Equipment
Yellow Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x officially hit stores
Michael Casey
With Bubba Watson and Kirk Triplett each giving visibility to the yellow Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x early with early-season success and use on their respective tours, the company has officially launched its yellow Pro V1/Pro V1x line at stores last week.
The yellow ball first got talked about in August when talks on the Team Titleist website hinted at the colored version of golf's No. 1 ball being released. Then Bubba Watson used the Titleist Pro V1x ball earlier this season, and Kirk Triplett won the Hoag Classic earlier this month with a yellow Pro V1.
“We read and shared all of the posts from the community asking for a yellow Pro V1 and our R&D team went to work,” the post reads. “They spent countless hours on figuring out how we could develop the best possible bright colored cover formulation. They went through numerous trials to get everything just right. It wasn’t an easy task but the hard work has resulted in a new offering that we can’t wait to introduce.”
A yellow version of the Pro V1/V1x previously was dismissed largely because Titleist engineers felt the color option wasn’t a particular player demand among its tour staff and core users. And to get the color right and maintain the performance of its cast urethane elastomer cover required more than slapping some yellow paint into the mix. But in developing a version of it for their multi-piece AVX ball last year, the company figured out the necessary components.
Other than Bubba and Triplett, other tour players using the golf ball this season include Kyle Jones and Rory Sabbatini on the PGA Tour, Scott Gutschewski and Zac Blair on the Web.com Tour and Mark Calcavecchia and Ken Tanigawa on the PGA Tour Champions.
By bringing a colored version of the Pro V1 to the market, Titleist joins other major brands with colored versions of multilayer urethane-cover balls, including Srixon, Bridgestone, TaylorMade and Volvik, as well as smaller players like Vice and Snell. Of course, one of the more successful colored, urethane-cover golf ball entries in recent years has been Callaway’s soccer-ball pattern Truvis versions of its Chrome Soft tour ball, which has been available in several colors and custom patterns. And last week, TaylorMade released the TP5 Pix, another multi-piece tour ball on the market.
Recent consumer surveys of serious golfers by Golf Datatech show about half of them indicating at least some interest in playing a colored golf ball. The current survey of attitudes and usage of average serious golfers said, “52 percent indicated they are at least somewhat interested in playing a colored golf ball, with 16 percent saying they are very interested. Total interest is close to an all-time high (54 percent in Spring of 2015 was the only time interest was higher). The older the player and the higher the handicap, the more likely they are to be interested in playing a colored ball.” In the biannual survey, yellow was by far the preferred color at 85 percent.