In 2000 a golf ball was created that revolutionised - and, in some eyes - ruined the sport
By James Corrigan, Golf Correspondent
The ancient game has been getting in a lather about the 15th anniversary of a ball.
Except the Pro V1 is not any ball. Depending on your viewpoint it is the piece of equipment which overhauled/ruined golf. What seemed merely evolutionary can now be deemed revolutionary.
At this week’s corresponding PGA Tour event 15 years ago, 47 players in the 156-man field walked to the first tee armed with the ball officially launched by Titleist. It appeared appropriate that they were playing in Las Vegas, although they all knew this was no gamble, no plus-foured crapshoot. Testing had shown them what was possible and so this, billed the “the largest pluralistic shift of equipment at one event in golf history” was to prove it.
Six of the top 10 used the Pro V1. “Our Eureka moment,” Bill Morgan, Titleist’s vice president said. For Billy Andrade and countless others to follow, it was a miracle encapsulated in a perfect sphere, granting an extra 20 yards while also allowing the same touch around the green.
In basic terms, the Pro VI was formed of a solid core (taken from the distance balls), surrounded by a surlyn “veneer” casing (taken from the performance balls). In financial terms it became the most successful golf product of all time.
The effect was remarkable. A few months later, Phil Mickelson warned rivals not using the Pro VI they were “operating under a distinct disadvantage” and as other ball-makers followed suit so the craze transformed into the norm. At the 2000 Masters, 59 of the 95 players employed a wound ball. At the 2001 Masters, only four did. By the end of that season, not a single player using a wound ball won on any of the major tours. The curators had another item for their museums.
The buzz rose in volume as rapidly as the driving distance stats. In 2000, one player on the PGA Tour averaged more than 300 yards; 10 years later there were 21 in this category. In 2000, 60 players averaged less than 270 yards; 10 years later there was only one.
It was to be a decade in which legendary layouts, in their pure state, looked too short and were thus “tricked up” and the fury duly erupted as the governing bodies sat back and did nothing, claiming there were other factors, not least the players being better conditioned.
Jack Nicklaus, for one, was not having it. “When will they wake up?” he said. “The golf ball is way out of bounds. It is making the great golf courses obsolete.”
Gary Player remains just as vocal.The Black Knight blames the ball for most of the modern game’s perceived ills - for boring, eye-straining holes with thick rough and daft greens; for the demise of the shot-maker; for five-hour rounds which put off so many. He wonders where golf can go next, where the tee-boxes can go next.
“I’ve been joking for 15 years that Augusta can’t get any longer that they will have to go out into the streets,” Player said. “Well guess what? They’re now buying those streets.”
Augusta National is having to expand into surrounding streets
The green-jackets have the greenback to do so; the overwhelming majority of clubs are not so fortunate. And so the cabbage will thicken, the putting surfaces become more and more like marble and this once wonderfully multi-faceted sport become less and less interesting.
