- 2 hours ago
Ball tester Sam De'Ath goes through a full Titleist ball fitting at the Woburn Performance Center to see what the process involves and which model is right for his game?
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00:00We have a really exciting video for you here today. I am at the tightest performance center
00:04here at Woburn where I'm not in fact being fitted into a new set of clubs but I am going
00:08through a
00:09golf ball fitting. Now it's the one piece of equipment that we use for every single shot
00:13so it's crucial to playing better golf. Right, I'm going to go meet Morgan on the tee and we're
00:17going to get into the video. So the first question is what ball do you currently play? I'm currently
00:36using a tightest Pro V1X. I am actually using the older generation at the moment. And what made you
00:43go for the Pro V1X? More so the feel of the face around the greens. I prefer that. I like
00:49to get
00:50a bit of feedback on strike especially with wedge shots, chipping and pitching. So that kind of
00:54clickier feel I prefer over the softer feel. In terms of my kind of flight windows I like to see
00:59a slightly higher flight anyway. The second question is that is around the surface that we're hitting
01:03off. It's asking us whether we're hitting off artificial or natural. So we're obviously hitting
01:06off natural turf. We don't have that problem today. We're on the purest turf in the world.
01:10One of the best fitting centers in the world. So the third question is how would you describe the
01:16greens that you typically play on? So in terms of are they really soft? Are you making quite a big
01:21pitch mark? Are they quite firm? Are you struggling to make a pitch mark? I try to play all year
01:25round.
01:25So obviously they are going to be softer but they do get really firm in the summers. I would probably
01:30for that reason just go medium because it's a bit of a mix. It's a mix and we're not even
01:36in the
01:37winters. The golf course I play typically drains quite well so they don't get that soft and wet.
01:42Next is about your preferred trajectory. So would you like to see the golf ball fly a little bit
01:46higher, fly a little bit lower and then on a scale of one to five how important is that to
01:50you?
01:50Five being very important. I would say I like to see it slightly on the higher side. Definitely on the
01:57higher side than the lower side and I would say that's probably a four out of five for me. I
02:03think
02:03that's pretty important. I like to visualise shots and I like to play with a lot of feel. So being
02:09able
02:09to hit my window and know it's going through that window is particularly important especially
02:13when you bring into account lie and some of the courses I play I try and play a bit of
02:18tournament
02:18golf. So a lot of pins get tucked away behind bunkers. Being able to access those pins with a
02:24higher ball flight is something that I look for. Similar type of question but this time around feel
02:27of golf ball. Would you prefer a slightly softer or slightly firmer feeling in golf ball and then again
02:31one to five in importance? I would go slightly firmer again on this. I'd probably go a three
02:36or a four. Overall I would prefer a slightly firmer ball. So this is how the ball fitting is going
02:41to
02:41work. Okay so we're going to hit 12 to 15 shots in total but they're going to be spread across
02:45a few
02:45different clubs in your bag. So we're going to have a half wedge so that's going to be sand wedge
02:50gap wedge
02:50I'm going to give it a half swing. Then we're going to hit a full pitching wedge then a full
02:53seven iron
02:54and then your driver. Okay so we're going to work greenside back to tee trying to cover all the clubs
02:58in your bag
02:59because obviously we're hitting the ball with every club in your bag. All the shots we're going to hit
03:02are going to be with Pro V1. What the app does is it essentially as you hit every shot it
03:06works out
03:06what all the other balls would have done then averages that across all the shots. When we get
03:10to the end you're going to get a percentage match of each product in the range. So first shot is
03:14going
03:14to be essentially grab your favorite one of your sand wedge gap wedge lob wedge. Okay and we'll give it
03:19a half swing. I'll go sand wedge. So let's grab your pitching wedge now then and we'll hit some full
03:30shots with that. Let's go to the seven iron.
03:52Now we've hit the seven iron I'll show you what we're mainly looking at. Like we said we're looking
03:55at spin height and landing angle as the three key metrics. You can see here with seven iron landing
04:01angle on average 46.8 degrees. PGA Tour average is 51. That would go along with what you were saying
04:07about maybe you start to feel like the seven iron becomes a little bit flatter in flight. Spin is okay
04:146800 not too bad with the you know with the type of seven iron that we're using it's not not
04:18in a bad
04:19place and height of 80 83 feet. So you can see it gives you a nice little summary analysis here
04:24of
04:24spins okay shallower landing angle than ideal but overall it adds up because the height is at 83 feet
04:30overall it adds up to stopping power is it is is not too bad for where we need it to
04:34be. Full wedge was
04:35in a good place you see landing angle at 48 degrees so we're landing that a little bit steeper half
04:42wedge
04:42low in spin. If we think to across the irons spin with half bench has been low landing angle with
04:52seven iron
04:53has been low so that's trending that maybe we could do with a bit more height and spin okay to
04:59help with
04:59stopping power with with it with your irons yep that's adding up to not being able to quite stop the
05:04golf ball how we need it to with your irons. We're hitting probably one here so that would indicate maybe
05:10we
05:10do with a little bit more height and spin like like you mentioned. Shall we move on to driver? Let's
05:15move
05:16on to driver. There's a mixed bag it felt like the whole way through. Yeah like we said we you
05:34know you
05:35don't have to hit your 10 out of 10s every time golf ball fitting isn't about having to make sure
05:41that you're the best player it's about you know hitting shots that you hit on the golf course and
05:46finding a way that we can help in height spin and landing angle. So here you go here's your summary
05:49page
05:50so quite close between Pro V1 Pro V1 X like we mentioned 38 percent is Pro V1 X and then
05:55we you know
05:57haven't been chatting around needing less spin so Pro V1 X Left Ash and AVX are coming out as four
06:01and one percent
06:02so your top two golf balls are Pro V1 Pro V1 X because we were talking about potentially maybe
06:06needing a little bit steeper landing angle a little bit more spin in the in the halfway shot so you're
06:10quite close between between those those two okay cool that's your summary page so let's take that over
06:15to the chip and green yep hit some shots between the two because obviously we're using 25 Pro V1 X
06:21here
06:21yeah you've previously played 20 23 yeah so you want to make sure that feels good for you around the
06:26green and
06:28couldn't you get the control that you're looking for let's go clip some away see if I can actually
06:32nip a few wedges off the tight turf over there I'm more concerned about doing that than actually
06:37working out what golf ball is going to be best for me at this point there's plenty of rough over
06:40there
06:40as well let's tee some up in the rough we're over at the side of the green we're going to
06:45play a couple
06:46of shots that Sam likes to play out on the golf course I'm going to put the balls down for
06:51you
06:52I'm going to try and keep it blind so you don't necessarily know which is which because we're in
06:56between V and X try and play all the shots in a similar way touch firmer than I wanted okay
07:09so
07:10I mean this is partly why we do golf ball testing blind at times because all three of those same
07:16golf ball okay you've got a different feel out of the third one yeah because strike change yeah and
07:20therefore sound change it sounded a little bit clickier maybe a little bit louder feel predominantly
07:25comes from sound and that clickier for louder sound we interpret as a firmer ball and that's affected
07:31by ball club stride so I mean the key for me here is we've hit you know let's say 20
07:49shots the only
07:51time you felt a difference between the ball is when the strike changed okay you know you haven't
07:55noticed we've we've hit V and X yeah the only time you've referenced that felt different was when
08:02you changed the strike so that would indicate to me that a you're quite a you're quite happy with the
08:08feel but b it sometimes shows that feel can come from our preconceived idea that this is a firmer ball
08:15or this is a softer ball yeah and then we hit it and go yeah that feels softer sometimes it
08:19comes from
08:19reaction sometimes people see it stop and think that ball must be softer you're quite happy and when
08:26you don't know what the ball is yeah you haven't noticed the difference between the two golf balls
08:30generally the ones that you've referenced that have spun up that have spun a bit more of when we've gone
08:34into pro v1x so we're now back on the hitting tee i have gone through kind of the whole ball
08:39fitting
08:40stage here with morgan we've gone down to the green we've hit the chip shots and we've identified that pro
08:45v1x is
08:45probably going to be my best shout to give me my best spin best landing angles i'm going to hit
08:50a
08:50few more with driver now and we're just going to get some kind of total figures with driver make sure
08:54that we're completely happy and then uh yeah it could be in a new golf ball
09:12okay so we went through the ball fitting with morgan and it turned out that the pro v1
09:16and pro v1x were really similar in terms of what i'm advised to play now then it came down to
09:23a
09:23personal choice of how i actually like to play my golf i've come into this fitting knowing that i was
09:27struggling for a bit of height and a bit of spin with my longer to mid irons and therefore
09:33something that was just going to get the ball in the air a touch higher and increase my descent angle
09:37into the green helping me stop the ball on the greens quicker was something that i was going to
09:41find particularly beneficial also when it came to the short game i noticed that even on a blind test
09:46there was a ball that was just spinning up a touch more than the other and that happened to be
09:51the
09:51pro v1x so therefore i have chosen to go into the 2025 pro v1x this year and i'm hoping it
09:58can
09:59dramatically improve my golf remember if you like today's video hit the like button down below
10:03subscribe to golf monthly's youtube channel so you don't miss any future videos but from me here
10:09at woburn we'll see you next time
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