3 Up Golf 3F12 Ball

3 Up Golf is not your prototypical golf ball company in the broad spectrum that is the golfing world. While the bottom line is a huge part of doing business in any spectrum, President of 3Up Golf Rob Zimmerman has used his personal health experience to create a simple guide to making golf balls for fun and profit.

Create a product that he'd be proud to put his name on -- Charge a reasonable pricePay 3 Up's bills from step two -- Give the rest back to charity -- Create an even better product and repeat!

Zimmerman and 3 Up Golf have pledged that for every dozen balls sold, $3.00 will be going directly to a charity. Every time 3 Up reaches the 333rd dozen balls sold, he will write a check for $1,000 to the current charity on their radar.

For a full list of their past and future plans for charitable contributions, visit their website.

Recently we received one dozen of 3 Up's 3F12 balls to put through their paces to see how their ball stacked up against some of the competition.

The 3F12 is a premium 3 piece golf ball that you're going to truly love playing. It was born out of a need for a truly remarkable 3 piece cast urethane ball at an equally remarkable price point. At 3 Up, we're passionate about golf at all levels and the 3F12 will benefit your game regardless of handicap.

Here is what we found.

First and foremost, the feel of the 3F12 ball is unbelievable. No matter what club I hit the ball with, it had an almost not there feel on every shot. With the driver, though the ball is created to have more spin than most balls on the market when it comes to short irons. Seemingly had no effect on the spin rate coming off the tee with the driver.

Even on the green the ball coming off the face of the putter makes a nice 'clicking' sound you look for on purely struck putts every time. Even on off centre strikes.

3 Up's website attests that the 3-piece design ensures that the massive spin characteristics are only employed when you hit the ball with lofted clubs. We can certainly back this claim up as every player that tested the 3F12 had nearly the same thing to say about the balls performance when it came to spin.

Speaking of the spin of the ball. When we tested it against other balls on the market (Maxfli U4x, U6, Titlest NXT Tour & Pro V1) we found that the feel of the ball around the green and from within 100 yards of the green was the better ball, from nearly every player that tested the 3F12.

If the ball needed to spin and check, it did so as needed. If the ball needed to hit and release, it did so as needed. Though the distance was not the same as with other balls, namely the Maxfli U6, there was no substantial distance loss to warrant not wanting to have this ball in your bag.

Finally, I want to address the durability of the 3F12 ball. I personally played 36 holes with the same ball in back-to-back rounds -- Cleaning only mud off the ball when necessary. The cover of the ball showed little to no where marks, even after a brief encounter with a tree.

The 3F12 after 36 holes with the same ball

Pros: Incredible feel and durability with a great combination of both short game spin characteristics without giving up much distance off the tee.

Cons: We did find some distance issues compared to other balls tested against the 3F12.

Overall: The feel and durability of the 3F12 out shinned nearly every ball we put it up against in our testing process. From short game to putting this ball reacted on plane, if not better than all other balls we put it up against. Combine the play-ability of the 3F12 and the company's direction in it's charitable causes. This ball will be in our bags for the foreseeable future.