Titleist Ball (1998 vs 2018) Better or Same?
Titleist ball has always been the no.1 golf ball but recently many other golf brands such as Taylormade, Bridgestone and Callaway are challenging its no.1 position. So it will be interesting to know does the ball performance of Titleist ball evolved drastically or has it reached its limits/ plateau.
Rick Shield managed to get hold of the 1998 Titleist Professional 90 and tested it with the 2018 model. The test was conducted with mizuno sand wedge, Ping i200 7 iron and callaway epic sub zero on GC Quad.
In the sand wedge (SW) test, The Titleist Pro V1 and Pro90 has almost the same carry and distance but ProV1 has a slightly more backspin.
Again, in the iron 7 test, we see almost identical distance with only 2 yard difference. The spin rate for pro90 is higher and has a lower carry compared to proV1.
For the driver test, we see a higher drop off for Pro90. The ball speed and carry both drop, resulting a difference in distance of around 12 yards. However, it’s interesting to note that the spin rate is almost the same between the two balls.
In summary, it’s almost unbelievable to see that there isn’t a load of difference between pro90 and prov1 golf ball especially when you are talking about a 20 years of tech evolution. The difference is not huge at all.
Durability wise, pro90 is also quite acceptable.
From our perspective, the ball tech advancement is limited due to the conformance of USGA standards. For such a small ball, there isn’t much changes that you can create to get a very different and outstanding golf ball performance.
For those who are interested, below is the USGA standard for a golf ball:
- Diameter > 42.67mm
- Weight < 45.93g
- Must be Spherical Symmetry
- Within Initial velocity and ball distance Standard Limits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6B6U0DflaY
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