The Masters champion trusts Titleist Pro V1

The 88th Masters Tournament ended with a  Pro V1 golf ball  dropping into the bottom of the cup on the 18th green Sunday evening at Augusta National Golf Club, officially sealing a decisive victory for the 2024 Masters champion.

A longtime Pro V1 golf ball player, the champion earned his second green jacket in three years with a closing 4-under 68, playing his final 6 holes in 3 under par to win by four shots.

After the round, the champion credited his short game as the “most important” part of his game this week in Augusta, which the statistics proved out. According to Data Golf, he led the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Green (+1.97 per round), accounting for almost half of his tournament-best SG: Tee to Green (+4.12 per round).

1-2 FINISH FOR TITLEIST GOLF BALL PLAYERS

The Masters champion led a 1-2 finish for Titleist golf ball players, with  Ludvig Aberg (Pro V1x) finishing runner-up at Augusta National in his first major start. Eleven of the top 15 on Sunday’s final leaderboard were Titleist golf ball players.

Fourteen of the 16 events played this season on the PGA TOUR have now been won with a Pro V1 or Pro V1x golf ball, with 70 percent of all competitors teeing up a Titleist:

1.  The Sentry Champion (Pro V1x)

2.  Grayson Murray  (Pro V1) – Sony Open in Hawaii

3.  The American Express Champion (Pro V1)

4.  Matthieu Pavon (Pro V1) – Farmers Insurance Open

5.  Wyndham Clark (Pro V1x) – AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am

6.  Nick Taylor (Pro V1x) – WM Phoenix Open

7.  Jake Knapp (Pro V1 Left Dot) – Mexico Open at Vidanta

8.  Austin Eckroat (Pro V1) – Cognizant Classic

9.  Arnold Palmer Invitational Champion (Pro V1)

10.  Brice Garnett (Pro V1) – Puerto Rico Open

11.  THE PLAYERS Champion (Pro V1)

12.  Peter Malnati (Pro V1x Yellow) – Valspar Championship

13.  Stephan Jaeger (Pro V1) – Texas Children’s Houston Open

14.  The Masters Champion (Pro V1)

CHAMPION WINS WITH THREE VOKEY WEDGES

The 2024 Masters champion brought three Vokey Design wedges to the winner’s circle, just as he has for each of his now nine PGA TOUR victories. The World No. 1, who plays a  Vokey Design SM8 50.12F gap wedge, a 56.14F sand wedge and an SM9 WedgeWorks 60T lob wedge, made three straight up-and-downs to begin his final round. After chipping it close from short of the green on 1 and long of the green on 2 to save pars, the champion set up his first birdie of the day, stopping his Pro V1 within 3 feet from a greenside bunker on the short par-4 3rd hole. He got up-and-down for birdie from greenside on the par-5 8 before hitting his approach on the 9th hole from 89 yards to 6 inches for another birdie.

According to Data Golf, he led the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Green for the tournament, gaining 7.88 strokes for the tournament. The top four players in that category all played Vokey wedges.

“I think probably the short game was most important,” he told the media Sunday evening.

In the first round, he holed a difficult shot from the bunker long of the 12th green. He opened his third round with a 32-yard hole-out birdie from left of the 1st green.

The Masters champ began making the transition to Vokey wedges from competitive models toward the end of 2020. He played a full set of three Vokeys for the first time at the 2021 Sentry Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.

At the 2022 Masters, the champion gamed a similar setup of Vokey wedges (he played an SM8 WedgeWorks 60.06K instead of his current T Grind), using his Vokey lob wedge to make a pivotal birdie on the par-4 3rd Sunday, chipping in his Pro V1 from 29 yards left of the green.

For the 2024 season, the two-time Masters champion ranks 5th in Strokes Gained: Around the Green (+0.547 per round) and 8th in Scrambling (68%).

LUDVIG ÅBERG FINISHES RUNNER-UP IN FIRST MAJOR START

Titleist Brand Ambassador  Ludvig Åberg  – playing a  Pro V1x golf ball, TSR2 driver, T100 irons  and  NEW Vokey Design SM10 wedges– carded rounds of 73-69-70-69 to post 7 under and finish solo 2nd in his first major championship appearance. Åberg now has one victory, three runner-ups, five top-5’s and eight top-10 finishes in his 20 PGA TOUR starts as a professional.

WITB | Ludvig Åberg

Titleist Pro V1x golf ball

TSR2 9.0 driver | Fujikura Ventus Black 6 X

T100 4-P irons | KBS Tour 130 X

NEW Vokey Design SM10 50.08F, 54.10S, 60.08M wedges | KBS Tour 130 X

ABERG ON HIS PRO V1X

– “I like to put spin on the ball. I like to hit it a little bit higher to have a little bit of a different angle coming into the firmer greens that we play here on the PGA TOUR. So I think the Pro V1x helps me with that and it helps me to be able to compete against the best players in the world.”

– “I just love the feel around the greens, putting, chipping, I love the softer feel (of 2023 Pro V1x), and it flights the way that I want to.”

– “What you want when you’re chipping is that little extra feeling of checking up on the green, and making sure that when the greens get a little firmer and faster, you’re still able to put that spin on it. Which I feel like [the Pro V1x] allows me to do. Chipping and short game is such feel-based – what you like to feel, what you don’t like to feel. And this allows me to have that creative mindset.”

– “We play so many rounds and you don’t want to question your equipment. If you make a bad swing, you want to blame yourself and no one else. So that’s where the ball comes in. And obviously you play in a lot of different conditions. The weather, the green, the grass, grass types, different kind of things. So it is very important to trust your equipment and that’s what I do. I’ve never ever questioned the Titleist golf ball. It is #1 ball in golf and there’s a reason for that.”

ÅBERG ON HIS TSR DRIVER

– “I’m playing the TSR2, 9 degrees, it’s on a D4 setting. I’ve played this ever since it came out. I really love it… I mean, no matter what driver you play, the good ones are always going to be good, but that’s not really how you play golf, unfortunately, because you’re going to miss it off the centre. You’re going to hit it off the heel, you’re going to hit off the toe every now and then. So for me, when I hit it off the toe, the spin numbers are still very good. It doesn’t really go under 2,000 (rpm), which just obviously makes it stay in the air longer and doesn’t get that left miss. And then the heel ones usually stays around under 3,000, which if you are in that little gap, that zone, I think that’s when you can perform. Because like I said, you’re not going to hit every driver great, but if you can kind of narrow down your misses a little bit, that’s going to be key.”

ÅBERG ON HIS 2023 T100 IRONS

– “I actually just ahead of this season switched into these. They’re the ‘23 T100’s. I’ve never been kind of the blade guy. I feel like I need all the help that I can get with my irons, golf is hard enough. So I really like the look of it, feel of it. It performs really well and I feel like an iron is such feel-based. Obviously you want the numbers and the trajectories to match up what you feel, but it’s so much what you see, look, feel, and I really love to feel the rounded edges, the semi-thin top line with an iron.”

– “You’re not going to hit the same flight all the time. You might hit one a little bit higher. I like to do a little bit of everything with my irons. If I have a left pin, I might want to draw it in there. I have a right pin, I might want to cut it in there. So if I can have that same feel no matter what shot I’m hitting, how the club goes through the turf. I’m more of a soft feel guy and I feel like these irons have that soft feel. I don’t feel any pinchy-ness. I don’t feel anything like that when I hit them. It’s very clean, it’s very nice and soft.”

ÅBERG’S VOKEY SM10 WEDGE SETUP

At the start of the year, Åberg arrived in Hawaii for the Sentry with three NEW Vokey Design SM10 wedges in the bag to start the 2024 season. Week in and week out, Åberg plays a  50.08F gap wedge  and a  54.10S sand wedge. He rotates between a  WedgeWorks 60V lob wedge  and a  60.08M lob wedge depending on course conditions. (He opted for the 60.08M this week at Augusta National.)

– “I got three wedges in my bag every week. Gap wedge, sand wedge, lob wedge… I’ve used these SM10’s, I’ve made the switch right before the holidays and they’re so nice. Like I said before as well, feel is so important with the wedges because you’re going to hit a lot of chip shots, a lot of bunker shots. And if you don’t like the feel, the sound, the look of it, you’re going to have issues getting it up and down. So that’s what I feel like. And then obviously the rounded edges around the toe, the top line, absolutely love it.”