What Happens During A Golf Ball Fitting?

We have a really exciting video for you here today

I am at the Titleist Performance Centre here at Woburn, where I'm not in fact being fitted into a new set of clubs

but I am going through a golf ball fitting. Now, it's the one piece of equipment that we use for every single shot

so it's crucial to playing better golf. Right, I'm going to go meet Morgan on the tee

and we're going to get into the video. So the first question is what ball do you currently play

I'm currently using a Titleist Pro V1X, I am actually using the older generation at

the moment. And what made you go for the Pro V1X? More so the feel of the face around the greens, I prefer that, I like to get a bit of feedback

on strike especially with wedge shots, chipping and pitching, so that kind of clickier feel

I prefer over the softer feel. In terms of my kind of flight windows, I like to see a slightly higher flight anyway

The second question is around the surface that we're hitting off. It's asking us whether we're hitting off artificial or natural

So we're obviously hitting off a natural surface. We don't have that problem today. We're on the purest turf in the world

One of the best fitting centres in the world. The third question is, how would you describe the greens that you typically play on

So in terms of are they really soft? Are you making quite a big pitch mark? Are they quite firm

Are you struggling to make a pitch mark? I try to play all year round. So obviously they are going to be softer

but they do get really firm in the summers. I would probably for that reason just go medium because

It's a bit of a mix. It's a mix and we're not, even in the winters

the golf course I play typically drains quite well so they don't get that soft and wet

Next is about your preferred trajectory. So would you like to see the golf ball fly a little bit higher

fly a little bit lower and then on a scale of one to five, how important is that to you? Five being very important

I would say I like to see it slightly on the higher side definitely on the higher side than

the lower side and I would say that's probably a four out of five for me I think that's pretty

important I like to visualize shots and I like to play with a lot of feel so being able to hit my

window and know it's going through that window is particularly important especially when you bring

into account lie and some of the courses I play I try and play a bit of tournament golf so

So a lot of pins get tucked away behind bunkers, being able to access those pins with a higher ball flight

is something that I look for. Similar type of question, but this time around feel of golf ball, would you prefer a slightly softer

or slightly firmer feeling golf ball And then again one to five in importance I would go slightly firmer again on this I probably go a three or a four Overall I would prefer a slightly firmer ball So this is

how the ball fitting is going to work. Okay so we're going to hit 12 to 15 shots in total but

they're going to be spread across a few different clubs in your bag. So we're going to have a half

wedge so that's going to be sand wedge, gap wedge, I'm going to give it a half swing. Then we're going

to hit a full pitching wedge, then a full seven iron and then your driver. Okay so we're going to

work greenside back to tee trying to cover all the clubs in your bag because obviously we're

hitting the ball with every club in your bag. All the shots we're going to hit are going to be with Pro V1. What the app does is it essentially, as you hit every shot, it works out what all the

other balls would have done, then averages that across all the shots. When we get to the end

you're going to get a percentage match of each product in the range. So first shot is going to

be essentially grab your favourite one of your sand wedge, gap wedge, lob wedge, and we'll give

it a half swing. I'll go sand wedge. So let's grab your pitching wedge now then, and we'll hit

Get some full shots with that. Let's go to the 7-iron

Now we've hit the 7-iron, I'll show you what we're mainly looking at. Like we said, we're looking at spin, height and landing angle as the three key metrics

You can see here with 7-iron, landing angle on average 46.8 degrees

PGA Tour average is 51. That would go along with what you were saying about maybe start to feel like the 7-iron becomes a little bit flatter in flight

Spin is okay, 6,800. Not too bad with the type of 7-iron that we're using

It's not in a bad place and height of 83 feet. So you can see it gives you a nice little summary ysis here of spins okay, shallower landing angle than ideal

but overall it adds up because the height is at 83 feet overall it adds up to stopping power is

it is is not too bad for where we need it to be full wedge was in a good place you see landing

angle at 48 degrees so we're landing that a little bit steeper half wedge low in spin if we think to

across the irons spin with half wedge has been low landing angle with seven iron has been low

So that's trending that maybe we could do with a bit more height and spin to help with stopping power with your irons. Yep

That adding up to not being able to quite stop the golf ball how we need it to with your irons We hitting probably one here so that would indicate maybe we could do with a little bit more height height and spin like like you mentioned should we move on to driver let move on to drive a few there a mixed bag it felt like the whole way

through. Yeah like we said you know you don't have to hit your 10 out of 10s every time. Golf ball

fitting isn't about having to make sure that you're the best player it's about you know hitting

shots that you hit on the golf course and finding a way that we can help in height, spin and landing

angle. So here you go here's your summary page so quite close between ProV1 and ProV1X like we

mentioned 38% is ProV1X and then we you know haven't been chatting around needing less spin

so ProV1X, Leftash and AVX are coming out as 4 and 1% so your top 2 golf balls are ProV1, ProV1X because we were talking

about potentially maybe needing a little bit steeper landing angle, a little bit more spin in the

half wedge shot so you're quite close between those two that's your summary page, so let's take that over to the

chip and green, hit some shots between the two because obviously we're using 25 ProV1X here

you've previously played 23 so you want to make sure that it feels

good for you around the green and couldn't you get the control that you're looking for

Let's go clip some away, see if I can actually nip a few wedges

off the tight turf over there. I'm more concerned about doing that than actually working out what golf ball

is gonna be best for me at this point. There's plenty of rough over there as well. So you can- Let's tee some up in the rough

We're over at the side of the green. We're gonna play a couple of shots

that Sam likes to play out on the golf course. I'm gonna put the balls down for you

Gonna try and keep it blind so you don't necessarily know which is which because we're in between V and X

Try and play all the shots in a similar way. Touch firmer than I wanted

Okay, so, I mean, this is partly why we do golf ball testing blind at times

because all three of those, same golf ball. Okay. You've got a different feel out of the third one. Yeah

Because strike changed, and therefore sound changed. It sounded a little bit clickier, maybe a little bit louder

Feel predominantly comes from sound and that clickier, louder sound, we interpret as a firmer ball

And that's affected by ball, club, strike. So I mean the key for me here is we hit you know let say 20 shots

The only time you felt a difference between the ball is when the strike changed. Okay

You know, you haven't noticed. We've hit VNX. Yeah. The only time you've referenced that felt different was when you changed the strike

So that would indicate to me that, A, you're quite happy with the feel

but b it sometimes shows that feel can come from our preconceived idea that this is a firm of ball

or this is a softer ball yeah and then we hit it and go yeah that feels softer sometimes it comes

from reaction sometimes people see it stop and think that ball must be softer you're quite happy

when you don't know what the ball is yeah you haven't noticed the difference between the two

golf balls generally the ones that you've referenced that have spun up that have spun a bit more

of when we've gone into Pro V1X. So we're now back on the hitting tee

I have gone through kind of the whole ball fitting stage here with Morgan

We've gone down to the green. We've hit the chip shots. We've identified that Pro V1X is probably going to be my best shout

to give me my best spin, best landing angles. I'm going to hit a few more with Driver now

and we're just going to get some kind of total figures with Driver, make sure that we're completely happy

And then, yeah, I could be in a new golf ball. okay so we went through the ball fitting with Morgan and it turned out that the Pro V1

and Pro V1X were really similar in terms of what I'm advised to play now then it came down to a

personal choice of how I actually like to play my golf I've come into this fitting knowing that I

was struggling for a bit of height and a bit of spin with my longer to mid irons and therefore

or something that was just going to get the ball in the air a touch higher and increase

my descent angle into the green, helping me stop the ball on the greens quicker

was something that I was going to find particularly beneficial. Also, when it came to the short game

I noticed that even on a blind test, there was a ball that was just spinning up a touch more

than the other, and that happened to be the Pro V1X. So therefore, I have chosen to go into the

2025 Pro V1X this year, and I'm hoping it can dramatically improve my golf. Remember

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