Revealed: Why does Scottie Scheffler, the king of iron play, use a ProV1 ball?

Mark Townsend 22 May 2025

If you still haven’t grasped quite how dominant the Titleist ball is at the top of the professional game, then then these stats should hammer it home:

– Every player in the top 10 of Strokes Gained: Approach also played a Titleist golf ball in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow

– 101 competitors gamed a Pro V1, Pro V1x or Pro V1x Left Dash, more than five times the nearest competitor (18).

– 73 per cent of players have teed up a Titleist golf ball on the PGA Tour this season

Top of the pile is World No.1 and freshly-crowned PGA Championship winner, Scottie Scheffler, who has played the Titleist ball since his junior days. The now three-time Major champion relies on the ProV1 which is the lower launching and more penetrating premium Titleist ball and has a slightly softer feel and lower spin on the long irons though still produces plenty of revs around the green.

“I started playing Titleist when I was pretty young. I remember my first dozen Pro Vs when I was a kid, my coach gave them to me. And it’s just one of those deals where it was the best back then and I think it’s still the best now.”

And it is around the green where Scheffler will begin testing a ball.

“First thing I’ll always do is take them to the short-game area, that’s always the most important. From there I’ll go to the range and just look at numbers, carry, stuff like that. From there, I’ll go out on the course and just start hitting shots. So same thing I do in the short-game area, have a few of my ball, have a few of the new ball and just try and hit the same shot and see how the ball reacts, see what it does in the wind and just go from there,” the 28-year-old explains.

“One shot that I’m always practising is when I take some off of it. I need to see that it’s still the same (distance) gaps between my full shot and when I’m taking some off of it. When I’m practising on the driving range, if I have a little mishit or if a shot doesn’t feel right, I usually have a really good feel for how far it actually carried. If my stock wedge is 140 and I’m trying to hit it 135, and maybe I catch a little bit off and I’m like, ‘man that really feels like 132,’ if it goes that distance, that’s really important to me. And that gives me a lot of faith in what that golf ball’s going to do.”

For all the talk of driving distance stats the real skill of a golfer is to hit the right yardages that sets them apart. While we most likely over-estimate how far we hit our 7-iron, the tour pros need to have a shot for every yardage.

“You’re always playing a different type of shot. Rarely am I just hitting a straight up stock shot, you’re always trying to do a little something with the ball. And so having that consistency and knowing that golf ball’s going to react the way I need it to react when it comes off the face and when it goes into the green – especially when you get in a Tour set-up where the greens are crazy firm, the wind is blowing – you got to have total control over where that ball is going to go. I feel like I’ve gotten that consistency with the Titleist ball over the years, and I really trust how it reacts.

“The ProV1 just gives me the best performance across the board. I can hit all the different shots that I need to. I can take off spin, apply spin, and the ball pretty much does everything that I need it to do, whether it’s going long, straight off the tee or hitting some nice soft nippers around the green. We try to stay consistent in what we’re doing, and then if the ball does what it’s supposed to do, we can make the proper adjustments. Versus if the golf ball is moving around a bunch with spin numbers, it’s going to be much harder for me to control than a good, consistent golf ball.”

One crumb of comfort for the rest of us is that a premium ball will make a real difference to the spin that we see, or don’t see, when we’re looking to get the ball close.

“Golf ball to golf ball across the board there’s such a huge variance between what they do. And so a lot of the inconsistencies they (amateurs) are seeing in their game could just be from using a different ball,” says Scheffler.

“And they’re like, ‘Man, how do the pros spin it like they do?’ But like if you gave me a regular range ball, I wouldn’t be able to hit the shots that I am with the Pro V1 and that’s just the nature of what the ball does. And so giving yourself a product that gives you the opportunity to be able to hit shots somewhat the way we do is really important. And I think they’d see some kind of vast improvements just from having a consistency, using the same golf ball every time.”