Why a successor to Titleist’s Pro V1x Left Dash golf ball lasted almost 8 years

The Pro V1x Left Dash was originally seen as a niche option, one of Titleist’s Custom Performance Options (CPOs), designed for only a small percentage of players.

But after winning the 2019 US Amateur and later the 2024 US Open, the ball began to capture a larger share of Titleist golf ball players. The ball quickly became a mainstream retail option and some of the technologies within it, such as the High Gradient Core construction, made their way into the regular Pro V1 and Pro V1x.

That was when the Left Dash, designed to be slightly sturdier, spin lower and fly higher than the retail Pro V1x, remained unchanged from the original version, as the company says they will never release a new product unless it’s better.

Now the “Dash” gets its own update with a new, faster, high-gradient core, a thicker casing layer, a thinner urethane coating, and a new custom-designed dimple pattern, all to make the “Dash, more Dash.”

“If you’re a Dash player, you should be very excited to play the new Dash because we’ve taken everything you love about it and made it just a little bit better,” said Mike Madson, Titleist’s Senior VP of Golf Ball R&D. “It’s still low spin off the tee. It’s faster, it’s longer, it penetrates the wind better. It’s everything a Dash player loves, with a little more.”

Keep reading below to learn more about the 2026 Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash, including my thoughts on the release.

In late 2023, Frederick Waddell, Director of Golf Ball Product Management, prepared to unveil a new Left Dash. The goal was to add a little more spin around the greens and soften the feel somewhat.

But months before launch, Waddell said the team was walking away from a 2024 launch. Feedback from Left Dash players was that this wasn’t the Dash they were looking for. It compromised the features of the standard Pro V1x.

“We said, you know what, we don’t have it together,” Waddell told GOLF. “And that didn’t mean it wasn’t a perfectly good golf ball — it was a really, really good golf ball — but it didn’t meet the need that the golfer was asking us for.”

So the team focused again on the core properties of the Left Dash: super fast and low rotation.

To make the ball faster, Titleist reformulated the core of the Dash to be slightly sturdier, but there was a trade-off.

The new Left Dash is faster than before.

Title seat

“The higher compression ball is always faster, but with that increased compression comes spin, which this golfer obviously doesn’t want,” says Scott Cooper, Titleist’s Director of Golf Ball Product Development, R&D.

The solution was to make the casing layer thicker, balancing the sturdier core to keep spin as low as the previous Left Dash while gaining speed.

A new spherical tiled design with 348 tetrahedral dimples helped make the flight more consistent and bring it down a hair, while still being considered ‘high’, for a very important reason.

“Because we made the ball so much faster, we have to abide by the rules of golf, and if it flew in that same window, we would. It would be too risky not to pass the USGA’s ODS test,” Cooper said.

My opinion: Keep the Left Dash a valuable passing tool

If you fit into the Pro V1x Left Dash, it’s not because you have problems generating spin. That’s not a large group of players. In fact, Titleist says that only about 6-8% of their ball fittings end up in a Left Dash recommendation (still 3-4x the number of Left Dot players).

The golf ball offers the right player plenty of control on the greens, and Titleist knows that because it was used to win the 2019 US Amateur and the 2024 US Open, both at Pinehurst.

While trying to add more greenside spin and feel could be great, the player who wants that would probably be better served playing the standard Pro V1x.

Ultimately, I think everyone at Titleist will be very happy that they focused on making the Left Dash faster, especially in an era where distance is king and there are more fast, high-spin players looking to gain control by dropping a little spin.