At the Biltmore Championship Asheville in North Carolina, mysterious black boxes have started appearing around the PGA Tour. Inside them are new Srixon golf balls that are not yet available to consumers. A new Z-Star XV has been spotted, along with what appears to be the next generation of the Z-Star Diamond.
Lucas Glover has already been involved in testing the Diamond, and his reaction — shared in a promotional video by Srixon — was exactly the kind of comment any marketing department would welcome: “Amazing.” The American also said he “hadn’t seen that kind of speed in a while.”
Welcome to the 2027 golf equipment season.
It starts in September 2026.
The story could simply be: Srixon is preparing new golf balls. But those black boxes spotted in Asheville raise a much more interesting question for golfers.
Why does a golf ball that still performs perfectly well need replacing every two years?
Because the current Z-Star XV is hardly obsolete. It is played by the likes of Hideki Matsuyama, Ryan Fox, Sepp Straka and Shane Lowry. Lowry has just won the Irish Open with it. According to Srixon, the Z-Star family recorded more than 45 victories worldwide in 2025.
And the current generation only reached the market in January 2025.
Less than two years later, its successor is already being tested on Tour.
There is nothing unusual about that. Nor is it something unique to Srixon.
It is simply how a significant part of the modern golf equipment industry works.
Nine generations in sixteen years
The original Srixon Z-Star appeared in 2009. The model introduced in January 2025 was already the ninth generation of the franchise.
Srixon operates on an approximately two-year product cycle, meaning the balls currently being tested on Tour are likely to provide the basis for the next commercial generation.
What we are seeing in Asheville is part of a process commonly referred to as Tour “seeding” and validation. Before a new golf ball reaches retail shelves, manufacturers provide prototypes to professional players, collect feedback and use those observations to validate — and sometimes adjust — their final designs.
So this is not simply about placing a mysterious black box next to a Tour player’s golf bag and waiting for somebody to photograph it.
Professional golfers can detect extremely small differences in launch, spin, trajectory and feel.
Sepp Straka provides an interesting example. In 2026, the Austrian tested the Z-Star Diamond before eventually returning to the Z-Star XV because the Diamond produced a higher trajectory than the window he wanted to see.
At that level, seemingly tiny differences matter.
A few hundred rpm of spin, a slightly different launch window or a small change in peak height can influence how an elite player sees and controls a shot.
For an 18-handicap golfer, however, the question is rather different.
Sometimes Tour players actually ask manufacturers not to change too much
There is a particularly revealing story from Srixon’s development of the 2025 Z-Star Diamond.
Dunlop’s engineers explained that they slightly reduced the compression of the ball during development. But they also revealed something arguably more interesting: the previous Diamond had been so well received by contracted players that some of them effectively asked the engineers not to change it too much.
That captures the paradox perfectly.
The industry needs another generation.
Engineers need to find improvements.
Marketing departments will eventually need to explain why the new ball is better.
Meanwhile, some of the best golfers in the world are asking the engineers to be careful not to alter a golf ball they already like.
That does not mean research and development are pointless.
Far from it.
For the 2025 generation, Srixon worked on an extremely thin urethane cover incorporating biomass material, its Spin Skin+ coating and the construction of the core. With the XV, its engineers also sought to maintain driver distance while increasing iron spin.
Those are genuine engineering developments.
But there is another question that consumers are rarely encouraged to ask:
How large is the improvement?
“More” does not necessarily mean “much more”
Look through successive golf ball launches and the vocabulary becomes familiar.
More speed.
More distance.
More spin.
Better control.
Improved feel.
A more stable flight.
The problem is not necessarily that these claims are false.
The problem is often the absence of scale.
If a new golf ball produces more speed, how much more?
0.1 mph? 0.5 mph? 1 mph?
If it generates more spin with a 7-iron, are we talking about 50 rpm, 150 rpm or 500 rpm?
If it travels farther, is the gain half a metre, two metres or five?
And perhaps most importantly: at what swing speed and for what type of golfer?
To establish whether a new generation represents meaningful progress for an amateur, the old and new balls should ideally be compared under identical conditions: same golfer, same club, comparable delivery parameters and enough shots to distinguish a genuine equipment difference from the golfer’s own natural dispersion.
Yet marketing frequently gives us the conclusion before giving us the measurement.
The new generation is “better”.
What golfers really need to know is: better by how much?
The replacement cycle is also an economic model
There is another reason why the two-year cycle deserves scrutiny. This one is not technical. It is economic.
Srixon is far from alone in regularly replacing its premium golf balls. Titleist also works on a two-year cycle with the Pro V1 and Pro V1x. Callaway and TaylorMade generally operate on comparable cycles with their premium ranges.
And almost simultaneously with the mysterious Srixon balls appearing in Asheville, new Pro V1 and Pro V1x models carrying a “Split Arrow” sidestamp appeared on the USGA Conforming Golf Ball List.
Once again, the indications are that Titleist is preparing its next generation after launching the current Pro V1 and Pro V1x models in early 2025.
This business model is not exactly hidden.
In its 2025 annual report to investors, Acushnet — the parent company of Titleist — explains that new Titleist golf ball models are generally introduced on a two-year cycle.
More importantly, the company also acknowledges that sales of newly introduced golf balls tend to be higher during the first year of the product cycle than during the second.
That matters.
A new generation is simultaneously an engineering project and a commercial event.
Acushnet generated approximately $2.56 billion in sales in 2025. Consumable products — principally golf balls and gloves — represented close to 40% of the company’s sales.
The constant introduction of new products is therefore not merely a communication exercise.
It is part of the economics of the golf equipment business.
The strange paradox: today’s golf ball is already operating close to regulatory limits
There is another contradiction worth considering.
While manufacturers continue investing money and engineering resources in extracting additional performance from golf balls, golf’s governing bodies have spent years trying to manage increasing hitting distances.
In 2025, average driving distance reached 302.8 yards on the PGA Tour — approximately 277 metres.
On the Korn Ferry Tour it reached 308.4 yards, while the DP World Tour average stood at 297.8 yards.
Distance has become significant enough for the USGA and The R&A to spend years studying changes to the Overall Distance Standard governing golf ball performance.
Under the existing test protocol, balls are tested at a clubhead speed of 120 mph. The previously announced proposal would increase that test speed to 125 mph, using an 11-degree launch angle and 2,220 rpm of spin, while retaining the 317-yard overall distance limit plus a three-yard tolerance.
Initial estimates from the USGA and The R&A suggested the change could reduce distance by less than five yards for many affected recreational golfers, around 9 to 11 yards for male professionals, and potentially 13 to 15 yards for the longest hitters.
But the situation changed again in June 2026.
The USGA, The R&A, PGA Tour and DP World Tour jointly acknowledged that hitting distances at the elite level were continuing to increase, while announcing that no change to the Overall Distance Standard test protocol would take effect before January 2030 as alternative approaches continue to be studied.
It creates a curious situation.
Manufacturers are spending money looking for additional performance.
The best golfers in the world are searching for tiny performance gains.
And golf’s governing bodies are simultaneously considering how to prevent the accumulation of those gains from continuing to alter the way courses are played.
A new golf ball is not necessarily a golf ball you need
None of this means the next Z-Star will be identical to the 2025 model.
It may objectively be better.
Lucas Glover’s comments about the speed of the new Diamond are certainly worth noting. And as the Tour validation process continues, we should learn much more about the technical changes when Srixon eventually reveals the final specifications.
But there are at least three different meanings of the word “better”.
A golf ball can be better in a laboratory.
It can be better for Lucas Glover.
And it can be better for you.
Those three statements are not interchangeable.
An elite professional capable of repeating impact with extraordinary consistency can benefit from a change in trajectory or spin that an amateur may never be able to separate from his or her own shot dispersion.
Conversely, a change in feel, launch or spin characteristics could genuinely suit some recreational golfers while making the ball less suitable for others.
That is why perhaps the first question we should ask when a new generation appears is no longer:
“Is it better than the previous ball?”
Instead, ask:
“What has actually changed, by how much, and does that difference correspond to my game?”
New does not automatically mean useful
This is one of the issues explored in Think Before You Swing – Volume 2: the golf equipment industry inevitably depends on novelty.
A manufacturer cannot launch a new golf ball every two years while making its main advertising message: “The previous one was already excellent and most golfers can happily continue playing it.”
Yet in some cases, that may be the most rational advice.
The next Srixon Z-Star therefore deserves our attention. When the final production ball becomes available, the interesting test will not simply be whether it performs well. Given the quality of modern premium golf balls, it almost certainly will.
The useful comparison will be against the generation it replaces.
Not simply to determine whether the new ball is better.
But to establish how much better it is, for which golfers, and at what point that difference becomes significant enough to matter on a golf course.
After nine generations of the Z-Star since 2009, perhaps the real question is no longer whether engineers can continue improving a golf ball.
They probably can.
The more interesting question is whether the golfer buying it will be able to see that improvement on the scorecard.