Noodle Golf Balls Review (2026): TaylorMade's Value Line, Priced Per Ball

Quick answer

TaylorMade’s value shelf, priced per ball

Prices verified August 26, 2026 from TaylorMade’s own product pages and DICK’S Sporting Goods. The Tour Response is there for context — it’s the cheapest urethane ball TaylorMade sells, and the step up this article keeps referring to.

A ball that outlived the brand that made it

The Noodle is the only ball TaylorMade sells that TaylorMade didn’t create. It started life as a Maxfli product, a soft, cheap distance ball, and came over when TaylorMade’s parent acquired Maxfli’s ball business in a deal effective at the end of 2002. When TaylorMade sold the Maxfli brand to DICK’S Sporting Goods in 2008, it kept the Noodle trademark for itself.

That detail explains a shelf oddity that confuses buyers to this day. Maxfli is now a DICK’S house brand, made by whoever DICK’S contracts. The Noodle, the ball that was once Maxfli’s bestseller, is a TaylorMade product. That name recognition is why TaylorMade held onto it: plenty of golfers who couldn’t name a single current TaylorMade ball can name the Noodle.

Our TaylorMade lineup guide maps the whole range from the TP5 down. This piece stays on the value tier, where the differences are easy to miss and the robot coverage is patchy.

Noodle Long and Soft (~69): $0.92 a ball

The Noodle Long and Soft (~69) is a two-piece ionomer ball sold in bulk. TaylorMade’s own store lists the 24-ball pack at $21.99 — about $0.92 a ball, or roughly $11 a dozen — though the page showed out of stock when we checked in late August 2026. Walmart and Big 5 both carry a 15-ball pack at about $19. Nobody sells it as a plain dozen, which tells you who it’s for: golfers who buy balls by weight.

TaylorMade markets an “ultra-soft 34 compression core” for it. That number describes the core alone, and core numbers always read far softer than the assembled ball — our catalog places the finished Noodle at ~69, mid-band and 19 points firmer than the SpeedSoft. The build is high launch and low spin, which helps a slice stay findable and gets a slow swing airborne.

What the Noodle doesn’t have is data. It has never appeared in MyGolfSpy’s robot test fields, 2026 included, and Today’s Golfer’s TaylorMade robot test skipped it too, so every distance claim attached to it is a manufacturer’s. At $0.92 a ball that’s an acceptable trade. Buy it for what it verifiably is — the cheapest TaylorMade in production — and not for any performance number printed near it.

Distance+ (~77): the label and the gauge disagree

The Distance+ (~77) is the value ball TaylorMade actually merchandises. $21.99 a dozen on TaylorMade’s site, the 2025 edition at the same price at DICK’S, two-piece ionomer, built on the REACT Speed Core with a “Plus Alignment Aid” stamped on the side for lining up putts.

TaylorMade lists it at 77 compression, and our catalog carries the stated number. Today’s Golfer measured it at 95 in their 62-ball robot test — a full compression band firmer than the label, tour-ball territory. Stated and measured compression disagree across the industry, but an 18-point gap is wide, and it moves the fitting answer: a 95-compression ball wants a much faster swing than a 77 does.

The same Today’s Golfer test explains what that firmness buys and costs. The Distance+ took their bronze medal for tee-to-green performance at 78 mph, sat near the top of the leaderboard at all three driver speeds — and produced the lowest short-game spin of their entire 62-ball field, 3,685 rpm. It was absent from MyGolfSpy’s 2026 test, so that is the one independent dataset it has: long off the tee, and last in the field when a chip needs to check.

SpeedSoft (~50): the one with data

The SpeedSoft (~50) is the ball this line should be judged by, because it’s the only one of the three that made MyGolfSpy’s 2026 field. $24.99 a dozen on TaylorMade’s site in white and yellow, plus the splash-painted SpeedSoft Ink colorways (MyGolfSpy’s launch coverage has the full color list). It joined the line in 2024, built on a large low-compression core TaylorMade calls PWRCORE, and at ~50 it’s the softest ball TaylorMade has ever made — a number Today’s Golfer’s gauge confirmed exactly.

In MyGolfSpy’s 2026 48-ball test it came away as the ionomer pick at mid swing speed — the same slot the Titleist Tour Soft took at high speed and the Amazon Basics took at low speed. The numbers behind that pick run in two directions:

The iron result is the surprising half. Off the driver, soft balls give up speed to firm ones at every test speed — though at 85 mph the whole 48-ball field fit inside 2 mph, so “slowest” costs almost nothing there. Off the iron the order flipped outright, and MyGolfSpy’s slow-speed iron chart put the three softest balls in the field fastest, ahead of every premium tour ball. For a golfer who swings near or below the 94 mph amateur average TrackMan reports, that flip is the argument for the SpeedSoft over both of its cheaper siblings.

Our full SpeedSoft review works through every one of those rows with the per-ball numbers off MyGolfSpy’s dashboard, plus the Golf Digest Hot List result and the SpeedSoft Ink colorways.

The greenside row is the ceiling. Bottom five of 48, alongside the Callaway Supersoft and the Amazon Basics ball — our Amazon Basics review covers that one’s nearly identical profile. Soft feel off the putter and greenside bite are different properties, and the SpeedSoft has the first without the second.

What the cover costs all three

Every ball in this line wears an ionomer cover, so one dataset settles what the step up to urethane buys. MyGolfSpy’s cover-type analysis of the same 48-ball field averaged the two materials:

Dry, the gap is about 1,900 rpm on a short pitch. Wet — dew, a damp lie, anything out of the rough — the average ionomer ball kept 55 percent of its spin while the average urethane ball kept 90. Our urethane vs ionomer breakdown works through what those numbers mean shot by shot.

Within TaylorMade, the step up is the Tour Response (~74) at a $42.99 list price (marked down to $39.99 on TaylorMade’s own site in late August 2026) — urethane-covered, and in the same MyGolfSpy wet-spin data it held 77 percent of its dry spin (10,103 rpm down to 7,781). That’s the weakest wet retention among the urethane balls tested, and it still roughly doubled the ionomer average. Our Tour Response review covers it in full. Paying $3.58 a ball instead of $1.83–$2.08 for the cover is a good trade only if short shots are where your strokes go; the compression chart explains how cover and core split the work.

Which one fits you

Buy the Noodle if you lose balls. At $0.92 each against $4.83 for a TaylorMade TP5 (~93), a lost Noodle costs less than a fifth as much, and its high-launch, low-spin build keeps a slice more playable. Nothing about it is measured; everything about it is cheap. That can be the right answer.

Buy the Distance+ if you want the alignment line and a firmer flight at the same $21.99 a dozen the Noodle charges per 24. On Today’s Golfer’s gauge it played like a 95-compression ball, so it fits a faster swing than its label suggests.

Buy the SpeedSoft if you swing at or below the mid-90s and want the value TaylorMade with the most proof behind it. MyGolfSpy’s mid-speed ionomer pick, top-5 iron ball speed, softest feel in the brand’s history — and a documented bottom-5 greenside result you accept going in.

Skip all three if you regularly play pitches that need to stop within a step or two. That’s a urethane cover’s job, the wet-spin table shows how big the gap gets, and the Tour Response at $42.99 is the cheapest TaylorMade that does it.

The next step

Three balls inside a $3 window: one MyGolfSpy-tested, one measured a full band firmer than its label, one priced by the bucket. The right answer depends on your driver speed and where your round leaks strokes, which is what the 90-second BallCaddie fitting quiz scores you on — it ranks the full catalog, TaylorMade’s value line included, against your answers. Or put these three side by side in the ball catalog.

For deeper dives

• TaylorMade golf balls: the complete lineup — the whole range mapped, TP5 to Noodle
• TaylorMade Tour Response review — the urethane step up this article keeps pointing at
• Golf ball compression chart — every catalog ball by compression, and how to read the bands
• How to choose a golf ball by swing speed — the fitting order that decides between these three
• Urethane vs ionomer golf balls — the cover-material trade, with the wet-spin data
• The 2026 MyGolfSpy ball test — the 48-ball robot test read as fitting criteria

Key takeaways

• The Noodle started life as a Maxfli ball; TaylorMade kept the trademark when it sold Maxfli to DICK’S in 2008, which is why the two brands sit in different aisles today.
• At $21.99 for a 24-ball pack (about $0.92 a ball), the Noodle Long and Soft is the cheapest ball TaylorMade sells, offered in bulk packs rather than dozens.
• The Distance+ is listed at 77 compression, but Today’s Golfer’s robot test measured it at 95 — a full band firmer — and gave it a bronze medal tee-to-green at 78 mph alongside the lowest short-game spin of their 62-ball field.
• The SpeedSoft is the only TaylorMade value ball in MyGolfSpy’s 2026 48-ball test, where it was the ionomer pick at mid swing speed; Today’s Golfer’s gauge measured it at exactly the 50 compression TaylorMade claims.
• Its numbers split by club: bottom-4 ball speed off the driver, top-5 off the 7-iron at mid speed, and at the slow swing speed the three softest balls in the field were the three fastest off the iron.
• All three balls wear ionomer covers, which averaged 3,506 rpm on a 35-yard wedge against 5,415 rpm for urethane, and kept 55 percent of full-wedge spin in the wet against urethane’s 90.
• The cheapest urethane step up in the brand is the Tour Response at $42.99 — the weakest wet-spin retainer among tested urethane balls at 77 percent, and still roughly double the ionomer average.