Players teeing up the new Pro V1 and Pro V1x at Royal St. Georges have a distinct advantage over the competition: golf ball aerodynamics.
The reason? The new 2021 Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls each feature completely new aerodynamics – a new spherically-tiled 388 tetrahedral dimple design for Pro V1 and a new spherically-tiled 348 tetrahedral dimple design for Pro V1x.
According to Mike Madson, Director of Aerodynamics & Research Engineering, these new patterns emerged as the result of R&D's never-ending search for better flight.
"Since the first Pro V1 was introduced, we have designed, built, and tested right around two-thousand different dimple configurations," Madson said. "We explore dimple counts, dimple sizes, shapes, depths – anything we can possibly think of to find and refine the next innovation in golf ball aerodynamics.
The dimple patterns on the 2021 Pro V1 and Pro V1x were first tested back in 2013, and from the beginning both patterns showed a lot of potential. We knew they were both going to be Pro V1-type candidates. Since then, we redesigned and optimized them time and again as part of a constant iterative process.
For the 388 pattern, we built and tested over 60 different versions before we actually landed on the one that you see on the new Pro V1," said Mike. "And for the 348 on Pro V1x, it was 35 different versions before we got the one we wanted. From the beginning we knew we had something great, but we needed to optimize them before we could put them on a Pro V1 or Pro V1x."
That optimization process was an exhaustive exercise for Mike and his team – refining dimple depths on the 388 and 348 patterns to maximize distance for the specific core and casing layer constructions of Pro V1 and Pro V1x, respectively.
What is optimized flight?
"Here's an example we like to use," Mike answered. "Imagine you're standing outside with a garden hose. You're watering your flower bed and you've stretched the hose as far as it will go, but you still need to get to that part of the garden that's on the other side of the yard, right?
So what do you do? Well, first you put your thumb over the nozzle to make it spray out faster…but after that you start raising your arm up in the air, and as you raise your arm the water goes a little farther, and then even a little farther, but then it gets to a point of diminishing returns where you start getting too high, and the water doesn’t go as far, so you go back down to the ideal spray height. That is the optimized trajectory for the water, the point in the trajectory that maximizes the distance. We do the same thing with dimple design. By precisely changing the depths of the dimples and testing those slight differences, we find the optimal trajectory for that specific pattern."
Just how precise do these changes that R&D makes need to be from one test ball to the next?
"When we make the tooling to do this, we're only changing the dimple depths by about two ten-thousandths of an inch for each iteration. To put that into context, that's about the size of a red blood cell. Our ability to precisely control the depth of the dimples allows us to optimize trajectory and maximize distance as a result. "
In addition to maximizing the distance potential of new Pro V1 and Pro V1x, a key focus for the new 388 and 348 dimple patterns was to improve flight consistency.
"The new patterns allowed us to take another step forward in consistency of flight," Mike said. "These dimple patterns are designed with flight symmetry in mind, so regardless of how the ball is oriented, your flight is remarkably stable. The trajectory, peak height, and carry distance will have reduced variability from shot to shot."
Improved aerodynamic consistency means that your good shots will be even better, and your misses will be closer to your target.
A golf ball with more predictable flight is particularly useful at a venue like the Open Championship. In fact, stability helps tame one of the main defenses of links courses like Royal St. Georges: the wind.
"The wind exaggerates everything," Mike explained. "In a 20-mph headwind, tour players hitting driver could lose as much as 50 yards off the tee. And maybe even more importantly, in a 20-mph crosswind, those same tour player tee shots could be blown sideways as much as 30 yards off-line. Any inconsistency in the aerodynamics will be exaggerated as wind speed increases. Under Open Championship conditions, if the ball isn’t designed and manufactured for consistent flight, you can get into trouble through no fault of your own.
Our commitment to aerodynamic research means that regardless of what the wind does at St Georges this week, the new dimple patterns on V and X have improved their total performance. So players can be confident in their golf ball on every shot, and in any condition."