After drilling up an old Cure and loving what it gave me, I decided to give the Element Au-79 a look.
I made a mistake in getting a used ball with a funky drill and not redrilling the whole ball. Instead, I just plugged the thumb and tried to move it to a place I could use it. Didn't work all that well.
The ball was drilled with pin above and to the left of the middle finger, and the CG swung WAY out to the right. There was a small weight hole in the ball that ended up not very far away from my PAP. Since my PAP is a little further up and in than most, I definitely was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
The end effect of the drilling was that I was bowtieing right in the middle of my palm almost, and clipping both finger holes and the thumb. The ball didn't do a thing but skate all the way to the pins. I could get some backend movement by laying my hand over to an extreme angle and almost spinning the ball, which pulled the track down a little and gave the ball a nice downlane projection with a bit of pop on the end.
Rather than post a full review, since that would be unfair to the ball, I'll just give generalities:
Positives -- Really good carry. The Cure is the same way. DynoThane cores do a good job of retaining energy and it shows in the pin carry department. Light hits, heavy hits, wherever the ball hit it did a good job of carrying. Also, the surface appeared to be very tunable. The ball gave me exactly what I put into it.
Negatives -- Not a lot of recovery right, even when I adjusted my axis and tilt. Hold on pulled shots was just decent. And this may not mean anything to most of you, but the coverstock on mine and two others I've seen don't resemble the promotional photos at all. Not that it makes a difference in performance but I wish the ball companies would hire better photographers.
I just sold this ball to another BR.com member and I'm sure he'll have better success with it than I did. I'd be open to trying another Au-79 in the future but definitely not with the drilling I had on my first one.
Jess