Golf's Major Championships

[fuagf]

As DeChambeau's clubs had to be PGA approved before he could use them i'd thought balls had to be PGA approved too. Obviously there is a standard and little tweaks can be made to that standard. Your post suggests (to me) Tiger's solid core ball was a huge first. This article gives me a similar impression:

Tiger Woods and the golf ball that (almost) changed it all
Jonathan WallBy Jonathan Wall
May 29, 2019
https://golf.com/gear/golf-balls/tiger-woods-golf-ball-nike/

I thought surely the ball Tiger played with that day couldn't be a wild new invention, as the article gives me
at least the impression it was. Surely, i thought the ball had to be PGA approved before he could use it.

This article leaves me i think with a more accurate idea of what the situation was:

The inside story of what the original Titleist Pro V1 launch was really like

By: Andrew Tursky October 8, 2020


Stewart Cink was at first skeptical of the ProV1. Getty Images

Twenty years ago this month, Titleist launched its revolutionary, multi-layer Pro V1 balls to PGA Tour players at the Invensys Classic of Las Vegas. That week, an astounding 47 players switched to the new Pro V1 ball, including the Invensys Classic winner, Billy Andrade; not a bad start, and the momentum never let up. Since that week, Titleist’s Pro V1s have been widely recognized as the game’s best balls for 20 years.

The Pro V1 was special because it combined two different worlds that were previously separate. Before 2000, golfers had to choose between wound-core balls, which were soft and spun a lot so they were easy to control, and solid-core balls that offered more distance. The wound-core balls weren’t very long, and the solid-core balls didn’t feel or perform very well.

Then came the Pro V1 that offered the best of both worlds with its solid core construction (from Titleist’s distance balls), surlyn casing (from Titleist’s performance balls) and a 392-dimpled urethane cover. For professionals and amateurs alike, the formula worked.

Bryson DeChambeau might unveil his newest innovation ‘hopefully’ at the Masters
By: Jonathan Wall .. [excerpt outed]
[...]The 48-inch driver shaft is almost non-existent in the professional ranks and has only been used a handful of times — Phil Mickelson tried a 47-inch shaft while Padraig Harrington attempted to play with a 48-inch driver — in the past few decades, but DeChambeau views the club as a weapon that could allow him to carry the fairway bunkers on the 2nd and 8th holes at Augusta National, as well as potentially drive the green (or get close to it) on the 3rd and 7th.
https://golf.com/gear/drivers/bryson-dechambeau-masters-driver-shaft/

These days, Titleist pumps out 300,000 Pro V1 (and Pro V1x) balls per day in its 225,000-square-foot Titleist Ball Plant 3 facility in New Bedford, Mass. Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine the golf world without Pro V1 balls, but would you believe that some pros were initially skeptical of the product?

Fordie Pitts, who started working for Titleist in 1993 and is currently the Titleist tour consultant for golf ball R&D, remembers testing the early prototypes for the Pro V1 as far back as 1997, and it wasn’t an immediate home run.

“Those (wound) balls had a lot of spin and that’s how the game was being played at the time,” Pitts said. “Years prior to the launch in 2000, we had taken a solid-core product to the players and a lot of them were a little skeptical at first. The feel was a little bit different. The spin wasn’t as much. … I think the attitude back then was you needed spin and a lot of it.”

Early prototypes for the Pro V1 didn’t make much of a splash in the industry, and wound balls continued to prevail on Tour. Tiger Woods may have had a hand in changing that, though. Woods — who now uses a Bridgestone ball — famously switched to a solid-core Nike ball and dominated the 2000 U.S. Open. Players started to take notice, and realized they may have been mistaken about solid-core balls.

“Tiger came on the scene and was blowing it by everyone else and all of the sudden guys were like, ‘Wait a minute, let me rethink that product,’” Pitts said. “So we brought it back out again.”

Continued - https://golf.com/gear/golf-balls/20-years-later-insiders-discuss-titleist-pro-v1-launch-vegas/

So, ok, DeChambeau's tweak, if there was more in it than just the longer shaft others had tried before, was obviously within the parameters
which the PGA allows. And Wood's in 2000 did not come-up with a ball no one else had access to, but just a slightly different solid core ball.

I've learned a bit in all that. Thanks.