Equipment Insider: Kaymer's high-tech, top-secret ball

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Check out more of Adam Barr's equipment coverage at AdamBarrGolfGearGuide.com.

Look at PGA Championship winner Martin Kaymer's golf ball, the five-layer TaylorMade Penta TP, and it's tempting to think of how the makers of men's razors have been adding blades over the years. Does the fourth blade actually make your face any smoother?

The important difference is, every layer of that Penta ball has a specific job to do. And they all teamed up into one effective golf ball for Kaymer, who had to avoid close shaves with the shore of Lake Michigan on his way to his first major championship win. It was also the first major win for the Penta.

Working from the inside out, the core of the Penta is the powerhouse, where the rubber recipe provides the super-ball reaction at impact. TaylorMade engineers say this core keeps the spin rate down, but still encourages a high launch. Among ball-makers, these recipes are always kept more secret than the formula for Coca-Cola, so the hows and whys of that rubber reaction are off-limits.

The second layer, the inner mantle, works best with long irons to provide a buttery feel while also providing that high launch/low spin combination, increasing the chances of a soft landing. The middle mantle is next; it is designed to work with mid-irons to keep them from ballooning. The outer mantle provides spin and feel on short irons, TaylorMade says. Finally, the urethane cover, which comes standard on most tour balls, enhances that short-game spin and feel and gives the "click" many players like to hear off their wedges.

In My Bag: Martin Kaymer

Driver: TaylorMade SuperTri (8.5 loft) Driver shaft: Mitsubishi Fubuki, 70 grams 3-wood: TaylorMade R9, 13 degrees 5-wood: TaylorMade Burner, 17.5 degrees Irons: TaylorMade rac MB (3-PW) Gap wedge: TaylorMade rac, 54 degrees Sand wedge:TaylorMade TP xFT ZTP, 58 degrees Putter: Ping Karsten Series Anser2 Ball: TaylorMade Penta TP

And for Kaymer, the Penta spun the right way to keep it on the world in some evil winds. Assisting in that effort were rac MB irons, a model TaylorMade no longer features, but one TOUR pros have always liked.

It's a muscle back blade with TaylorMade's sound-tuning "feel pockets" in the back, and it may be one of the company's most workable models. That served Kaymer well on Sunday, when he hit it to four feet on the par-3 12th, using 9-iron from 152 yards. (The birdie putt just slipped by.)

Even the shots that weren't exactly darts were useful. On 17, also a par-3, Kaymer kept his tee ball way right in regulation, taking the lake out of play and catching the green, but leaving himself a sizable lag. He got up and down, finishing with a left-edge six-footer, to save what turned out to be a crucial par.

When he got back to 17 less than an hour later, down a stroke in the playoff with Bubba Watson, Kaymer felt confident enough to rip a 5-iron to 15 feet. He drilled the putt for the birdie that evened the score and turned up the heat enough to boil it all down to the last playoff hole, the par-4 18th.

It's a hard driving hole under any circumstances, more so with one's head in a self-tightened vise of first-major pressure. Both Kaymer and Watson pushed their drives into cabbage on the right; even though he ended up getting the best result, Kaymer actually had the worse lie. (Watson's mishit approach went into the water short left of the green.)

Despite what happened on 18 in the playoff, Kaymer had driven the ball pretty well all week. He used a TaylorMade R9 SuperTri with just 8.5 degrees of loft. That loft may be fairly common on TOUR, but less so among average players who need help getting the ball into the air. The low loft likely helps Kaymer keep distance-robbing spin at bay. His driver had a 70-gram shaft from Mitsubishi. That's not as light as some being tried out there (Boo Weekley messed around with 39 grams last week), but its lightness surely added some ball speed for Kaymer last week.

Kaymer rolled the ball through the Straits with a Ping Karsten Series Anser2. Like all major winners who use Ping putters, Kaymer will be getting a solid golf commemorative edition of the club from Ping.