It is the question Mike Fox, TaylorMade’s senior director of product creation for golf balls, gets asked most often: When will TaylorMade put the stripe seen on its Tour Response ball on to its TP5 line? “Now,” Fox said, “I have an answer for them.”

Indeed, that answer is “now.” TaylorMade is expanding its TP5 family with its latest iterations—TP5 and TP5x Stripe. The Stripe was first introduced on the Tour Response in 2022 and is the most popular visual aesthetic TaylorMade offers.

However, TaylorMade is not just adopting the bright green stripe on Tour Response. Rather, the stripe on TP5/TP5x is a clear 22-millimeter digital band that wraps around the center of the ball with a thin black line that runs through the middle. The black line provides an additional putter sightline, making it easy to align putts and make more consistent strokes, according to the company.

Since the inception of the stripe, TaylorMade has increased production tenfold. The company currently has eight digital printers and is considering growing that number. The bones of the stripe-design remain unchanged, but the process has become more precise. Printing a straight line on a round object is more complicated than it sounds, but TaylorMade has developed a system using proprietary machinery. Its digital printers find the same dimple on every ball and print the line on the center seam.

The outcome is a perfectly centered visual aid that provides immediate feedback. Center strikes consistently roll end over end, whereas the digital band wobbles in motion on mis-hits.

The development of TP5 and TP5x Stripe took 42 months and included more than 300 hours of robot testing, nearly 20,000 shots recorded and more than 550 prototypes. The result is a ball that will not only receive attention at retail, but on tour as well.

“Perhaps the most excited person for this new stripe product is Tommy Fleetwood,” Fox said. “When I told him about this, his face lit up like a little kid. He plays our Pix product but practices putting with the Tour Response Stripe to improve his alignment from 10 feet and in.”

The TP5 and TP5x Stripe balls will be available for $58 per dozen beginning Aug. 29.

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com