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Has golf equipment reached a plateau?
It sometimes feels that way. Across the various product categories, the days of revolutionary improvements from one generation to the next seem to be far in the past. Refinement and optimization are the main objectives nowadays.
One company that can forever claim to have fundamentally changed the game is Titleist, which in the fall of this year will mark a quarter-century since its original Pro V1 golf ball debuted on the PGA Tour. From the very first week it was available, the Titleist Pro V1 swept through the pro ranks, then the rest of the game, like a tsunami, replacing entrenched golf ball manufacturing methods virtually overnight with its arrangement of multiple solid layers beneath a responsive urethane cover.
This is an odd-numbered year, which means the newest iteration of Titleist's flagship golf balls - the Pro V1 and the Pro V1x - are ready to hit shelves. I have had a dozen of each in my possession for a couple of weeks and have had the opportunity to put them through their paces. In short, they represent an incremental improvement on their predecessors, helping to keep the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x the gold standard in pro-line golf balls.
2025 Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls compared to their 2023 counterparts
Play
The holy-grail ideal is a golf ball that exhibits low spin on shots with the driver and fairway woods and high spin on short irons and wedges. Titleist refers to this dynamic as the "spin slope," and with a new core material formula in both the 2025 Pro V1 and Pro V1x, the company believes it has succeeded in "steepening" that slope. After multiple rounds and practice sessions' worth of testing, I am inclined to agree - I perceived slightly more bite on greenside shots from the new Pro V1 and Pro V1x relative to their predecessors, released in 2023.
While reviewing that year's new golf balls, I had something of an epiphany. For years, I had defaulted to the Pro V1 simply because it was reputed to be the longer golf ball of the two. But by testing both models from the green backwards, I realized that the firmer feel and higher spin and launch of the Pro V1x was worth the potential trade-off of a small handful of yards off the tee for me.
After putting the 2025 Pro V1 and Pro V1x through their paces, I remain a Pro V1x player. The new version plays ever so slightly softer than its predecessor, with little change in distance or trajectory. That difference manifests most clearly on greenside shots, where the tone of the '25 Pro V1x is slightly more muted than that of the '23 model. Likewise, I found the 2025 Pro V1 to be slightly softer than the already-soft '23 Pro V1, with overall similar feel and flight performance. Crucially, the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x remain superior to their competition in the wind. In other words, two excellent golf balls have been incrementally refined, as indicated by the $54.99-per-dozen advertised price, which is unchanged from the 2023 editions.
Should you play the 2025 Pro V1 or Pro V1x?
Having used the Titleist Pro V1 for approximately 200 rounds since late 2022, I am all-in on spin. Most brands' high-end golf ball lines boil down to a choice between a little more distance and a little more spin, and I would challenge golfers to at least experiment with a new mindset that prioritizes spin over distance. The quest for distance in golf club categories has led to lower-lofted irons and lower-spinning shafts, which cause many golfers I've played with to struggle to generate a steep enough landing angle into greens. This limits stopping power and, therefore, control. What good is a little bit more distance if it doesn't end up helping get you closer to the hole on the shots that matter? If you have defaulted to the Pro V1 for years because of distance, you should at least experiment with a sleeve or two of Pro V1x golf balls this year. You might find spin is your friend, too.
That said, The Pro V1 is a fantastic golf ball in its own right. Golfers who would already describe their typical ball flight as high should likely stick with it. There's a reason it's been the dominant golf ball for a quarter-century.
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