Junior
Tour Winner
Got back late last night after a bit of a horror m25, m40, m42 and m6 journey in the pouring rain......was it worth it ??? ABSOLUTELY !!!!!
Having negotiated my way down the drive way, past the sublime properties, and past the first tee box of the Wentworth estate it became quite apparent that the place does not do things by halves. The whole place echo's grandure and it was even more impressive than what I remembered from a previous visit 5 years ago.
I made my way straight to the driving range where we all met in the reception area of the TM performance lab. There were lots of nice touches around such as Justin Roses's Putter, Retif Goosens driver etc that just added to the whole professionalism of the set up there. We were chewing the fat over clubs and our games when Tom from Taylormade came over and introduced himself. We were straight into the fitting and I was first up......
After and explanation of the SLDR and the technology incorporated into it Tom asked me about my current game and what my strengths and weaknesses are ? where my bad misses were with my driver? and then also about my current driver and how I have it set up. I've always been an OK driver of the ball. When its good , its good, but when its bad, i'm often stood on the tee now knowing where the heck its going to go.....this usually ends up with either a big block or a toey snap hook!!! I've always suffered from chopping and changing the driver far too often and i'm always in search of the perfect shaft and head combo. My current driver is a TM RBZ tour ( set to 12 degree) with custom Matrix 6 stiff shaft. I say custom, it was custom for the guy who I bought it off ebay. I explained this to Tom and he quickly (and impressively) spoke about the charachteristics of the shaft and explained how the kick-point shafts could be hindering (or helping) my driving.
I hit a few drives with my current driver and managed to get a couple of ok ones out there, but I also hit a couple of hooks. It was quickly apparent that the inconsistencies in my driving was due to the kickpoint of the shaft not being suited to my swing. I was carrying the ball 215 /225 yards and the launch angle was way too low. This surprised me as I always though I hit it further. Im not a big hitter, but I expected to see 240/250...ego slightly dented. We loaded up the SLDR with the stock shaft and I hit a few on the neutral weighting setting and 12 degree's of loft. It ballooned a little bit so Tom changed to an Aldila shaft which immidiately brought the flight lower. The difference between the two shocked me, the ball flight and spin rates really were night and day. However, the Aldila didnt feel too great and the launch angle was lower than what we needed. We then Moved to a Diamana shaft and the results improved immeasurabley. The launch angle and spin rates were on the money and my distance had improved an average of 20 yards to 235/245 yards. I thought i'd hit the jackpot at that point but , as with the everything about the facility and location, it wasn't perfect, so Tom said he wanted to try some more. We stuck with the Diamana shaft and went up and down in weight and switched between an x-flex and a stiff flex shaft. All the time the weight bar was at neutral and the loft at 12 degree's due to my ball flight being pretty straight and on a good trajectory. The results between the x-flex 70g shaft and the s flex 60 gram shaft were very similar but my dispersion with the s flex was slightly tighter so we decided to go with that, set at 12 degree's.....job done, and more interesting and fun than I ever could have imagined. I can safely say, my days of ebay driver purchases are over !!
The SLDR itself felt really solid to hit. The weight is moved forward in the head to help get the spin rate down and Tom was explaining that as a result of this most players are increasing the loft of the driver. Tom also explained how a lot of the tour players are hitting slightly descending in to out blows with the driver which is in contrast to what a lot of people here about hitting the ball on the 'upswing'. Incidently, I had earlier found out that I slightly hit down on the ball with an in to out swing too so that made me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside. The key thing for me was how you always knew where the head was in the swing with the combo I had settled on. It felt heavier than other drivers that I'd tried, but easy and forgiving to hit. I mentioned this a few times during my jibbering videos piece. I was more nervous doing the video than hitting balls infront of a video camera and photographer and being.
It was great to meet Canary Yellow and Dufferman and i'm sure they enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks once again to Paul and Neil from GM and to Tom and Jess from Taylormade, It was a proper Carlsberg day and one I wont forget !!!
Having negotiated my way down the drive way, past the sublime properties, and past the first tee box of the Wentworth estate it became quite apparent that the place does not do things by halves. The whole place echo's grandure and it was even more impressive than what I remembered from a previous visit 5 years ago.
I made my way straight to the driving range where we all met in the reception area of the TM performance lab. There were lots of nice touches around such as Justin Roses's Putter, Retif Goosens driver etc that just added to the whole professionalism of the set up there. We were chewing the fat over clubs and our games when Tom from Taylormade came over and introduced himself. We were straight into the fitting and I was first up......
After and explanation of the SLDR and the technology incorporated into it Tom asked me about my current game and what my strengths and weaknesses are ? where my bad misses were with my driver? and then also about my current driver and how I have it set up. I've always been an OK driver of the ball. When its good , its good, but when its bad, i'm often stood on the tee now knowing where the heck its going to go.....this usually ends up with either a big block or a toey snap hook!!! I've always suffered from chopping and changing the driver far too often and i'm always in search of the perfect shaft and head combo. My current driver is a TM RBZ tour ( set to 12 degree) with custom Matrix 6 stiff shaft. I say custom, it was custom for the guy who I bought it off ebay. I explained this to Tom and he quickly (and impressively) spoke about the charachteristics of the shaft and explained how the kick-point shafts could be hindering (or helping) my driving.
I hit a few drives with my current driver and managed to get a couple of ok ones out there, but I also hit a couple of hooks. It was quickly apparent that the inconsistencies in my driving was due to the kickpoint of the shaft not being suited to my swing. I was carrying the ball 215 /225 yards and the launch angle was way too low. This surprised me as I always though I hit it further. Im not a big hitter, but I expected to see 240/250...ego slightly dented. We loaded up the SLDR with the stock shaft and I hit a few on the neutral weighting setting and 12 degree's of loft. It ballooned a little bit so Tom changed to an Aldila shaft which immidiately brought the flight lower. The difference between the two shocked me, the ball flight and spin rates really were night and day. However, the Aldila didnt feel too great and the launch angle was lower than what we needed. We then Moved to a Diamana shaft and the results improved immeasurabley. The launch angle and spin rates were on the money and my distance had improved an average of 20 yards to 235/245 yards. I thought i'd hit the jackpot at that point but , as with the everything about the facility and location, it wasn't perfect, so Tom said he wanted to try some more. We stuck with the Diamana shaft and went up and down in weight and switched between an x-flex and a stiff flex shaft. All the time the weight bar was at neutral and the loft at 12 degree's due to my ball flight being pretty straight and on a good trajectory. The results between the x-flex 70g shaft and the s flex 60 gram shaft were very similar but my dispersion with the s flex was slightly tighter so we decided to go with that, set at 12 degree's.....job done, and more interesting and fun than I ever could have imagined. I can safely say, my days of ebay driver purchases are over !!
The SLDR itself felt really solid to hit. The weight is moved forward in the head to help get the spin rate down and Tom was explaining that as a result of this most players are increasing the loft of the driver. Tom also explained how a lot of the tour players are hitting slightly descending in to out blows with the driver which is in contrast to what a lot of people here about hitting the ball on the 'upswing'. Incidently, I had earlier found out that I slightly hit down on the ball with an in to out swing too so that made me feel a little warm and fuzzy inside. The key thing for me was how you always knew where the head was in the swing with the combo I had settled on. It felt heavier than other drivers that I'd tried, but easy and forgiving to hit. I mentioned this a few times during my jibbering videos piece. I was more nervous doing the video than hitting balls infront of a video camera and photographer and being.
It was great to meet Canary Yellow and Dufferman and i'm sure they enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks once again to Paul and Neil from GM and to Tom and Jess from Taylormade, It was a proper Carlsberg day and one I wont forget !!!
