Is Vice Golf Redefining Golf Ball Design?

Today’s story on Vice Golf isn’t the story I was expecting to write.

If you’re a regular reader of MyGolfSpy, you know “partner content” is usually a corporate profile and a discussion of that company’s products and what makes them different/unique. When I sat down with Vice Golf co-founder Ingo Duellmann and Chief Growth Officer Benny Pfister, that’s pretty much what I thought would happen.

Instead, I was thrown a curveball that even Sandy Koufax or Dwight Gooden would have envied. And that curveball came with a nice dollop of German mustard on the side.

I don’t know if Vice Golf’s new approach to designing golf balls means their golf balls will be “better” than everyone else’s. Heck, the company itself says their balls won’t fly farther or be more accurate. But this story is about the process, not the end result.

And the process, dear readers, is the story. Whether the results of that process (i.e., the 2024 line of Vice Golf balls) work for you is, well, entirely up to you. But for today, the process is the compelling story.

Vice Golf Balls: Quick Background

Before we dive into the process, let’s take a quick look at the Vice Golf backstory. It’s a little different, too.

Co-founders Ingo Duellmann and Rainer Stoekl were German law students who met in 2008 while indulging in their favorite pastime: surfing. They struck up a friendship and, when they became lawyers, a partnership. One of their first clients was one of the biggest golf ball brands in Asia. During that process, they got to know a little about the golf ball business.

And that led to Vice.

“Instead of trying to solve other people’s problems as lawyers and consultants,” Duellmann tells MyGolfSpy, “we decided to start a business and solve our own problems.”

Neither partner was a golfer but they saw golf balls as consumables. By 2010, they noticed the rise of internet-based, direct-to-consumer companies such as Dollar Shave Club selling razors and Warby Parker selling glasses. They decided to take the plunge.

“We didn’t have exclusivity with our supplier,” explains Duellmann. “We were their smallest customer and it took some convincing from our side. They finally said, ‘Let’s give these German guys a shot.’”

Their first order was for 60,000 golf balls (5,000 dozen), which jam-packed the tiny Vice warehouse.

“When they showed up, we were like, ‘We’re never going to sell all these.”

But they did. And they grew.

Coming to America

By 2015, Vice opened U.S. operations as one of several emerging direct-to-consumer brands.

That’s also when it met Acushnet. Or, more accurately, Acushnet’s legal department. Acushnet sued Vice and nine other DTC golf ball companies in federal court over patent violations, specifically over a “triangular dipyramid dimple pattern” that was patented in 2003 and was the foundation for the Pro V1x.

“Of the brands sued, it was just us who fought it,” says Duellmann. “After a year or so, it was cleaned up. There was a settlement that I’m not allowed to talk about.”

Ultimately, Vice sold the same balls after the suit as it did before and is the only one of the defendants that didn’t close up shop rather than fight.

“That really kick-started our business,” Duellmann says. “At the end of the day, it was better to have had that lawsuit than to not have it.”

Five years later, Vice Golf decided to take is business in a new direction by adding retail to its DTC model.

“We noticed we had grown to a 20 percent market share of ball sold online,” Duellmann says. “That’s when we decided to go the opposite way and challenge the heritage brands on their home turf.”

It started at Walmart and Target, which had been selling second-tier golf balls and were looking to add a premium offering. Vice Golf’s U.S. sales force has grown to 37 reps and the company has penetrated green grass accounts and into PGA TOUR Superstore. Currently, Vice is in over 1,500 green grass facilities and more than 10,000 retail locations.

But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about HIO.

Who, or What, Is HIO?

HIO is one of Europe’s largest brand-agnostic fitting studios, similar to Club Champion, True Spec or Cool Clubs. It was founded in 2009 and has 15 years’ worth of detailed swing data on its hard drive. Just over a year ago, HIO merged with Vice Golf.

And this is where the story gets even more interesting.

“We do fittings for everyone from the beginner to the scratch golfer,” says Benny Pfister, an HIO founder and now Vice Golf’s Chief Growth Officer. “We have all that data from the past 15 years and we used that to develop our new products.”

Like most fitting studios, HIO collects launch monitor and swing biomechanical data. They focus on the usual suspects: ball speed, launch angle, spin, peak height, landing angle, carry and total distance, dispersion, attack angle, face angle, swing path, dynamic loft and impact location. That mountain of data was used to design the 2024 line of Vice golf balls.

As far as we can tell, it’s the first time golf balls have been designed based on actual club fitting and performance data from golfers other than Tour pros. We know Bridgestone uses data from its ball fittings to refine its R&D process but it also leans on Tiger Woods and Jason Day. Most major OEMs rely on advisory staff, professionals and, of course, robots. But we don’t know of any that bases their designs on this kind of extensive launch monitor fitting data from regular golfers.

Vice Golf balls, it would seem, are made for you and me.

Six Player Profiles: Which One Are You?

Based on 15 years of data, HIO and Vice created six distinct player profiles. Vice then used those profiles to design its 2024 product line. Let’s meet them, shall we?

Beginner Ben (yes, they went there) is a COVID-newbie golfer, playing for less than two years but enjoys it. He plays regularly but struggles with impact quality and overall consistency. He’s not looking for specific spin outcomes on the green. He just wants satisfying sound and feel. And he wants to get better.

Average Andy is a seasoned golfer who loves the game but doesn’t have time to practice. He’s reasonably confident and reasonably consistent and is the very definition of “the average golfer.” He struggles with dispersion and hitting greens in regulation. He’s not terrible, he’s not great. He’s, well, average.

Short Sammy loves him some golf. He’s consistent, doesn’t lose many balls and has a decent short game. What he doesn’t have is distance due to a slower swing speed, inefficient trajectory or both. He scrambles to make par and can’t really increase swing speed through athleticism but will benefit from optimizing spin.

Fast Freddy swings fast and is long … in every direction. He hits it high and far but without much control. He’s not a “lessons guy” but he could use more consistency in his game.

Wild Wayne also doesn’t care for lessons. When he’s on, he’s a dangerous opponent. When he’s off, he’s just plain dangerous. He hits it all over the clubface, so consistency is a problem, and he has no predictable flight pattern or trajectory.

Finally, there’s Scratch Steven, the par machine. He knows what he’s doing and is looking for distance and control. He likes high spin on his short game and can honest-to-God “work” the ball on command.

Fitting Balls to Golfers

While not ironclad, Vice believes it can fit 99 percent of all golfers into one of those player profiles. By extension, Vice also believes it can fit those same golfers into a Vice ball that’s best for their games.

“If you have a high swing speed but can’t get enough short game spin, you go for the Pro Plus,” says Pfister. “If you aren’t super long but want a softer feel, higher launch and lower spin, you go for the Pro Air. And if you can’t decide, the Vice Pro is the one in the middle.”

In its fittings, HIO collects data from driver, 7-iron and sand wedge. From that data, patterns emerge. Ball speed, dispersion and peak height are key metrics. Specifically, does a shot have enough “air time” to gain distance and create enough landing angle to hold the green?

For example, let’s look at golfers with 7-iron ball speeds below 100 mph. The HIO data says three-quarters of them don’t hit the ball high enough to maximize distance or hold greens. Inexpensive Surlyn balls try to achieve more distance with lower spin but low spin leads to lower trajectories. Vice says its new Vice Pro Air is designed for low spin plus higher trajectory for more air time and a good landing angle. That makes it a good fit for Andy, Sammy and Steven (if he – or she – is looking for more distance).

For Faster Swingers …

Even with 7-iron ball speeds approaching 110 mph, spin can be a problem. The data says one-third of those golfers don’t create enough spin to control trajectory and landing angle. That leaves some distance on the table. Vice says the new Pro Plus is designed to optimize greenside spin while keeping driver and long-shot spin under control. Steven and Freddy should love it.

Andy, Freddy, Wayne and maybe Steven are good candidates for the Vice Pro. It simply splits the difference between the Air and the Pro Plus. All three balls are multi-piece, cast urethane balls. The Pro Air flies higher and is designed for air time. The Pro Plus is firmer and spinnier and the Vice Pro is the tweener: distance with a softer feel and lower spin than the Pro Plus but firmer, lower spinning and lower flying than the Pro Air.

The Vice Tour and Vice Drive are lower-priced Surlyn balls designed for distance. They’re not exactly “soft,” but are perfect for Beginner Ben or any of the others. They’re inexpensive balls with some performance that they won’t mind losing.

Is Vice Golf Redefining Golf Ball Design?

The answer to that question is yes and no. Vice Golf doesn’t, isn’t, and likely won’t be designing golf balls with Tour pro input. And since it’s leveraging swing and impact data from thousands of “regular” golfers – something that, as best as we can determine, hasn’t been done before – we can say yes, that does qualify as “redefining” golf ball design.

The result is three urethane balls with distinct performance profiles. Vice says its data-driven process has created far more separation between its three urethane balls than its previous iteration, so much so that the Vice Pro Air replaced the old Vice Pro Soft. At the very least Vice has redefined its own design process.

Conversely, if you’re a serial cynic and live to dismiss everything, it’s easy to say, “Nothing new here, move along.” You can point to the Pro V1/1x/AVX, Callaway Chrome Tour/Tour X/Chrome Soft, TaylorMade TP5/TP5x/Tour Response and Srixon Z-Star/Z-StarXV/Z-Star Diamond trios for reference. Bridgestone offers four urethane balls and Snell has three new urethane offerings.

But, as we said early on, the story here is the process. It’s a data-driven process, derived from real club fittings from regular golfers and is not easily copied. Additionally, Vice Golf has leveraged that information to create an online ball fitting tool. That’s something other golf ball OEMs have but, again, the fit is derived from 15 years’ worth of data.

Will all that translate into a good fit for you? The good news is trying the fitting tool doesn’t cost anything. Additionally, with Tour-level balls from the mainstream OEMs running upwards of $55 per dozen, $39.99 for a dozen Vice balls isn’t a particularly high barrier.

And finding the right ball for you is, like this story, all about the process.

This article was written in partnership with Vice