For many years, players at the Hot List Summit tested equipment using a variety of golf balls. All were multilayer, urethane-cover, tour-caliber models. Recently, we went to a single ball to enhance the consistency of our testing process. That said, there’s a reason ball manufacturers offer multiple models at the high end of their lines: Ball-fitting matters.
So we took things to the next level this time by having each of our 32 player-testers go through Titleist’s ball-fitting process to identify a ball that matches their swing and short-game characteristics. The goal was to eliminate as many variables as possible during testing.
Each player was informed of the right ball for them— Pro V1 or Pro V1x— and they exclusively hit that ball during testing, as each hitting station was fully stocked with both models. The final breakdown was 14 players using Pro V1 and 18 using Pro V1x, underscoring the importance of the undertaking and ball-fitting in general.
Titleist provided a total of 500 dozen golf balls—that’s 6,000 balls—but that’s not enough to get us through a testing day when our players collectively hit about 10,000 shots. We had dedicated assistants collecting, washing and replenishing the supply on a regular basis throughout each session. In fact, two of our helpers had the sole job of sorting Pro V1 from Pro V1x models.
As our methodology continues to evolve, we think this upgrade is an important step in delivering to you the most accurate equipment reviews.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
