Golf
2024 Titleist Golf Balls: Which is right for your game and budget?
For more than two decades, the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x have been the most-played golf balls on the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, the LPGA Tour and at every major amateur event, including the NCAA Championships, but the Titleist portfolio of golf balls goes much deeper than those two offerings. According to Titleist, in 2023, the company’s golf balls were used to win 159 professional events, while the next closest competitor scored 28.
Titleist golf balls are typically updated on two-year product cycles, so after the 2023 release of new versions of the Pro V1 and Pro V1x, it was not surprising that the brand did not release another update before the start of the 2024 season. However, Titleist did drop a new AVX, Tour Soft and TruFeel.
The Titleist Tour Speed, which had been a complimentary ball to the Tour Soft, has been discontinued to streamline the family of offerings.
For 2024, there are seven golf balls available at retail, with the Pro V1, Pro V1x and Pro V1x Left Dash elevated to the most-premium position in the lineup. Titleist feels that if price is not taken into consideration, those three golf balls offer the best overall performance and one of them would be ideal for nearly all golfers. However, price, as we all know, is a factor for most golfers when it comes to buying golf balls, so the other four balls — AVX, Tour Soft, Velocity and TruFeel — are designed with specific player types in mind and at lower prices.
The best way to find out which Titleist golf ball is best suited for your game is to try them, starting around the green with chip shots, pitch shots and short approach shots before progressing into iron shots and finally tee shots. Consider how much spin you generate and the control you have with your wedges, the flight of your iron shots produce and then the distance you create with your fairway woods and driver. Prioritize what you need your golf ball to do, then take price into consideration, and you should be able to find a solid choice for your game and your wallet.
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The 2023 Titleist Pro V1. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Specs: Three-piece construction with cast urethane cover Since 2000, the Pro V1 has been one of the most popular and most-played balls in golf, so we will use this ball as the baseline for comparisons in this article. The Pro V1 is a three-piece ball that features a high-gradient core designed to be soft in the center and grow progressively firmer toward the perimeter. That core is encased in a firm mantle layer, which in turn has a very thin and soft cast urethane cover applied over it. The large differential between the rigid outer portion of the core and the soft inner area helps to reduce spin with your long clubs, while the soft cover on top of the mantle makes it easier for your short irons and wedges to grab the ball on approach shots, chips and pitch shots to generate spin and control.
The 2023 Titleist Pro V1x. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Specs: Four-piece, dual-core construction with cast urethane cover Like the standard Pro V1, the Pro V1x was most-recently updated for 2023. It remains a four-piece ball made with a dual-core design inside a firm mantle layer that is encased in a soft urethane cover. In a higher-compression ball like as the Pro V1x, excessive spin can be generated with longer clubs, but by using two cores, Titleist designers were able to drop the spin generated at higher speeds. For the current ball, the inner core’s volume was increased 44 percent, and like the Pro V1’s core, it is softer in the center and gets progressively firmer toward the perimeter. The outer core, which is slightly thinner, was made marginally firmer. The new gradient core amplifies the effect of having two cores with different levels of firmness, so the 2023 Pro V1x can now deliver more speed. In addition to feeling firmer than the Pro V1, the Pro V1x should fly slightly higher and generate slightly more spin, both off the tee and around the green.
The Pro V1x Left Dash. (David Dusek)
Price: $54.99 per dozen
Specs: Four-piece, urethane-covered balls available in white The Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash made its debut in 2019 and has not been updated, mainly because it services a very specific group of golfers. Like the standard Pro V1x, it is a four-piece ball with a dual-core system inside a mantle layer and a urethane cover. The dual-core system helped Titleist engineers create a greater firmness separation between the inner core and the outer core, which for fast-swinging players can mean more distance off the tee with less spin. The Pro V1x Left Dash will be the firmest-feeling ball in the lineup, but what makes it unique is it should produce less spin on full-swing shots than either the Pro V1 or Pro V1x. At the same time, Pro V1x Left Dash will fly higher than Pro V1, making it an interesting alternative to the Pro V1 and Pro V1x for fast-swinging golfers who often produce excessive spin that robs them of distance.
The Titleist AVX ball for 2024. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $49.99 per dozen
Specs: Three-piece, urethane-covered golf balls. Available in White and Yellow. The first AVX was released in 2017 as an alternative to the V and X balls (get it, AVX) and this ball was updated for 2024. Like its predecessors, the current AVX is a three-piece ball with a urethane cover, but now the core is gradational, like the Pro V1, and the 2024 edition has been given a softer, thicker urethane cover to enhanced greenside spin. The softer, thicker urethane cover also helps to make the AVX feel softer at impact, even though the updated ball’s overall compression (80) is the same as the 2024 version. Compared to the Pro V1, the AVX is feel softer, produce less full-swing spin and fly lower on full-swing shots, but it’s greenside spin nearly matches Pro V1. In Titleist testing with a full-swing wedge, the updated AVX generated an average of 9,398 rpm of spin, which is only 201 rpm less than the current Pro V1. The AVX now has a suggested retail price that is $5 less than Pro V1, Pro V1x and Pro V1x Left Dash.
Titleist Tour Soft for 2024. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $39.99 per dozen
Specs: Two-piece, ionomer-covered golf balls. Available in white, yellow and green. Updated for 2024, the Tour Soft is a two-piece ball that has a massive gradational core to help golfers generate more speed and distance. The cover of the Tour Soft has a 346-dimple pattern that Titleist designers created to help the ball hold its line more effectively in windy conditions. However, unlike the Pro V1, Pro V1x, Pro V1x Left Dash and AVX, the Tour Soft does not have a urethane cover. Instead, the cover is made using an ultra-thin ionomer that Titleist refers to as Fusablend. Titleist claims that it differs from the hard ionomers put are used in most distance balls sold at budget prices. Titleist adds other materials to the ionomer to soften it, so the cover can be easily grabbed by the grooves in your wedges and short-irons on approach shots. Does it provide the same level of greenside spin that the urethane-covered Pro V1 and Pro V1x balls? No, but the Tour Soft is $15 less expensive than the Pro V1, Pro V1x, Pro V1x Left Dash and $10 less than AVX, and Titleist claims that it performs better than harder ionomer covers on the market.
Titleist Velocity for 2022. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $29.99 per dozen
Specs: Two-piece, Surlyn-covered ball The current Velocity was released in 2022 and like its predecessors, it is a two-piece ball that features a large core and an ionomer cover. However, the current Velocity’s higher-compression LSX core measures 1.55 inches in diameter. A golf ball’s total diameter is 1.68 inches, so this core is massive, helping it deliver more speed off the tee and with long irons. With a price that is $25 per dozen less than Titleist’s most-premium offerings, and with a name like Velocity, golfers know what this ball is about. Unlike Titleist’s urethane balls that use the cover material to help generate spin and stopping power on the green, Velocity creates stopping power with trajectory. Velocoty flies higher than most Titleist balls, so it can create a steeper descent angle that can help iron shots and wedges naturally stop quicker.
Titleist TruFeel for 2024. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Price: $24.99 per dozen
Specs: Two-piece, ionomer-covered golf balls. Available in white, yellow and matte red The latest version of TruFeel has a newly-formulated core that Titleist calls TruTouch. While it is slightly smaller than the core in the previous TruFeel ball, it still helps golfers generate more ball speed for good distance off the tee. The benefit of going with a smaller core is it allowed Titleist to make the TruFlex cover, which is made from a blend of ionomer and softening polymers, slightly thicker. The softer cover can be grabbed by the grooves of wedges and short irons more easily, so the 2024 TruFeel should give players more greenside spin and control. TruFeel has a lower compression to go along with the thicker cover, so at impact, the ball will feel softer than other Titleist balls, but the dimple pattern and cover design were made to help it create a low, penetrating ball flight. Think of the Titleist TruFeel as the best Titleist ball the company can make, knowing that the price needs to be less than half of what golfers pay for a Pro V1.
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