Is Pro V1 Still King??

All golfers should be playing at least a 3pc ball in my opinion. So to help find good options at various price points, I put these 4 balls up against the mighty Pro V1. Hope you find it helpful!

Under Armor Hat in this episode
https://amzn.to/4ebz4HQ

Cut Grey
https://amzn.to/45k7nsu

Titleist Pro V1
https://amzn.to/4ekFmF9

Snell Prime 3.0
PRIME 3.0 golf ball

Maxfli Tour
https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/maxfli-2023-tour-golf-balls-22maxu2023mxfltrggbl/22maxu2023mxfltrggbl

0:00 Intro
0:30 2pc Balls vs 3pc
2:16 The Contestants
4:11 Testing / Award Overview
4:45 Lob Wedge Results
5:40 7 Iron Results
6:58 Driver Results
9:09 Sound and Feel
10:22 And the winner is…
14:47 Outro

the prov1 is the Undisputed king of golf balls since its introduction in December of 2000 the prov1 has been used by more professionals and has won more tournaments than any golf ball in history as a result of that there’s been a lot of competition trying to bring other balls to take some of that market share away from the prov1 other three-piece balls and in this video I’m going to compare four of the current competitors to the Prov V1 now you may be asking yourself does my game even warrant using a three-piece ball like the pros do and I would say absolutely it does everyone can benefit from using a three-piece ball the benefits of a three-piece ball are is it it’s going to generate a lot more backspin as a result of that as you’re hitting shots into a green wherever the landing area is because of that increased backspin you’re going to stop sooner around your landing area especially true when you start having greens side shots where you’re trying to Chip and get close to a flag once you get comfortable with a three-piece ball you can really start to put some backspin on that ball and you can really start to get it to check up around the area that you want it to stop it’s just it opens up a whole different element of the game and as a result I would definitely recommend that everyone consider using a three-piece ball now some folks will say well slower swingers shouldn’t use these three-piece balls because the compression is too high and I couldn’t disagree with that any stronger than I do the reason I say that is because of the additional backspin it will actually fly longer given the aerodynamics of a ball the higher the Back Spin the higher the ball will fly and the longer it’s going to stay in the air now that’s also going to shorten your distance a little bit so if you’re going for maximum distance you want a little bit lower spin but for most amateurs higher spin a higher flight is only a good thing and I would strongly recommend even if you are a slower swinger of the golf club that you use one of these three piece balls because it generates so much more backspin and that’s really beneficial for your game so hopefully I’ve convinced you that you should switch to a three-piece ball now let’s talk about the five balls that are in this Roundup obviously number one it’s the tight list prov1 three-piece ball this ball is a classic and it’s what all other three-piece balls should be measured against because the performance has been so solid for so many years next up is the Snell Prime 3.0 this is a brand new bow from the direct to Consumer darling that so many people love and I’ve never played a snell before so I was really interested in including this one in the trial for my own benefit next up is the maxfly tour now the maxfly tour gets a lot of love from my golf spy and I don’t know you know what your feelings are about my golf spy they seem to emote a lot of very strong emotions from people I really think they do a nice job for the community and bring up a lot of interesting data and share a lot of good results um but they really love this ball and I know on their social media channels they really talk about how this is a a very great uh performing ball and I was interested to test it next up is the cut gray another three-piece ball it’s a fairly recent addition to the cut lineup and it’s a uh a solid ball and I wanted to include it I’ve done a short about the cut gray I’ve been really impressed and I wanted to see how it stacked up against all five of these balls and finally my favorite the Kirkland I played the Kirkland I’ve been playing them for several years now this is the new Kirkland in yellow and I included a yellow ball in this test because I’ve read over the years on forums that yellow balls don’t perform the same as white balls not just wanted to get some data to really see do I see any differences that would make me think that a yellow ball at least in the case of the Kirkland does perform any different than any of the other options to evaluate the bowls I hit lob wedge seven iron and two different drivers I used a 12d driver with a regular flex shaft and then I used a 10 and 1/2 degree driver with a stiff shaft just to see if there was any trends that would hold true from one driver to another finally I hit every ball with a putter just to test for feel and sound and at the end of this video I’m going to give several Awards in different categories where I think different balls Excel with regards to the lob wedge testing I personally think the most important criteria whenever you have a wedge in your hands is the amount of backspin that you’re getting out of that particular ball the highest spinning ball in this group was the prov1 it was 300 revs higher than the closest competitor which was the Kirkland the next ball was the maxf tour followed by the cut gray and then finally the Snell came in with the lowest spin the Snell to the prov1 amounted to 900 RPMs worth of difference in backspin which is you know pretty considerable so if you end up having too much backspin and you want to take some off maybe the Snell would be a good option if you want more backspin and you want more checking power then the prov1 or the Kirkland would be really good options as well when it came to my seven iron testing all of these balls performed pretty similarly off of the seven iron so the highest spinning ball was the snow off the seven iron and the fastest ball speed that I saw was off of the prov1 uh but the differences were pretty small in total off the seven iron the five balls uh the difference in backspin was only 350 RPM which really isn’t a lot your strike can influence the uh amount of backspin more much more than that 350 RPM so it’s not a number I would get overly hung up about the ball speed differed from the fastest to the slowest by about 4 1/2 M an hour and I have to say that I think again I think you’re strike or at least my strike I’m certainly not a swing robot by any means and uh I think your strike is going to influence the ball speed pretty much more so than than uh that 4 and 1 half M an hour from the fastest to the slowest you know if you take the average of that you’re talking about plus two plus- 2 milph and that’s only about four yards plus minus so that’s not a huge difference and I think strike could explain a lot of that difference with regards to testing with drivers like I mentioned at the beginning of the video I used two different setups just to see if I could see any Trends in the data the first driver was a pxg set to 12° with a regular flex shaft and the second driver was a Callaway epic speed with a very stiff shaft set at 10 1/ 12° of Loft when it comes to the results of the driver in terms of Back Spin there just wasn’t much difference between all of these balls the max difference between the highest spinning and the lowest spinning ball was about 500 revs in both cases and I really think my strike variation could contribute to that difference more so than really anything else but there was a couple little trends that I want to be able to share with you namely the lowest or trending towards the lowest spinning ball in both trials or both tests was the maxfly tour it really does a nice job of controlling spin off of the driver now the ball speed conversation is a little bit more extreme because there was 11 M an hour difference in ball speed off of the pxg and there was 9 M an hour of ball speed difference off of the Callaway in both cases the Snell was the slowest ball in both groups in terms of the fastest ball in both groups for the pxg the maxfly tour was the fastest ball and the prov1 was the fastest ball off the Callaway but I will say that those two kind of swapped positions they were both amongst the top two in terms of ball speed it’s just one beat out the other uh in one test versus the other which again could be just the human factor of trying to test balls in this way but ultimately what I would say is the maxfly tour does a really nice job of delivering low SP Spin and high ball speed if you want a little more spin but with a lot of ball speed the prov1 did a very nice job as well sound and feel off of all five balls was pretty similar with a few subtle differences but nothing that would make you say oh there’s no way I could play this ball uh I would say that the softest ball in the group appeared to be the Snell it felt really soft u in fact I played a round of golf the other day with a fairly new golfer and let him play a few holes with the Max Fly let him play a few holes with the snil and both of us like the snil on course pretty well because it feels pretty good off the uh the irons off the driver and everything but the difference is fairly subtle it’s a little bit more firm when you get to the Max Fly which is probably the firmest in the group um but again the differences are subtle off the putter all five of these balls feel very similar and sound very similar which is a big deal for me cuz if you’ve ever hit like a really awful two-piece ball off of a Putter and it just clicks right off that is a really horrible feeling and it’s not something I enjoy and that would instantly take a ball out of uh out of the possibility of use for me I don’t know if you feel the same way but I feel pretty strongly about that so which ball is best well that’s kind of tough to say because the thing about a golf ball is it’s a very personal decision it really needs to fit the golfer that is playing that specific ball so I wouldn’t say that a prov1 is perfect for everyone I wouldn’t say that the Snell is perfect for everyone it really just depends what your specific game needs but in terms of the testing that I did and from my perspective what I think is that in terms of a great ball for greens side control it is the titless Pro V1 this ball is fantastic around the greens it’s obviously got a very rich history of having great performance around the greens and it would be my best for green side control however I would also say as a strong runner up the Kirkland performs extremely well checks up very nicely and given the price boy you just can’t beat that so green side control prov1 takes it for me but Kirkland is a strong second place best ball off the driver well you may figured it out based on some of my comments but the maxfly tour this is a fantastic ball off of a driver it offers really good ball speed and lower spin so if those are things that you need for your particular game especially the low spin piece of this and when I say low spin it’s a couple hundred RPM it’s nothing major um but this is a firmer hotter ball and I can definitely see why my golf spy has been pushing this ball so hard um it reminds reminds me a lot of the tailor made tp5x which is one of my favorite balls and is very hot off the driver and it’s a little bit cheaper than a tp5x with very good performance so if you’re looking for something that’s a bit of a budget Max Fly tour would be my recommendation for a really good ball off the te in terms of what’s the best value golf ball well it’s my best friend the Kirkland I just can’t beat this ball for a little over a buck a ball it h right in there with the other four balls it didn’t always come out on top but it typically didn’t always come out on bottom either it was just kind of in the middle of the pack I really like how much this ball spins up I don’t see a lot of distance loss out of it it’s a really good ball for the price and I just don’t think you can possibly argue that another ball is a better value than this ball on the market right now in fact I’d go as far as to say this may be the best value in golf period however as a second Place runner up this cut gray Bowl right now you can get this bow on Amazon for 20 bucks a dozen 19.95 I think it is um and that’s a really really good price I mentioned earlier that I used this ball in a short video not this specific Ball but one of these cut Grays in a short video well then I used it on my SIM just to practice record other videos Etc and I put a ton of shots on a cut gray before the cover failed so these covers are extremely durable and the performance is surprisingly close to a prov1 in many instances so for 1995 a dozen a great alternative to what is undoubtedly the best value and that’s the Kirkland and my best overall golf ball out of this three-piece golf ball study is the titless Pro V1 there’s a reason this thing is as popular as it is because it just performs it does great on green side it performs well on Mid irons it’s great off the driver it feels fantastic off a putter the cover holds up really well it’s got the best looks within the group I love the classic thin tight list logo it just looks classy I love the prov1 however it’s very expensive and because of that I don’t play it if you were looking to play a really good ball that may be a little bit less expensive the max fight tour would be my first recommendation uh after that I’d probably say the cut gray if you’re really opposed to Kirklands but again my personal favorite ball is the Kirkland and that’s what I’m going to continue to play going forward well regardless of what ball you choose I hope you got some value out of this video of this Roundup of these five different balls I think there’s some really interesting information here and I hope it helps you as as you’re selecting what ball you want to play but most importantly I hope I’ve convinced some holdouts that you should no longer be playing a two-piece ball and you should definitely be playing a three-piece ball it’s what’s best for your game well that’s it from the golf nerd hit on long and straight and I’ll see you next time [Music]