Tour Striker Smart Ball Review
The Tour Striker Smart Ball is one of the few training devices that can help you throughout your entire swing. It is a functional partial swing trainer, meaning it can help in certain areas of your swing. It is also a full swing trainer, which means it can be used through the entire swing as well. We have a list of golf swing training aids that we use daily with our students. With the increasing popularity of the Smart Ball, we decided to test it out to see if it could make our list of favorite trainers.
What is the Tour Striker Smart Ball?
The Smart Ball is an inflatable ball connected to a lanyard that hangs around our neck. The way you use the Smart Ball is by hanging the inflated ball from your neck. You approach the ball (or just get in your swing stance if not using a ball) and now the ball is hanging freely.
Now you place the ball between the forearms and, as you swing your club, you try to keep the ball in place between your forearms.
This training tool is what is known as a connection device. It is meant to train the arms to work synchronously, and it is meant to train the arms to work in unison with your body, especially the shoulders and hips.
As your arms work together with each other and your body, the result is a more unified contact which leads to cleaner contact and straighter, more powerful shots.
One of the claims of those that tout the greatness of the Tour Striker Smart Ball is that players of all skill levels, from beginner to advanced, will benefit from training with it. Furthermore, it supposedly works with every club swing (drives, iron shots, chips, putts, etc.).
We, of course, were skeptical of this claim. Having thoroughly tested dozens of different training products, there are only a select few that can actually provide benefit to most golfers.
Testing the Striker Smart Ball
As is always the case when we test new products, we started with our own team members and took the Smart Ball to the range. The Smart Ball is very simplistic in its design, which lends itself to being very easy to use. Put the lanyard around your neck. Inflate the ball. Keep the ball between your arms during your swing. No instructions or further help from videos was necessary. It may be the easiest to use trainer we've tested to date.
On our team we have a good mix of intermediate to advanced golfers and everything in between. All of us enjoyed using the Smart Ball. The simple design and ease of use are great and among the best we've seen. And we were amazed at how it truly could be used through the entire golf swing, from the beginning of the backswing all the way to the top of the follow through on both drives and iron shots. It gave each of us something slightly different to focus on based on our individual swing differences and tendencies, which was remarkable.
As we moved on to testing the device with pitches and chips, the Smart Ball continued to impress. Again, each of us found that it was helpful in creating better contact throughout our shots. When we took it to the putting green, it didn't prove to be very helpful. It also didn't hinder us. It just felt arbitrary, which might be because we already have the fundamentals down in our putting swings.
Whenever we get positive results through our own testing of new training aids, we start to incorporate them into our instruction with students. This is where we really can measure effectiveness and improvement. Most of our students really enjoyed using the Smart Ball, and it helped them feel how the arms and body move together. Using before and after videos, many of our students saw marked improvement in their swing, most commonly in the backswing and downswing.
Where the Smart Ball fell short was with brand new to beginner golfers. For many, swinging a golf club can feel really strange at first. And some take a while before they start feeling somewhat comfortable swinging a club. When we added the Smart Ball to the mix with these types of players, the result was mostly frustration. Interestingly, however, newcomers and newly beginners did benefit a lot from using the Smart Ball to learn proper putting form.
Our Tour Striker Ball Final Verdict
The Smart Ball is one of the simplest to use trainers we've ever tested. It is also one of the most affordable swing aids out there. We do not recommend the Smart Ball for newcomers to the sport, except for learning to putt. For you newcomers, our top recommendation would be the Orange Whip. For more intermediate to advanced players, we fully endorse the Tour Striker Smart Ball. This tool will absolutely benefit you by unifying arm and body movement through your swing in almost every type of shot, including pitching, chipping, iron shots, and drives. This versatility truly makes this a remarkable tool.