What Kind of Golfer Am I?

I’m currently an 8.9 GHIN, and I got as low as a 7.0 toward the end of 2023. Before COVID, I spent most of my time somewhere between a 16 and 18 handicap. Around that time, I set an ambitious goal of improving enough to eventually try to play in the Arizona Open. I’m not there yet, but the long-term target inside Arccos is still a 5 handicap, and I take that goal seriously—even if my playing schedule doesn’t always cooperate.

I’m also a high school football and track coach, which makes me much more of a weekend golfer than a tournament golfer. During football season in the fall and track season in the spring, rounds are few and far between. Most of my golf gets packed into June and July, when I try to play once a week—and occasionally twice—along with our annual four-round Sandcrane golf trip. I may sneak in one or two rounds during December, but Arizona golf prices make playing regularly that time of year difficult. And while I play whenever the calendar allows, I’m not much of a practicer. Range sessions are rare, and they almost never connect consistently with my playing sessions. Most of my improvement has come from simply getting on the course, tracking what happens, and learning how to score with whatever version of my swing shows up that day.

Why the Pro V1 Was My Baseline

As far back as high school, I’ve always been able to compress a golf ball—I just haven’t always known where it was going. For the past 10 to 12 years, I’ve played the Pro V1 almost exclusively. I trusted how it flew, how it reacted around the green, and what it felt like off every club in the bag. One of my favorite feelings in golf is a perfectly struck shot with a well-constructed, three-piece urethane ball. There is a combination of compression, sound, and feedback that is difficult to replicate, and the Pro V1 has consistently delivered it.

The Pro V1 is the gold standard. I’m not sure anyone needs me to sell them on that, and this article isn’t an attempt to tear it down. That is exactly why it mattered as my baseline. I wasn’t comparing the Feather Pro to a random bargain ball I found in the bottom of my bag. I was taking out a ball I had trusted for more than a decade and replacing it with ours. For the switch to last, the Feather Pro didn’t just need to be good for its price—it needed to give me the flight, feel, control, and confidence I had come to expect from a premium urethane golf ball.

An Important Disclosure

I’m one of the founders of Sandcrane Golf, so this is not an independent golf-ball review. I helped bring the Feather Pro to market, I want it to succeed, and I’m not going to pretend I approached this comparison without some bias. But I’m also serious about my own game. I wasn’t willing to keep a ball in play simply because our logo was printed on it—especially if it was costing me shots.

That is why I went back through my actual Arccos data. I had the same question any golfer would have when moving away from a ball they had trusted for years: Am I giving up anything by putting this ball in play? Rather than relying only on how the Feather Pro felt after a few good swings, I compared my first 10 rounds with it against my final rounds with the Pro V1. The data isn’t a laboratory test, but it does provide an honest record of what happened where it matters most: on the golf course.

What the Scores Showed

For the cleanest comparison, I used only completed 18-hole rounds when calculating scoring averages. My Pro V1 history included seven completed rounds, along with one 16-hole session and separate 9- and 10-hole sessions. All 10 Feather Pro rounds were completed over 18 holes.

 

 

The averages were separated by only three-tenths of a stroke: 82.0 with the Pro V1 and 82.3 with the Feather Pro. With this number of rounds played across different courses and at different times of the year, that difference is far too small to declare one ball the winner. It is also small enough to answer my original question. From a scoring standpoint, I could not find evidence that switching to the Feather Pro cost me anything.

The score range tells a similar story. I still had rounds when I struggled into the mid-to-high 80s, regardless of the ball. I was also able to break 80 with both. Most importantly, my lowest completed round in the comparison—a 74 at Dobson Ranch—came after putting the Feather Pro in play. I cannot claim the ball caused that round, but I can confidently say it did not prevent it.

What Arccos Actually Exposed

The clearest lesson from the Arccos data wasn’t about the golf ball. It was about the golfer using it. Compared with my 5-handicap target, I lost an average of 3.94 strokes per round on approach shots with the Feather Pro. That was easily the largest weakness in my game. Driving cost me another 1.45 strokes per round, while my putting was essentially even with the 5-handicap benchmark.

That profile makes sense because I’m an 8.9-handicap golfer who rarely practices. I’m capable of hitting almost any shot; I’m just not capable of knowing exactly when it will show up. I can make birdie on consecutive holes and follow them with a triple. I can hit a drive 320 yards down the middle, step onto the next tee with the same ball and the same driver, and send one straight left out of bounds. That inconsistency is the difference between the golfer I am and the 5-handicap golfer I’m trying to become.

The Feather Pro didn’t fix that inconsistency, but nothing in the scoring pattern suggested it created it either. A golf ball can provide the flight, spin, feel, and control needed to hit a good shot. It cannot replace practice, straighten a bad swing, or stop me from compounding one mistake into three. My best shots with the Feather Pro were every bit as good as the shots I expected from the Pro V1. The misses were still mine.

How the Feather Pro Has Actually Performed

The scoring data told me I wasn’t giving up anything obvious, but a scorecard cannot explain how a ball feels or behaves. Those observations are more subjective, and they come with the same disclosure as the rest of this article: Feather Pro is our ball. Still, after playing the Pro V1 for more than a decade, I know what I expect from a premium golf ball.

Driver feel and flight

Off the driver, the Feather Pro feels and flies very similarly to the Pro V1. My driving distance has shown little to no meaningful change since switching. A well-struck drive still produces the speed, flight, and feedback I expect. If there is a difference, I would say the Feather Pro feels slightly less forgiving when contact moves away from the center of the face. Great swings produce great results, while poor swings feel—and usually finish—like poor swings.

Iron performance

The Feather Pro feels soft off my irons without feeling dead. A flushed iron has the compressed, solid sensation I want from a urethane ball. My distances through most of the bag have remained essentially unchanged. If I have lost anything, it may be with my 4-, 5-, and 6-irons, but the difference has not been large or consistent enough for me to separate the ball from the quality of my strike. With my scoring irons, I have noticed virtually no distance difference.

 

Wedge spin

Spin is where the Feather Pro has stood out the most. I wish I still had the simulator reports from our development testing because these balls spun—a lot. From what I remember, my gap wedge generally produced around 10,000 to 11,000 rpm with the Pro V1. With the Feather Pro, I routinely saw numbers closer to 13,000 to 14,000 rpm under the same testing conditions.

Important context: Those numbers are based on my recollection rather than a saved test report, so I’m not presenting them as a formal laboratory comparison. What I can confidently say is that I have never felt short on greenside or approach-shot spin. If anything, the Feather Pro can produce more spin than some golfers need.

Putting feel

The Feather Pro feels softer than the Pro V1 off my putter. The best way I can describe it is that the ball feels like it remains on the putter face slightly longer. It doesn’t jump off the face or feel as “hot.” Some golfers may prefer a firmer, faster sensation, but I like the softer response.

For me, that feel has made putts from roughly 5 to 15 feet seem more predictable. I’m not claiming the ball transformed my putting, but I feel more comfortable controlling the starting speed from that range.

Durability

The Pro V1 wins on durability, although not by an overwhelming margin. I play Titleist T250 irons and Vokey wedges, and my gap wedge, 54-degree, and 58-degree can be hard on any urethane cover. Even when I didn’t lose a Pro V1, I could go through one or two during a round because the cover became scuffed or chewed up.

With the Feather Pro, I may use roughly one additional ball per round because of cover wear. Both balls show damage when repeatedly hit with fresh wedge grooves, but the Pro V1 holds up slightly better. That is a real tradeoff, and one I would like us to continue improving.

Performance in the wind

I haven’t noticed a meaningful difference in the wind, but I’m also the wrong golfer to make a definitive judgment there. Wind gets into my head, my swing starts changing, and the experiment quickly becomes more about me than the golf ball. I haven’t seen anything that concerns me about the Feather Pro’s flight, but I’m not going to pretend my windy-round results constitute a reliable ball test.

Did I ever have to compensate for the ball?

No. I’ve never stood over a shot thinking I needed to swing differently because I was playing the Feather Pro. Flushed shots feel flushed with both balls. Poor shots remain poor shots with both. At no point have I felt that the ball was the reason I was playing particularly well or particularly poorly.

That is ultimately why I’ve continued playing it. Yes, it is my company’s golf ball, and there is no way to remove that bias completely. But shooting good scores is still more important to me than forcing our product into my bag. The Arccos data says my scoring has remained essentially unchanged, and my experience on the course has given me no performance-based reason to switch back.

If I weren’t one of the founders of Sandcrane, I would still be left with the same practical question: if I can shoot the same scores with a premium urethane ball, why wouldn’t I save $20 to $25 per dozen on the balls I’m eventually going to lose in the woods?