Titleist EXP·01: You're not just buying a ball, you're The BEST!!!!!

Of course, what actually matters about this ball seems to be what consumers have to say about it. Titleist is seeking input from those who purchase the balls, providing a link to a survey on a card enclosed with every box.

“The EXP Project invites golfers into the early stages of our R&D process, and allows us to broadly test experimental materials, constructions and processes that could be integrated. into any segment of our golf ball line,” said Michael Mahoney, vice president, Titleist golf ball marketing. “EXP·01 is truly an exploratory product and there’s no better way to evaluate our progress than getting it into the hands of dedicated golfers.”

But for the consumer playing test to work, Titleist doesn’t too reveal too much about the EXP·01. In a message to its retail accounts who will stock the ball in limited supply, the company revealed little.

“We will not be providing full details of the product design as we do not want to influence the performance of this product,” the message reads.

While the company has distributed trial versions of its balls to its Team Titleist group of company-faithful customers and it’s also recently released specialized versions of the Pro V1 family played on tour (including the Pro V1x “Left Dash” a few months ago), the desire for this product was a larger audience, especially non-Titleist loyalists it seems. Indeed, the consumer survey asks golfers what their preferred ball is and in addition to top companies (Callaway, TaylorMade, Bridgestone and Srixon) the list of choices includes lower-priced direct-to-consumer brands like Snell, Vice and even Kirkland, the consumer warehouse Costco house brand that offered balls several years ago that became a cult favorite. That ball also led to a legal battle between the two companies that was eventually settled out of court.

The EXP·01 survey also asks consumers to rate the ball compared to the ball they normally play in the following criteria in this order: driver distance, spin on full shots into the green, iron distance, feel, spin on chip/pitch shots around the green, durability, appearance and (again) feel.

Test marketing a new product isn’t a foreign concept in golf. It’s much like what Titleist did with the initial launch of AVX. But in that case it seemed like there was a finished product. It’s not clear whether EXP·01 is a finished product or subject to change (or even complete disappearance) based on consumer feedback. In short, consumers could be determining where Titleist’s product line goes next based on their feedback on EXP·01.