Golf’s urban legend

It’s golf’s version of the Rubik Cube or the hoola-hoop – a must-have fad that has golfers throughout the world agog. It’s Titleists Pro V1 (“Pro Vee One”) golf ball that has set sales records like no other golfing item and become the stuff of urban legend.

In America, with a golfing population said to be in the region of 33-million, rival manufacturers have claimed that the ball is illegal, Internet trading sites have sprung up with people who have managed to obtain a stock trying to cut a quick profit, while a fable has sprung up that the ProV1 goes further if teed up in a certain way.

Pro shops and golf equipment retailers throughout America have had to ration their stock and create waiting lists for golfers wishing to buy the ball. In many instances stock arrives and is sold out within hours of the arrival of the shipment.

Titleist ads for the solid core ball (in other words it has no wound elastic) carry the notice: “The Pro V1 is available in limited quantities.”

When the ball was first launched the like of Phil Mickelson, David Love and Ernie Els sung it’s praises, won tournaments using it, and caused the legend to spread like a Highveld grass fire. Not only, it was claimed, did the ball go further but it also stopped as quickly as any high-spin version.

Next came the locker-room gossip that if the Pro V1 was teed up in a certain way (with the seam pointed vertically) it could be made to fly further and if the seam was set on the tee horizontally it would climb into the air quicker. Urban legend became fact and golf shops report that many customers now demand to be told how to tee the ball up to achieve certain results.

As to whether the ball conforms to the USGA’s standards the association’s senior technical director Dick Rugge has no doubt. “No question. And you can underline ‘no’”, he said when approached about claims that there were problems with the ProV1’s symmetry – something along the lines of the legendary (and illegal) Polaris ball introduced during the 80s that was constructed in an asymmetrical way to yield a self-correcting flight.

According to the symmetry (roundness) regulations a ball must essentially perform the same regardless of where on the ball’s surface it is struck. The allowed variance is 3.2 yards or .28 seconds hang time and the ProV1 according to Rugge meets the standard.

Opponents, faced with a runaway best-seller knocking their own product, are not so sure and some such as Maxfli and Precept have voiced their concerns.

The craze has reach South Africa. Bo Barnard, general manager of Acushnet SA, a subsidiary of the American manufacturer, says he is able to access only a limited number of ProV1s “and I’m pre-booked until October.” Barnard explains that with golfers out in force in the Northern Hemisphere summer it is likely to be a few months yet before the ball is freely available.

At an approximate retail price of R36,99 (a ball!) it is not the cheapest of fads to follow. I have tried the ball (thanks to a gift of two of them) and discovered that it has one thing in common with all the other balls I have ever used – it sinks!