2022 Official Member Review: Titleist Pro V1/Pro V1X White Box

[CarlH]

39 minutes ago, PeterHenric said:

I’m glad you posted the photos of the stickers because I didn’t see them in the box and almost threw them out! They are saved now.

Me too!  Saw the photo with the stickers and took another look inside the box.  Score!

[RichL85]

Got my package today as well. 

[JerryB]

Am I allowed to make a "nice package" joke?

[PeterHenric]

So who is going to be the first one to cut open their shiny prototype ball to compare to the existing one? 

I’ve got a round schedule for Monday but it’s at kind of a treacherous course and I’m honestly afraid to lose one. I might do a little Houdini magic and not use them off the tee (yet) so I can see how they behave off the irons and putter.

I usually play softer, low launch and spin balls like the AVX and Tour Response. In anticipation of this test, I went out and bought a dozen of the current V1 and V1X balls to get a better feel for how they perform. My round on Thursday was with the V1 and I can honestly say that I loved it. Not too much spin but green side play was decent. I went and played a round yesterday at my local Par 58 course with the V1X and the iron play was pretty good. I don’t know for sure but they did seem shorter than my normal gamers. I definitely didn’t care for how it performed off the driver. I wasn’t swinging particularly well but it seemed to spin much more than what I’m used to and distance definitely suffered. A normal approach shot will “one hop and stop” with no backward movement. The ball is usually within 5’ of the pitch mark. The V1X was usually within a foot or 2 of the pitch mark. I don’t know if it was hitting and spinning back or just had enough spin to not let it bounce forward.

I usually play once or twice a week and don’t usually lose any balls off the tee, short shots over water are another story. I’ll be putting these balls through their paces and I’ve got a buddy who is better than I am and has better feel for this stuff. He said he’d be more than happy to give me his opinion when we go to the chipping area.

I have always wanted to get a proper launch monitor but could never justify getting one because I hate hitting off of mats. Getting selected for this test REALLY made me want to pull the trigger so I could get legit spin and distance numbers. Sadly, the wifey still said no. 

[PeterHenric]

Bump for my intro being updated 

 

[yungkory]

I was bummed on Friday because I saw in my USPS app that I was getting a package from Yorktown on Monday. Much to my surprise, I got it today! Perfect timing because I'm playing tomorrow let's gooooooooo

[GolfSpy BOS]

5 hours ago, yungkory said:

I was bummed on Friday because I saw in my USPS app that I was getting a package from Yorktown on Monday. Much to my surprise, I got it today! Perfect timing because I'm playing tomorrow let's gooooooooo

Which ones are up first?! Or are you going to use both models?

[mikeanthony]

1 hour ago, GolfSpy_BOS said:

Which ones are up first?! Or are you going to use both models?

I’ll be out on the course for 9 early tmrw morning and hopefully 18 depending on pace of play. The first 9 will be the ProV1x and if I have time for the back 9, I’ll play the ProV1. 

[yungkory]

5 hours ago, GolfSpy_BOS said:

Which ones are up first?! Or are you going to use both models?

Headed to the course so I can chip with both for an hour before the round. Going to play the V1X first since I've gamed that ball for years and have the most familiarity with it.

If time permits I'll drop some V1s down from the same positions on the course to see if I can do some direct comparisons but I doubt it won't be crowded.

Gonna walk on to the munis a few times to play them against each other where I know I can "practice" during the round without being a jerk and holding folks' rounds up.

Btw, does anyone know if the 348/red number is in fact the V1X? And the 388/black is the regular V1? I'm assuming they didn't switch the number colors around, but they've done it in the past.

[GolfSpy_APH]

News is out all! Looking forward to seeing your results as they come in as well as first impressions!

[daviddvm]

My intro is up and I'm ready to start testing!

 

[daviddvm]

2 hours ago, yungkory said:

Headed to the course so I can chip with both for an hour before the round. Going to play the V1X first since I've gamed that ball for years and have the most familiarity with it.

If time permits I'll drop some V1s down from the same positions on the course to see if I can do some direct comparisons but I doubt it won't be crowded.

Gonna walk on to the munis a few times to play them against each other where I know I can "practice" during the round without being a jerk and holding folks' rounds up.

Btw, does anyone know if the 348/red number is in fact the V1X? And the 388/black is the regular V1? I'm assuming they didn't switch the number colors around, but they've done it in the past.

I'm assuming the same Kory.

[PeterHenric]

5 hours ago, yungkory said:

Btw, does anyone know if the 348/red number is in fact the V1X? And the 388/black is the regular V1? I'm assuming they didn't switch the number colors around, but they've done it in the past.

The current V1 is a 388 dimple ball with black numbers. The V1X is a 348 dimple with red numbers. I am operating off the assumption that they are the same as these prototypes as far as model.

The covers look and feel the same. Hard to SEE a difference between the dimple patterns. 

[RichL85]

I'm assuming the numbers are correlating to the dimples also. It's pretty easy to tell the 348 ball has more of the larger dimples compared to the 388 ball that has more of the smaller dimples to fit the surface area. Whether they will perform very differently for me remains to be seen, but I did like the 348 better on just some initial hits. 

[yungkory]

Played like absolute dog water on the front so since I wasn't going to make any semblance of a typical score, I put the 388/ProV1 in play on the back 9.

I still played like doodoo, but there were some differences that I felt. Feel is so subjective, but:

1. Ball seems to want to move forward more than the 348, and last generation V1x that I'm familiar with. Don't know if that's due to less spin and the ball not "floating" as much, but just an observation since I don't have LM data. Still went plenty high for me, so I liked that a lot.
2. The 388 feels "heavy" compared to the 348. But off the face feels really soft. 348 not clicky by any means, but it feels hollow and less marshmallowy. I kinda prefer the 388 feel wise.
3. Spin around the greens was a little hard to judge when I was practicing because it was wet and I was getting rained on while chipping. Then the sun came out and it was immediately a sauna. Couldn't really tell the difference other than feel in this instance, but I'll have a couple more sessions before I put out my actual review.
4. Cover is kinda sus. I hit a rock once, so I was expecting one rash. Somehow the ball had two after 9 holes.

[vandyland]

So I played my first round today with the 348 proto. It was a cold, wet rainy day that looked like this:

High likelihood of losing a ball with all the leaves on the ground but went for it anyway. Was playing with others so I couldn’t play multiple balls. As compared to my Snell MTB black, I am fairly certain the 348 proto is longer than my current ball. I absolutely nuked a 6i and several other mid irons. Driver distance was about the same but it was 15 degrees cooler today and it rained all night last night so little to no roll. Also seemed higher spin than most since I was spinning back mid irons. Off the putter it was fine. 
 

Also, durability was good. Here is a picture of the ball after 18! I think I might start adding a dot every 18 it makes it through.

Edited October 31, 2022 by vandyland

[ZMendle10]

Introduction has been added where my placeholder was.  

[mikeanthony]

Was able to get out for 18 today, but I was coming into the course hot and wasn’t able to get any range time in … so straight to the first tee it was. 

Opted to pass on testing either of the balls on the front … partly a good decision, for I lost two balls on the 2nd hole. 

Gave it consideration on the back 9, but didn’t … and wish I had. Played a really good back 9 and was really hitting the ball great from tee to green. 

They’ll get a significant short game testing tmrw and hopefully a sim data session on Thursday evening. 

[CarlH]

I played the new Pro V1 ball for 9 holes today.  I was not playing well, so it's difficult to comment on the performance of the ball.  I do have one comment to start with -- we were sent a dozen of each type ball (348 and 388 Proto -- V1X and V1 respectively).  One of the sleeves of the 348 balls only had 2 balls in it.  Since it's a prototype package and at no cost to me, it's not a biggie, but at near $5/ball, if you buy 12, you want 12!

[PeterHenric]

Went out and played 18 today. For the majority of the time, I was playing the current Pro V1. It’s kind of a tough course and anything past the rough is rocky desert which can damage or disappear your balls pretty easily. I treated the Proto’s like they were gold and rarely took them out of my pocket unless it was on approach shots where I felt very confident I wasn’t going to lose them. On about hole 14, there was a wide open fairway and I decided to let my 13 year old son and my FiL each hit one of the Proto Vi’s for their tee shots. My boy hit a great shot about 220 yards straight out. My FiL had a very different result. He hit a real quacker and we ended up losing the ball. He felt terrible about it… Down to 11 Proto balls.

For about 6 or 7 holes, when I missed the greens, I would drop the current V1 and the Proto V1 and try to see or feel any difference in performance in any manner. Sadly, I couldn’t tell a difference in green side spin. My FiL joked that maybe I got a “Placebo” batch and they aren’t actually any different than the current ones.

Next round I play will be with the V1X and Proto V1X. Hoping to be able to see a performance difference between the new and old. Still have to go and do my short game testing at the range.