News·27 September 2026·3 min read
Today's Golfer Robot Tested 11 DTC Balls — and Eight of Them Finished Within 0.8 Yards
The gaps that mattered weren't between the brands. They were between two outliers and everything else.
Today's Golfer has published a breakout of the direct-to-consumer balls in its 62-ball robot test, covering 11 DTC models from Seed, Vice and Kirkland across five shot types on a $100,000* (£75,458) robot. The finding worth your attention: at slower driver speed, eight of the 11 were separated by 0.8 yards of carry and 0.6mph of ball speed.
Eight balls, one cluster
The test isolated the ball as the only variable — same strike, every shot. Under those conditions, most of the DTC field off the tee was effectively indistinguishable. Two models did detach: Today's Golfer recorded the Seed SD-05 as 4.5 yards (2.77%) shorter than the longest DTC ball at slow swing speed, with the SD-15 giving up 3.5 yards. Both are cheaper, lower-construction models, and the publication's own read is that neither is built for driver distance. The Seed SD-02 came out fastest and longest, 1.1 yards clear of the next ball. That is a useful shape of result. It means the choice between most premium DTC urethane balls is not a distance decision, because the distance differences are smaller than your own shot-to-shot variation.
Verified DataSource: Today's Golfer.
*Converted to £ at the exchange rate on 27 September 2026, the day this article was published (US$1 = £0.75458). Prices are as reported and subject to change; the conversion was correct at the time of publishing.
Where the separation actually shows up
On approach play, Today's Golfer found no single dominant DTC ball: the SD-02 produced the longest distance, the Kirkland Signature V3.0 the highest spin, the Vice Pro Plus the steepest descent angle, and the Vice Pro the best carry-distance consistency. Four different balls, four different wins — which is another way of saying the right one depends entirely on what your game is short of. The publication ran a separate head-to-head between the SD-02 and the Vice Pro Plus on the same robot and came out barely able to split them: the SD-02 took driver performance at every speed with less spin and faster ball speed, but the ball-speed margin was under 0.1mph, and irons and wedges came down to whether you want traditional high-spin, lower-flight behaviour or a touch more flight and carry. Their closing advice was to buy whichever is cheaper at the time.
What a fitting does with this
This is the pattern we see constantly at KaddieIQ, and it has nothing to do with which logo is on the ball. When a robot removes the golfer, most balls in a price tier converge off the tee and diverge around the green — so the ball that suits you is decided by descent angle, wedge spin and feel, not by a carry number in a chart. The two Seed models that fell 3.5 to 4.5 yards behind are still sensible buys for someone whose problem isn't distance; Today's Golfer rated the SD-15 the best two-piece DTC ball in the test. Our BallFIT tool is free and we don't sell balls, so we have no stake in whether you end up on a DTC model or a tour ball from a major brand. What we'd push back on is choosing either one from a single headline figure. Read the category you actually need — short game, consistency, descent — and let the cheaper ball win when the data is this tight.
Questions? contact@kaddieiq.com
What “Verified Data” means
The figures inside a Verified Data panel are checked against a named, public source — a retail listing, a press release, an independent test — before they are published, and we link to that source directly. They are not the same as a manufacturer’s own performance claims, which we report as claims, in the body text, until an independent test confirms them. If a number carries the badge, you can check it yourself at the source link below the panel; if it doesn’t, treat it as reported rather than verified. KaddieIQ is not paid by any equipment brand and sells no clubs or balls.