FAIRHAVEN, Mass. (Oct. 4, 2026) — Season after season, more than 70% of players on the PGA Tour choose to play a Titleist golf ball. That percentage only increases among those competing for the game’s biggest amateur titles such as the NCAA D1 Championship, U.S. Amateur and U.S. Junior.
At the same time, the Titleist Golf Ball R&D team continues to push forward, collaborating with the world’s best players to test prototype technologies and gather insights that provide the foundation for the Titleist golf ball development process.
“Everything we do is driven by the desire to better understand player needs and translate those insights into meaningful performance improvements,” says Fordie Pitts, Director of Tour Research & Validation.
Today at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan, the next generation Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls begin a key global validation phase that will span the world’s professional tours for the next several months, providing the game’s best players the opportunity to evaluate the new 2027 models under tournament conditions.
This is the next step in a multi-year development cycle, following intensive on-course testing that has been underway since the Arnold Palmer Invitational in early March. That week at Bay Hill, Adam Scott, Ryan Gerard, Jordan Spieth and Harris English each tested final candidates during their Tuesday practice rounds, providing feedback to Titleist reps after every shot.
Player after player — from Justin Thomas to Lottie Woad to Matt Fitzpatrick to Yana Wilson to Viktor Hovland — engaged in the same process over the following weeks and months, as the new Pro V1 and Pro V1x designs moved from prototypes to production.
This week in Japan, Titleist reps from both the PGA Tour and Japan Golf Tour will be working with players on the range and inside the ropes at Yokohama Country Club as they prepare to game the next generation models in competition.
“When we’re in the middle of a testing session and a player asks me how soon he can play the new ball, I know we’re onto something,” Pitts said. “That’s how it’s been the last couple months.”
Four players who eagerly awaited their first opportunity to tee up the 2027 models got the chance at the Biltmore Championship Asheville, the opening event of the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Fall season. That group included Neal Shipley, whose move to the new Pro V1 led to both his career-best round (62 in Round 2) and finish (T3) on the PGA Tour.
Two weeks later, the group of early adopters grew, with more 2027 Pro V1 and Pro V1x models going into play at the PGA TOUR’s Bank of Utah Championship, the LPGA’s LOTTE Championship and the DP World Tour’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
Robert MacIntyre was one of the latest players to convert, teeing up new Pro V1 for the first time this week in Scotland before finishing T6.
The new model initially caught MacIntyre’s attention during a prototype testing session with Pitts earlier this year at Harbour Town during his Tuesday practice round at the RBC Heritage. Last week, MacIntyre asked to book a session at the Titleist Performance Centre at Woburn (UK), where he worked with Titleist tour rep Liam McDougall to get dialed in with the new 2027 model.
Another player to make the early move was Doug Ghim, who added 2027 Pro V1x to his setup this in Utah after having first tested the new model during a trip last month to the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, Calif. Ghim played his first 54 holes of competition with new Pro V1x in 22 under par, putting him one shot back before the final round of the Bank of Utah Championship.
Stay tuned to Titleist channels as the global launch of the new Pro V1 and Pro V1x models continues over the coming weeks and months on professional tours around the world.
The original Pro V1’s introduction came in the fall of 2000 at the PGA Tour’s Invensys Classic in Las Vegas, where 47 players switched to the new multi-component, solid core technology Pro V1 the first week it was available, representing the single greatest shift in equipment usage ever at a PGA Tour event.
Since then, Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls have been used to win over 110 men’s and women’s major championships. On the PGA Tour alone, they have been teed up in competition over 100,000 times and counting.
The new 2027 models mark the 15th generation of Pro V1 and 13th generation of Pro V1x. Behind the innovations that precede each new model is an industry-leading Golf Ball R&D team that comprises more than 75 associates and groups such as Aerodynamics, Engineering, Materials Research and Analytical Chemistry, Research and Intellectual Property, Product Testing and Analysis, and Product Development and Implementation.
While specific performance and technology improvements vary from generation to generation, Titleist Golf Ball R&D’s approach remains the same. It’s rooted in a relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence in process — one that synthesizes golfer feedback, rigorous R&D and testing, world-class manufacturing technologies, and performance validation by the world’s best and most discerning players — to raise the bar and set a new standard for the #1 ball in golf, again and again.
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