BALATA GOLF BALL vs TITLEIST PRO V1X w/ Mark Brooks

This video features a balata golf ball vs Titleist Pro V1x golf ball in a head-to-head test on Trackman with special guest Mark Brooks, the 1996 PGA Champion, in the 2nd Swing Tour Van fitting bay at the PGA Coaching Center at PGA Frisco.

Sold core golf balls, such as the Titleist Pro V1x, were introduced to golf shortly after 2000, quickly rendering a balata golf ball useless for tour professionals. This test shows the difference between a modern Titleist Pro V1x vs a balata golf ball.

0:00 Intro
1:58 7-iron w/ Titleist Pro V1x
5:06 7-iron w/ Titleist Professional 90
11:33 Callaway Big Bertha Driver w/ Professional 90
15:03 Callaway Big Bertha Driver w/ Pro V1x
17:46 PING G430 Max 10K w/ Pro V1x
19:48 PING G430 Max 10K w/ Professional 90
21:12 Data & Conclusions

In this video, 2nd Swing’s Drew Mahowald is joined by 1996 PGA Champion Mark Brooks to test a balata golf ball, the Titleist Professional 90, against a modern golf ball, a Titleist Pro V1x, in a head-to-head test on Trackman.

SUBSCRIBE to the 2nd Swing YouTube channel for more in-depth golf equipment insights and knowledge!

Schedule an award-winning 2nd Swing Tour Van club fitting: https://fitting.2ndswing.info/schedule-now/

FOLLOW 2ND SWING GOLF ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2ndSwingGolf

X: https://X.com/2ndSwingGolf

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/2ndswinggolf/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@2ndswinggolf

hey golfers I’m darum M holder second Swing Golf here at the PGA coaching Center at second swings new fitting Bay at PGA Frisco joined by Mr Mark Brooks our good friend 1996 PGA Champion um and this is going to be a fun one because I have here a Bola Titleist professional 90 golf ball barely ever hit Mark and we’re going to compare that to a modern prov1 X ball so uh Mark obviously one of the most decor ated PJ tour careers um famously 803 starts so you’ve played with all kinds of equipment over the years so um what do you think we’re going to see in the differences between this ball and that one well my guess is that old ball is going to launch lower it should spin a little more uh that ball was sort of a tweener ball between what we would consider the true call Liquid core wound rubber round badas that ball came out about 1997 yeah and by 2002 everybody had switched to a solid core ball ball for the most part I mean 0 98% of the tour guys were playing a solid core ball or good players were for sure yeah yeah and so as as if you hear you know golf historians or or golf Geeks they talk a lot about how the 2000 and 2001 time frame is sort of when everything changed in golf equipment because of the new golf ball so what we’re going to do today we’re going to hit seven irons kind of compare the difference in the performance there and then we’re going to bring out the the driver and we’re going to hit driver and uh we I know Mark feels pretty good about that already yeah I’m I’m loving that old driver so all right let’s let’s start with the modern Pro One X so we got that there um and then we’ll hit a few shots maybe get five good ones and then we’ll bring out the Bola we ready to go t 90 we are ready to go all right well we’ll just generic s IR there’s a little my normal little draw try to get some of that out of there well hey your shot is your shot if you play that I know you like to play that little draw with the IR well you know that old saying swing your swing well swing your swing if it’s a good swing okay if it’s not a good swing let’s let’s swing somebody else’s so wind up i’ got I got the chunks going on the mat this morning here I mean you you’re still hitting the ball pretty consistently right I do my really good shot would go about 170 so maybe a hair under your carry number yeah my normal carry number with this would be right at 170 there’s your I’ll give you one I’ll go go ahead and fight it off give let let it dra go after one I’ll let it draw that sounded pretty crisp oh my that’s that’s my normal shot big there’s the big hook you’re right about that about that carry that was a 175. eight carry yeah squeeze another one out there there you go oh yeah we got up to 120 on the ball speed with that one ex there there’s the carry 17 all right so that’s that’s that’s my Play Shot there’s a 17 eight S so there’s our six shots there you got all the numbers yeah we I would peel out some of those but those last two or three were my normal shot those swings we kind of getting a little bit loose I’ll maybe we can take out these first couple here maybe and I actually hit a couple of those a little heavy so yeah let’s go with that right there huh so if I try to not turn it over it’s going to fly usually about 70 to 72 okay my turnover goes another five or six yards and my cut peels about six to seven yards off right okay so if I tried to hit a high cut it would probably only fly about 165 yeah but it would land better we talked about that before we got on right I’d have a much steeper Landing angle higher yeah that’s tough that’s it’s it’s awesome hearing you know someone like you that’s so dialed in and you know as a former pro I remember we talked about last time when we filmed videos was you’re worried about the carry number and then you’re worried about how the ball is going to react on the green no doubt way more than total or anything else 100% total is meaningless until you get to pretty much till you get to the driver May May 3w a little bit but for certainly the drivers illin one we want to see run out a lot okay okay yeah so I mean right here you’re you’re you got your Landing angle well over 45 on on kind of your your better swings there and then you were kind of peeling that draw that brought it back a little bit down but um still pretty good stuff that’s the back pins yeah right yeah exactly we got the pin in the back of the green that’s right um okay let’s get out the Bola here the Titleist Pro 90 could give that a feel there and which I would have played the Pro 90 you would have for sure I wouldn’t have played the 100 okay so let me make a tag here it’s been a while since I hit one of these I’ll go with the same shot we just finished with Wow marshmallow marshmallow yeah I tried to go for the same shot got some more spin on it not as much as I thought yeah land angle went up look I 170 pretty good that was about 78 before okay so that lost about eight yards of carry that actually I hit that that might have been the best one I’ve hit today yeah that was a really good ball for for a you know hard draw actually didn’t curve as much as I thought here we go same shot not as good it’s still up there interesting though that it’s so I’m what I’m curious curious to see here once we um kind of get a bunch of numbers is going to be you mentioned the launch too the launch would be different between the two I was expecting it to be the ball just sounds different too it’s way softer feeling yeah I mean you said right away marshmallow you know no offense to anyone or Titus or whoever this is the title yeah yeah it’s going way better it feels like I’m a practice ball yeah it feels like I’m actually hitting a a plastic dist you know distance limited practice one you could hit in your house I know exactly the balls you’re talking about those kind of foamy ones that’s a actually that was one of my better swings that is a really good swing there spin rate didn’t change near as what I thought yeah it’s actually kind of staying pretty similar I know you mentioned we talked a little bit kind of off camera about some of the differences that might happen um curious like I really wonder with driver what the big numbers are going to be if the differences happen there I would suspect I’ll be wrong I’ll try to take a little draw out of this one go for a little more straight I pushed it as usual didn’t curve as much okay there there your there your disc yardage came down yeah let’s see here let’s bring up some numbers all right let’s see we we got our sort of averages up there now and I’m this is interesting things are pretty close actually we obviously got more spin with the uh older ball which was what you expected ball speed’s down yeah ball speed’s down as well Heights down launch angle stayed very constant yep wow I’m kind of fascinated by that because we got it it’s pretty it’s kind of close across the board up there with the exception of the spin and then the ball speed difference as well really the two things because it is worth noting too you actually swung a little bit faster with the Pro 90 but your ball speed is is lower so well that would sense that would make sense yeah so more efficient with the prov1x there well clearly if I stayed with the same shot pattern and it hit them decent it looked like to me it was going to run about eight yards yeah shorter carry with the old ball right sure yeah and I can actually bring which is almost a club well I mean I remember 178 is was where my good ones were with the new ball these were going I didn’t hit one ball over 170 with this one yet so I can give it a go I’ll squeeze one out see if I can max out one maxing one out got some extra ball speed there too I got to go 73 you did okay that’s pretty good I was shocked that’s shocking you were hit that uh blot ball 173 with the S iron before no and I did make the point we started this this professional was definitely an and never mind an upgraded ball yeah from the let’s just say 95 or six and and early ear yeah this ball cuz I remember this ball quite well this was one of the first balls I had trouble stopping on greens yeah but it was awesome off the T yeah in comparison it was a definite upgrade so this ball started the trend for high-speed guys to have a piece a product in their hands they can control the spin better yeah no doubt got it yeah so here’s our so I took out so what happened was I took out the one before this yeah 161 so this is what the adjusted numbers are um still the difference in spin is there not as much as I thought but not as much um the launch is a little bit more of of a difference there right a degree which is quite a bit as you and I know one degrees can be a big deal for some players right yeah absolutely and then Landing angle more actually a little bit more shallow with the pro90 um so those are those are our numbers for the seven iron at least and and as we we observe the the good busted one for me was about eight yards shorter with the gold ball yeah there’s no you know I go I I could not hit this ball 180 yards in the air and I could probably take that that new ball and squeeze stuff in the low 180s yeah not as effec of a shot but I’m just saying if you’re just trying to go raw raw carry I can make that happen yeah in most senses it’s probably maybe five yard difference to seven yard difference probably that’s prob probably half the club okay well how about that difference with driver H hypothesis here we take it’s got to be what everybody’s talking about it’s got to be the 20 yards you think so yeah it’s got to be let’s see it all right let’s find out let’s do it all right so now we’ve got the driver from the 1996 PGA Championship I don’t like this driver as much as I did in 96 I’ll assure you yeah it’s it’s probably better suited to hit this ball maybe than than a modern driver right or no well we’re going to find out okay this this literally does need to go back back on the wall so okay well I’m glad we brought it out today because it’s it’s kind of we ready to go oh yeah we’re good I don’t even know where to begin here and I find myself trying to be careful with this thing too the head looks so small right yeah I got itk they’re going to fly all over the place that’s fine so are my drives there was some better contact I’m still Drew [Laughter] Drew oh there’s some speed there it is so when you were playing right back in you know 90s winning Majors things like that with this driver and a blot of golf ball was that the type of shot you’d hit most of the time well one of the you know again recalling I tried not to draw this club much it probably is one reason I probably had a pretty good Str pretty good run with this driver because I figured out pretty quickly if I if I turn this driver over much I actually lost too much spin right so I pretty much limited myself on a I mean like let’s have two or three of these a day on the hole that needs it you know like say a part five or if you really got one out there you might reach in two so I played a I honestly played just a little left to right slider with this a lot you know which sounds nuts everybody thinks I hooked it but I mean clearly just from these that spin rate’s pretty low for this old ball right yeah for so I yeah I try not to curve this ball this driver much which was good for my swing because it kept me from swinging too far the right look at that one there’s the straight one that’s dead straight how about that so path still a little to the right yeah up three not bad so that was kind of the you know I didn’t curve it a lot with this driver sure and again I mean even back then I I had through trial and error no no no machine readings yeah just you know we were pretty good out there you know we’re kind of like walking trackman after a while right and um I had learned you know hey limit your draws yeah so I really had to you know gear up and make really good contact but again it was better for my swing to swing a little more you know let’s call it left that one’s not that’s little healer all right let’s give it one more and then one more then we’ll switch we’ll see how that you want to see how that hits with a modern ball quick a couple absolutely that driver and then we’ll go to your your gamer driver who is coming out of my hands okay there’s a the 30-y old grip is slipping but there’s your what 236 there it is you got you said you were going to get to 240 and you got pretty close okay all right so here’s the uh prob1 X oh good good toss and here’s our numbers too just for what it’s worth you hit that one on average um 230 carry roughly yeah about 2 28.8 255 total so all right this will be fascinating you ready to go I’m ready well and you again there’s another that ball clearly curved to the right and that was my longest carry so I probably figured that out 96 my right my left to right slider actually carried further than my hooks wow there’s a good ball I probably have this club out of position too as far as where I where I have it in my stance because it’s it feels like it’s 4 in shorter I probably got it still pretty far up there creep one back a little straighter oh yeah there goes this the spin back down a little bit probably lost 400 oh yeah at least High launch low spin got another degree out of it there’s a better launch mhm and again when the when the hook spin comes off my ball carries better you can see that stayed to the right but carried a little better here we go got the launch over 12 I can’t hit it 240 one more try one more to get it to 240 then we’ll bring out the big stick the bigger stick I lost the club my hand I got your 42 though there you go there’s your 43 2 42 wow do you see how I did that though right check your launch number I I see that 16. that’s how I got the carry Mark Brooks knows what he’s talking about not that’s the surprise but so I got all these numbers up here this is the one right here we’re talking we’re highlighting here they got launch at 16.1 the rest of them were down 12 12 12 11 and then you see the carry go way up so that’s kind of I mean that’s that’s what makes happen that still happens today for the most part yeah for with driver and you’re hitting it well provided you can control your spin rate that’s what you you know High launch low spin that’s what we want interesting yes so here the averages then of sort of the you know we hit the big Bera with each ball and you hit a little further with the prov1x um the spin was actually relatively comparable there it is granted we had some I don’t know if track was picking everything up perect I had some bad golf swings in there but but all right let’s get let’s grab your your g430 max 10K and hit that a little bit right the the gamer the max the g430 max 10K now see what Mark Brooks has in the tank not much you got me nervous here yeah I’m definitely went a little further from the ball a little sound difference yeah just a tad okay and immediately we’re at 260 carry and I think I can’t remember 242 was the max was the max with the yeah we could have round rounded it to 243 yeah that was the last one I hit so how many yards simple math I mean we got 20 yards right here was you we had 18 yards and carry and then obviously the total similar but that was it’s just one swing and it’s uh there already a big difference wow Mark do you have 300 yards in you total sure we’re at 296 okay so nine degree that my big birtha was about 8 and a/4 right at 43 and 1 12ish roughly 9° at 45 and a half so I got a couple inches on shaft but what I the thing that strikes me is the launch for one this spin rate’s actually a little low on that one but it it was launched high enough do the trick it made yeah it made up for it not as good a swing but it still carry 261 that’s still pretty darn good for me that’s pretty darn good all right that was three 60 66 60 so that’s uh all right 262 try this thing now let’s have it let’s get three with that one okay we’ll have all these numbers to look at nerd over a little bit little more of a dip and ball speed actually kind of flew out there a little bit there’s some speed all right I’m kind of I mean that’s a pretty good shot you got your carry is actually keeping up pretty nicely about 10 yards yeah we’re probably in the 10 to you know I guess you were you got up to like 266 on one of your other balls but I did was I want to say that was one of the carries so you’re probably about 10 to 15 yard difference is yeah we guess I guessed 20 you did yeah so I you got you asked you bugged me I was 296 total out on a coup on the one yeah it’s uh 23 y let’s get one more good one here all right go for it hard five down win oh yeah it’s the fastest ball speed so far with that ball oh yeah 103 there we go look at this all right so here we go that’s that’s the best I got that’s the best Mark has and we saved it for last today and I was telling you drew the best I do is about 105 now is it okay so that’s not terrible that’s still really good I mean hey for 83 year old it’s not bad oh yeah exactly um so the carry average with the Pro 90 actually you hit it pretty well there that last one you hit 258 carry so we got about eight yards difference on those three with each right correct 54 262 that’s pretty solid it kept kept up really well 12 yard difference in total we just saw some more spin with the Pro 90 which is to be expected to be expected correct um God there’s a lot of a lot of stuff up here that’s just fascinating is there anything else that’s jumping out at you mark that you’re looking at here not a whole lot other than you know the clearly the best one I hit with the old driver for example yeah was a higher launch yeah right so if you’re going to like emphasize something that’s this one and we all know this I mean I have to throw my tip in there the slower your Club head speed is the slower you generally speaking you’re going to have to hit the ball more up in the air yeah oh so the super the more speed you have the lower you can actually launch it so that’s the thing I take away I mean my good ones are all running in that 15 16 launch which is pretty high but uh that’s where I MA that’s where I max out distance this is that shot you’re talking about of you know hitting the old driver and you got up to 16 launch and this is the best one that you hit 273 with that old driver that’s pretty darn good prettyy darn good U but clearly there’s a difference but look at the club head speed yeah that’s a good point there’s the jump out 98.7 fun fun to look back at that stuff because if we go and collapse everything this is the new driver up here 1017 102 and then down here we were looking at 98 and then so probably about a two three to four miles hour Club head speed difference so my conclusion at this point is this matters a lot yeah I think you’re right about that the the club is clearly responsible for a lot I know we run around going it’s ball ball ball ball ball man the club’s a big deal and uh that so you put the two together you get optim optimized yeah for example you wouldn’t have me in that 8 and a quarter degree if we had to go back to that driver you’d probably have me in 11 10 five um because you because you were really emphasizing that launch correct you’d also have me not 100 gram shaft right and you go we could probably take that old driver or something like that with more Loft those lighter shaft in there and probably creep even closer oh yeah absolutely closer so it’s pretty it’s very cool um but this has been fascinating uh just to see the differences a little bit and and then to watch you just kind of you know kind of geek out and just hit some shots and look at all the numbers that’s fascinating it’s fun I love it and and that’s the beauty of the machines they’re just there’s such good feedback and and it’s accurate so it’s it’s a blast to get on there yeah well Mark thank you for joining today this is fascinating I know the viewers are going to love this and seeing all the numbers and old golf ball new golf ball old driver new driver um really good stuff thank you Mark for joining and it was a blast awesome we’ll do it again [Music]