The Phobia is the first symmetrical-cored ball in Hammer’s Upper Mid Performance line in a number of years. Symmetrical weight blocks have been used recently in the High Performance line with the Scandal and Bad Intentions balls, and they have also been used almost exclusively in the Mid and Lower Mid lines, but in recent years the Upper Mid line has been dominated by balls containing Hammer’s asymmetrical Gas Mask core. The new symmetrical Phobia core is paired with the Semtex Pearl coverstock. This cover has only been used previously on the special edition Black Widow Limited, which we did not get to review. The Phobia comes out of the box finished with 1000 Abralon before being shined with Powerhouse Factory Finish Polish. This ball gave us more traction in the oil than the Rebel, while being just a step down in motion from the Scandal Pearl.

We started with this ball on our medium test pattern. Stroker and Tweener had their best reactions on this pattern with the box finish. The Phobia picked up very strong right past the arrows, while still coming off the breakpoint with authority. They both ...