Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
The Polara golf ball has different dimple design that makes it fly straighter than a conventional — and legal — ball.

A Cure for the Slice?

“That would be a miracle,” Dion Cooper, 26, of Brooklyn, said as he swatted balls last week at the Edgewater Golf Range in northern New Jersey.

“Straight as an arrow,” he yelped with a mix of awe and surprise. For the next five minutes, he rarely hit a ball crooked.

Or, as Mr. Cooper asked, “Is this magic?”

But as golf works to appeal to a younger generation that hits the links in cargo shorts and sandals and without a rulebook, does a nonconforming label still matter?

“I just want to go out and not spend the whole day looking for my ball,” he said.

“Part of the game is the challenge of hitting it straight,” said Charles Yoo, 33, of Edgewater.

Dave Felker, the former Callaway golf ball engineer and executive behind the Polara, said his product was meant to grow the game because it is not for the elite golfer.

Last year, Mr. Felker hired Golf Datatech, a research firm, to do a consumer survey of 1,000 frequent golfers. About 28 percent said they would be interested in playing a ball that would potentially improve their game even if it did not conform to the rules.

“More golfers are likely to take a nonconforming ball on the course,” Mr. Nathan said. “And if there is a tangible benefit, the appeal of that ball is stronger today than it was 10 years ago.”

“For the last 15 years, advances in conforming club and ball technologies have made it easier to play,” he said. “So we’ve already had a 15-year experiment on this make-it-easier logic. And what have been the results? Participation has not gone up. So we’re not going to dumb it down.

The science behind the ball is more or less straightforward.

On the two poles of the ball, the dimples are deeper and more concentrated and reinforce the horizontal spin axis. They work in tandem with the shallow dimples to generate lower drag, which combined with the lower lift creates a straighter and slightly lower trajectory.

The ball is now stamped with an arrow, which must be pointed toward the intended target to achieve the anticurving ball flight. The ball has two models beginning at about $30 a dozen.

Patrick Fallon, a teaching pro at the Edgewater range, intentionally tried to slice and hook the Polara ball last week. He curved it in each direction but only slightly. He said he believed the ball would have an appeal.

Al Caceres of Manhattan was one of the better golfers who said he would not play the Polara ball because it was nonconforming. But he said he would buy some for special uses.