Inside the Titleist TSR4 driver and Ben An's top contender
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Everyone loves a driver from the deck, usually because most of us can't take it off.
In the Genesis tournament Ben An played the shots of the year with his long team to help Tom Kim before winning the play-off in their home country of Korea.
It was An's second victory on the DP World Tour, his first coming at Wentworth in 2015, and took him to 27th in the world.
The 33-year-old's wallet is interesting for a variety of reasons; otherwise you only have one wood in the bag because you have 1 iron.
An driver, the Titleist TSR4, has been in the bag since its release in September 2022 and, on the evidence of this, will remain so.
The Korean had 290 yards to the pin on the 15th hole, a flag cut behind a high green protected by water. An pulled the trigger and, amazingly, hit it 13 feet.
“I think I got two goals back. “I hit a good driver down the deck on the front nine on the par 5, so I said, 'You know what, he's the one to do it,'” An said.
“Planning is not that easy to hit near the flag, and the driver was the way I planned it… I think it was the shot I needed at that moment… It was aggressive, but I knew I could pull it off. .”
The odds of a PGA Tour player hitting a shot from 290 yards to within 15 feet is about 0.4% or 1 in 250, according to Jamie Kennedy at X.
WHAT A SHOT!! @ByeongHunAn and the driver who left the deck in one of the pictures of the year. #GenesisCompetition pic.twitter.com/0MVlJZhIEE
– DP World Tour (@DPWorldTour) October 27, 2024
The TSR4, according to Titleist, is its low-spin driver with added leverage. It actually has a built-in face so that the entire hitting surface is designed to take a constant speed and distance.
In An there is still enough spin in the TSR4 to be able to take such a shot.
“I like it a lot. “If I don't feel like I have a good strike or a little spinny, a little bit to the right, it does what it's supposed to do when I hit it,” he said.
“Normally, I'll have a couple of low spins, like 21, 22. If I hit it on the toe, it's about 19, but like I said, I have enough length in my ball flight, so it starts about 11, 12 degrees .
“It's about 125, 130 feet of apex, so it's very high and that's a lot of rotation at that height.”
Obviously another ingredient in this shot is An's Pro V1x ball.
“We did a lot of testing with the Pro V1 and X. I have been trying both balls and the X type feels like it spins a little bit but I can control the green.
“And it goes a little higher near the green as well, so I can hit higher, softer shots.
“The ProV1x is a high flight ball but, for me, I can hit it low or high both ways.
“If I feel like it's going down, it's going down. If I hold it right and try to hit it high, it goes high.
“So I think that's the golf ball that I'm looking for, it's like, whenever I hit a shot, whether it's a miss or a good hit, it does what I feel, you know, it comes off the face, what it does.”
READ MORE: By the numbers: what goes into the Titleist Pro V1 and Pro V1x golf balls
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