Why would Titleist and the other ball makers have to retool their plants? Wouldn’t this just be a reformulation in the polymers, or whatever, that go into their balls? Like they would be reverting back to the 2007 Pro V1 formula, or something similar.
The 2000 Pro V1 is barely any shorter than the 2023. The 2007 Pro V1 is NOT going to meet the new distance standard (whatever it is, which is probably what was in that Golf Digest article). The 2000 Pro V1 wouldn't pass. They can't just go back a few generations and call it good.
So, I put it this way on another site:
- Year over year, they paint a wall and sometimes replace a countertop in the kitchen.
- This will require gutting the house, knocking down some walls, maybe leaving one whole side of the house up and the foundation to satisfy the Historical Society, but then completely renovating the house.
Every part of the ball will have to be re-done. Not from the ground up, but they may have to change the core, the mantle, the cover. They may have to change the thicknesses, the materials or the composition, and they'll almost certainly have to change the dimples.
They could make a ball that meets the criteria pretty quickly: making a ball that performs GREAT across all clubs that meets the new regulations will take a lot of experimentation, a lot of new molds, a lot of testing…
Molds are expensive. Erie has a good number of plastics places, and in talking about this today, one person who was a manager at one of those said the molds for the caps of Gillette deodorant cost about $3M.
Also, unrelated to the above…
https://twitter.com/SashoMacKenzie/status/1730815668172300624This seems like a lot for a measly 5%. Should've just gone to 10%.