lady Precept – the best-selling women’s ball, the e6 Soft Lady is a three-piece construction.

“The e6 Soft is going to be preferred over the Lady Precept by better players,” says Elliot Mellow, Bridgestone’s Marketing Manager. “Besides the difference in construction, the e6 Soft has a surlyn cover while the Lady Precept has an ionomer cover. The Precept ball is geared toward players with moderate swing speeds to help them produce higher launch with low spin off the driver for longer distance and carry.”

Mellow adds that even though a significant percentage of female golfers being fitted for a golf ball were finding the e6 Soft performed better for them than anything else, they weren’t necessarily buying the product because ‘the packaging doesn’t tell a female-driven story’. “At the end of the day, this golf ball is designed to ensure that more female golfers are confident in their selection,” Mellow says. “Because that ultimately leads to better scores.”

Even though the packaging and stamping definitely suggest female, Mellow stresses that, technically, the e6 Soft Lady could well be suitable for many male golfers depending on what characteristics they favor and what type of golfer they are.

“It definitely isn’t exclusive to the female demographic,” he adds.

I tried the e6 Soft Lady on my boys’ high school team earlier this week and, though one or two were troubled by the name at first – “Soft Lady, Coach?” they quickly came around. “I’d play this,” said the team captain, an 80-85 shooter who hits the ball plenty far but sometimes lacks touch on and around the greens.

The free BFIT Ball-Fitting App, which turns your iPhone into a mobile launch monitor, and the new online feature which offers two levels of fitting – ‘Quick Fit’, and ‘I Know My Game’. And the ‘I’ve Been Measured’ path allows you to input launch monitor data, ensuring the most accurate recommendation possible, says Bridgestone.

$30/dozen
bridgestonegolf.com

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