For men of a certain age, Santa sometimes has a brain freeze and relies on his algorithm for inspiration. If there is a small rectangular box under the tree with your name on it the wrapping is unlikely to heighten the suspense: either it is a box of premium, fits-like-a-glove socks, or a box of premium flies-like-a-bird golf balls. The socks will be lost too, just not so fast.
Golf balls are big business. In 2023 global sales were reportedly worth $984.5 million (€944 million). In my local golf shop, there are 52 species and subspecies stacked in front of the tills. Their positioning comes from the same dastardly marketing ploy that insists supermarket tills are surrounded by sweets and chocolate.
Golf has a blood-pact with consumerism. And because golf is insoluble there is a multi-billion-euro golf solutions industry. Technology sunk its teeth into the game and produced a conveyor belt of instruments to rescue golfers from their incompetence and to prey on their endlessly renewable optimism.
The massive golf ball industry is central to this confidence trick. On the boxes of golf balls, the usual buzzwords and unrequited promises are plastered on the front: distance, feel, spin. The market is so crowded now that standing out from the chorus line is a challenge. One ball is called Warbird, another is called Xtreme. Two punks. And just like movies and wine, you will find reviews for every ball under the sun.
A box of Pro V1s is the Christmas present of choice for many. But do they help the average golfer?
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For brand recognition, though, all of them are playing for second place. The latest poster for the Titleist Pro V1 includes the tag line: “The #1 gift in golf.” There is no empirical data to support such a claim, but giving a golfer a box of Pro V1s always feels like the equivalent of gifting somebody handmade chocolates: just enough of a luxury to qualify as an indulgence.
The Pro V1 is about to celebrate its 25th birthday. In an industry full of fads and the latest must-have-thing, it has been remarkably durable. The Big Bertha driver, another hardy annual, has been going since 1991, but it is no longer the market leader, or the cutting-edge solution for distance off the tee, like it was once perceived to be.
What Pro V1s had from the beginning was street cred. Towards the end of 2000 Titleist launched it at a PGA Tour event in Las Vegas. In the very first week 47 players switched to it, including the winner, Billy Andrade. His circumstances instantly adrenalised their marketing push.
“I was not having a very good year entering that event,” Andrade said recently. “I was around 160th on the money list, and there were only a few events left. I had already sent my cheque in for qualifying school. I was desperate. I vividly remember the first time I put it into play during a practice round. The ball was 20 yards longer than the Tour Prestige that I was playing at the time. It was like nothing I had ever played.”
Phil Mickelson finished second that week and he was one of the early converts too. In a televised exhibition match against Davis Love that autumn Mickelson hit a 445-yard drive with the new ball. John Daly led the driving distance on the PGA Tour that year with an average of 301 yards.
Among the pros, the Pro V1 immediately gained a reputation as a game-changer. “Players would come in the locker room and say, ‘Hey, I’m definitely going to play Pro V1 this week,’ and I would say, ‘Okay, well, hang on a second,” said Mac Fritz, in an interview with Athlon Sports recently – he was Titleist’s senior vice-president of tour promotions at the time.
“Then I’d go over to two other players I’d already given dozens to and snag a couple of sleeves from each of them. We had guys going to the first tee with half-empty boxes.”
It represented a technological leap: before that, players either used hard, solid balls or softer ones, some of which had a liquid core. The Pro V1 married the properties of a hard and soft ball. At the elite level of the game, power was starting to take over. Players wanted a ball that would reward their swing speed off the tee, but still give them control with their approach shots. For spin, Pro V1s were more intuitive than the existing balls on the market.
No other single piece of kit has had a comparable influence on the professional game in this century. The PGA Tour uses a company called The Darrell Survey to tabulate the equipment used by every player on all its tours on a weekly basis. According to their data the Pro V1 and the Pro V1x have been played in competition more than 97,000 times, which is six times more than its nearest market rival. In golf, there is no consensus about anything in the realm of playing equipment: this is the nearest thing.
So, this is where we come in. By putting their clubs and balls into the bags of the top players in the world, the golf industry is targeting us. How much are we prepared to pay? What are we prepared to believe? If your swing speed is less than 100 miles an hour, is this the ball for you? Have you ever turned down a Pro V1 on the basis of your inadequate swing speed?
According to James Hogg, a golf equipment writer with Today’s Golfer, two of the best balls for club golfers with slow swing speeds are made by Callaway, and the next best is produced by Wilson. But how many club golfers know their swing speed? How many ask their club pro what ball might suit them best?
If you’re a high handicapper, are you wasting your money on a Pro V1? Yes. If you have a mid-range handicap? It is still not worth it. But there are more sword-swallowers and fire-eaters in your club than players who can fully exploit the spin capacity of a Pro V1, intentionally.
Under a variety of guises, the golf industry is always flogging us a feeling. Do those shoes feel good? That polo shirt? That driver? That putter? At the bottom of golf’s vast pyramid, Pro V1s have cornered a hugely lucrative chunk of the feelgood market. Do they help you play better? Next question.
Anyway, good luck with Santa’s algorithm. You don’t need socks.
