How Many Indentations Are on a Golf Ball? The Count, and What It Doesn't Tell You

Most golf balls carry between 300 and 500 indentations, which the industry calls dimples, and no rule sets the number. The Equipment Rules published by the USGA and The R&A govern diameter, weight, initial velocity, symmetry and total distance, and say nothing about how many dimples a ball must have. Current counts, taken from product copy and spec listings: the 2025 Titleist Pro V1 has 388 dimples and the Pro V1x 348, the Srixon Z-Star 338, the Callaway Chrome Tour 332, the TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x 322, and the Mizuno RB 566 has 566. The figure quoted most often, 336, is a historical leftover, the count of the ATTI mold pattern that dominated ball production until the 1970s. A typical dimple is about 0.010 inch (0.25 mm) deep and roughly 0.14 inch (3.5 mm) across, set into a ball that must measure at least 1.680 inches (42.67 mm) in diameter and weigh no more than 1.620 ounces (45.93 g).

The counts, model by model

| Ball | Indentations (dimples) | Where the figure comes from | |---|---|---| | Titleist Pro V1 (2025) | 388 | Titleist press release, January 13, 2025 | | Titleist Pro V1x (2025) | 348 | Titleist press release, January 13, 2025 | | Srixon Z-Star (2025) | 338 | Srixon "338 Speed Dimple Pattern" product copy | | Callaway Chrome Tour (2026) | 332 | Retail spec listings | | TaylorMade TP5 and TP5x | 322 | Golf-media listings for the Tour Flight pattern | | Mizuno RB 566 | 566 | Mizuno product page, "566 Micro-dimple design" | | Any ATTI-pattern ball, pre-1970s | 336 | US Patent 6,482,110, Callaway Golf, 2002 |

Two things in that table are worth more than the numbers themselves. The first is that the sourcing quality drops as you go down it. Titleist prints its count in a dated press release; Mizuno puts it in the product name. For the Callaway and TaylorMade figures you are trusting retail listings and golf media, which lag a model-year refresh and rarely say which generation they measured.

The second is that counts move. The Pro V1 launched in 2000 with 392 dimples, ran at 352 from 2011 through 2020, and has been at 388 since the 2021 model. Titleist says it has designed, manufactured and tested more than 2,500 dimple patterns since that first ball. So when one site tells you a Pro V1 has 352 and another says 388, both were right at some point, and neither told you the year.

What the count leaves out: depth, edge angle and coverage

Here is where the count stops being useful. Scientific American, drawing on Tom Veilleux and Vince Simonds of the Top-Flite aerodynamic research group, puts average dimple depth at about 0.010 inch and adds that a depth change of 0.001 inch can produce a radical change to trajectory and total distance. That is 25 micrometers, roughly a third the width of a human hair, and it is the reason ball molds are held to tolerances that would embarrass most machine shops.

Open a patent and the single number collapses entirely. Callaway's US Patent 6,482,110, granted in 2002, describes a ball with 382 dimples arranged in seven different size sets: 220 dimples at about 0.0834 inch radius, 100 at 0.079, then sets of 20, 20, 10, 10 and 2 running down to 0.051 inch, with chord depths between 0.0051 and 0.0054 inch and entry angles near 15 degrees. Together they cover 86 percent of the surface. "382 dimples" describes seven distinct dimples and a coverage figure. Say only the 382 and you have thrown all of it away.

Published depths disagree, and I want to be straight about why. Patents cite chord depths near 0.005 inch while popular sources cite 0.010, because depth is measured against different reference surfaces and there is no single public standard I can point you to. Treat any depth figure without a stated method as approximate.

The cleanest proof that count is the wrong variable came from Titleist itself in January 2025. The Pro V1x kept its 348-dimple pattern from the 2021 model, unchanged. Its flight did not. Scott Cooper, project manager for golf ball development, told Golf Digest's E. Michael Johnson: "The X required a lower peak height in order to pass the ODS. It's still higher flying than the Pro V1, but we made some changes to edge angle and depth of the dimples to achieve that." Same count, different ball.

Smooth versus dimpled: the comparison that explains what dimples are for

Forget more-versus-less for a moment and compare a tour ball with a smooth practice ball, because that is the comparison that isolates the variable.

A smooth ball hit by a professional travels about half as far as a dimpled one, and a dimpled ball has roughly half the drag of a smooth one, both figures from that same Scientific American piece. A COMSOL computational fluid dynamics study, which modeled drag alone without the lift that backspin generates, put the gap at 25 percent, or 30 meters, about 33 yards. The spread between "half" and "25 percent" is not sloppiness; it is the difference between counting drag only and counting drag plus spin-generated lift.

The mechanism is pressure drag. Air separates early from a smooth sphere, leaving a wide low-pressure wake behind it, and the ball is effectively pulled backward by the pressure difference between its nose and its tail. Dimples trip the boundary layer into turbulence, which keeps the flow attached further around the ball, pushes the separation point back toward roughly 110 degrees, and shrinks the wake. Lift works alongside it: Scientific American attributes about half a golf ball's lift to backspin and the other half to the dimples.

That comparison also shows why the popular more-versus-less question is malformed. It treats count as the only adjustable surface variable, when the adjustable set is count, diameter, depth, edge angle, size mix and coverage. Given one number about a ball's surface, I would take the coverage percentage over the count every time. Coverage tells you how much of the sphere is actually doing aerodynamic work.

What the rules actually control

The Equipment Rules are precise about the ball and silent about its dimples. Diameter must be not less than 1.680 inches (42.67 mm), with no maximum. Weight must not exceed 1.620 ounces avoirdupois (45.93 g), with no minimum. The ball must not be designed or manufactured to have properties that differ from those of a spherically symmetrical ball, which is tested by firing it in different orientations and comparing the flights. That symmetry requirement is the only rule that touches the pattern at all, and it constrains the arrangement, never the count.

Distance is capped by the Overall Distance Standard: 317 yards of carry and roll, with a 3-yard tolerance, measured on a test machine at 120 mph clubhead speed, 10 degrees of launch and 2,520 rpm of spin. In December 2023 the USGA and The R&A announced revised conditions effective January 2028: 125 mph, 11 degrees, 2,220 rpm, with the 317-yard limit unchanged. They project the longest hitters losing 13 to 15 yards, tour-level players 9 to 11, and most recreational golfers 5 yards or fewer. Balls conforming in 2027 stay legal for recreational play until January 2030.

That standard is what forced the Pro V1x change quoted above. A manufacturer facing the distance ceiling reaches for depth and edge angle, because those move peak height and drag. The count stays where it is.

Spin comes from the club, not from the dimples

Golfers routinely credit the ball's surface with spin it never produced. Loft, strike quality and clubhead speed create the spin; the dimples convert some of it into lift.

TrackMan's published tour figures give the scale. PGA Tour driver spin averages 2,545 rpm, LPGA 2,506 rpm. Move down the bag and PGA Tour 6-iron spin averages 6,204 rpm, LPGA 5,904 rpm. TrackMan's optimizer figure for a pitching wedge at 72 mph clubhead speed is 8,408 rpm. The amateur numbers are the instructive ones: a male scratch golfer averages 2,896 rpm off the driver, a 5-handicap 2,987, a 10-handicap 3,192, and the average male golfer at 14.5 sits at 3,275 rpm.

If your driver spins 3,275 rpm and you want it nearer 2,500, the gap is roughly 750 rpm of ballooning, and no dimple count on the market closes it. Attack angle, strike location and loft do. A lower-spin ball model helps at the margin, which is a different claim from a dimple count helping.

Where the count stops mattering: the green

Run the arithmetic on a putt and dimples fall out of the equation.

The USGA Stimpmeter is a 36-inch extruded aluminum bar with a 145-degree V-groove and a release notch 30 inches from the tapered end. Raise it until the ball releases at 20 degrees and the ball leaves at roughly 6 feet per second, about 4 mph. A tour drive leaves the clubface at 167 mph. Aerodynamic force scales with the square of speed, so the air is doing on the order of 1,700 times less to a ball rolling off a Stimpmeter than to a ball leaving a driver. Whatever the dimples are worth in flight, they are worth nothing you can measure over the last thirty feet.

What does move the ball over those thirty feet is the surface, and the numbers there are large. USGA Green Section research found that cutting height had the single largest effect on green speed, with each 1/32-inch change producing an inverse change of 6 to 8 inches in roll. Annual nitrogen moved it 3 to 5 inches per pound per thousand square feet. When the USGA measured more than 1,500 greens across 36 states in 1976 and 1977, average speed came in at 6.5 feet, which is slower than most club golfers today would believe.

Then there is the finding I keep returning to: golfers can rarely discern differences of 6 inches or less in Stimpmeter roll. So the average golfer will argue about a dimple count he cannot feel while standing on a surface whose speed he also cannot feel until it moves half a foot. That asymmetry is most of what I have spent twenty-odd years writing about.

The USGA's own measuring guidance says to take readings at least 30 minutes after mowing or rolling and with minimal surface moisture, because a wet or freshly worked surface will lie to you. I have ignored it. Years ago I blamed a putter for a dead, slow roll on a green that was still holding water from the morning irrigation cycle; my father's pocket moisture probe was in the same bag as the green-speed notebook and I never took it out. I have carried both ever since. Green reading starts at the maintenance shed, not on the putting surface, and the ball you are rolling is the least variable thing in the whole system.

How to compare two balls in one afternoon

1. Measure the green before you measure the ball. Take a Stimpmeter reading and a firmness check at least 30 minutes after mowing or rolling, with a dry surface. If the surface changes between your two ball tests, the test is worthless.
2. Hit ten alternating 60-yard wedge shots with each ball to the same flag. Mark first bounce and finish for every shot. This is where cover and spin differences actually show up.
3. Hit ten alternating drivers on a launch monitor and read spin and launch, not carry. Carry on a given day tells you about the day. Spin and launch tell you about the ball.
4. Repeat the wedge set into a two-club wind. Flight window differences that hide on a calm day become obvious the moment the ball has to hold a line.

Questions golfers actually ask

How many dimples does Pro V1 have?

The 2025 Titleist Pro V1 has 388 dimples in a spherically tiled tetrahedral pattern, and the Pro V1x has 348. Older Pro V1s differ: the ball launched in 2000 with 392, and models from 2011 through 2020 carried 352. Check the model year before trusting any published number.

Which golf ball has 500 dimples?

No mainstream ball has exactly 500. That figure is the top of the usual 300-to-500 range rather than a product spec. The highest count I can verify on a currently sold ball is the Mizuno RB 566, at 566 dimples. Experimental designs have gone past 1,000.

Is it better to have more or less dimples on a golf ball?

Neither, on its own. Count alone predicts nothing, because depth, edge angle, size mix and surface coverage change flight far more. The 322-dimple TaylorMade TP5 and the 388-dimple Titleist Pro V1 are both tour balls. Compare launch monitor spin and launch numbers instead of counting.

Why are there 336 dimples on a golf ball?

There aren't, on most modern balls. The 336 figure comes from the ATTI mold pattern, an octahedral layout of 336 same-size dimples that dominated manufacturing until the 1970s. It lasted because it repeats every 90 degrees, which suited the symmetry rule and gave the mold a natural parting line.

What are golf-ball dimples called?

Dimples is the technical term, used in patents and by every manufacturer. The arrangement carries its own names: octahedral, icosahedral and tetrahedral describe how the dimples are tiled across the sphere. Brands add trade names such as Speed Dimple or Tour Flight. Raised bumps on pre-1908 balls were called brambles.

How does dimple depth affect flight?

Depth decides where airflow separates from the ball, which sets drag and lift. Scientific American reports that a change of 0.001 inch can radically alter trajectory and total distance. Patent design windows describe shallow dimples that let flight balloon and deep ones that make the ball drop early.