In 2020, Bridgestone had an idea to improve the golf ball that had nothing to do with its core, how it spun or how far it went.
It all centered around visual performance technology and using the mindset of a golfer to help improve putting. Through rounds of testing and working with PGA Tour player Jason Day’s performance coach, Jason Goldsmith, Bridgestone came up with Mindset.
On the surface, Mindset is just two circles and a dot, but what they represent and how they activate a thought process for a golfer make it that much more than markings on a ball.
“We really got to thinking about what could we do with the golf ball to allow someone to actually, physically play better,” Elliot Mellow, golf ball marketing manager at Bridgestone, said. “The ethos of what Bridgestone is, it’s all about high performance products, whether it’s a golf ball or an Indy 500 race car tire and if we’re going to put our name on it, it’s going to be the best it can be. The same thing held true when it came to visual technology on the ball, we weren’t just going to decorate something because it’s trendy.”
Bridgestone tested alignment lines on the ball and the results they saw showed that there were flaws with the alignment system. After talking with Goldsmith about what he and Day work on together, through the mental side of the game and mental focus, Bridgestone set out to make something that would activate actual thinking and play on some neuroscience through colors and schemes.
On the outer edge of the marking there is a red circle with an arrow, inside of that there is a yellow circle and inside of that there is a green dot. The thought is that the red circle and arrow signal the player to line their putt up on the green and find the spot they want to hit. The yellow circle tells you to look at the golf ball and then visualize your shot and finally the green dot tells the golfer to clear their mind and focus on the dot.
“If you’ve gone through the three steps correctly, what happens is it clears your mind from analytical thought and allows you to execute the shot that you just visualized,” Mellow said. “There’s a part of your brain at analyzing things and that’s where the red and yellow portion of this come into play with the identification and visualization of the shot really helps to activate that part of your brain. And then when you get into the green dot, that’s where it activates the athletic side of your brain.”
The thought is that the green dot helps turn off the analytical side of your brain and turns on the athletic side to help you perform better without overanalyzing what you’re doing.
The Mindset marking is offered as an option on all four versions of the new Tour B line from Bridgestone. As they did with developing Mindset, Bridgestone put plenty of research and data into the Tour B line to continue advancing the evolution of that line of golf balls.
“We got the polymer science with the reactive material (on the golf ball). We have ball fitting, which is kind of our core identity as a brand,” Mellow said. “And then we have this new, exciting visual technology with mindset that, quite frankly, has just been gangbusters for us from a consumer side. It’s definitely exceeding expectations in terms of consumer adaptation and it’s resonating with folks, which is great.”
