It was raining today, and Steve’s question about my ball flight and loft took me to Golf Town, where I was looking to get a swing speed radar, that device that can measure club head speed and ball speed.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have this product (though I know they did last year), so I wandered over to the clubs section to check out the Drivers.
I decided to give the Adams Speedline and Callaway Diablo Edge drivers a couple of whacks in the Testing Centre.
Get ready for this.
I didn’t care much for the Adams driver. The balls were going right and my maximum drive with it was 340 yards. My club head speed was 136 mph and the ball speed was 192 mph. Unfortunately, the spin was over 5000 rpm, which is why my flight resembled a big rainbow balloon.
The Diablo was awesome. It has an Aldila 60 Stiff flex Habanero shaft and 9.5 degrees loft.
After a couple of warmup drives to get the feel of it, I hit 6 drives with the following average stats:
Distance – 350 Yards
Club Head Speed – 135 mph
Ball Speed – 191 mph
I was very impressed with the Diablo, so much so that I bought it, since it was brand new and on sale at a bargain-basement clearance price. I was saying that I’d be happy to get a fitted driver that would give me 350 yard drives, and I found one in a store rack!
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Funny Story
When I was hitting the Diablo, a young pro-shop fellow came around the corner a couple of seconds after one drive. I was watching the screen and writing down the stats, when he said, “You’re going to find that’s one of those where the monitor has the ball going forever.”
“Really?” I said, looking down at my numbers on the sheet.
“Yeah,” he said, “Not trying to make you feel bad, sometimes the monitor gets an off reading.”
“That’s weird,” I said, looking again at my sheet. “My three last drives were 355, 350 and 350…”
“OH,” the young guy said, “Is that your normal distance?”
“There or about,” I said.
“OK… then…. never mind, I guess,” he said, looking as if he detected the strong odour of B.S.
I teed up the ball and hit another one, about 352 yards, and the guy said, “Oh, O.K.! The machine’s working. You have a huge swing arc!”
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I’m betting I can hit this Driver even longer than 350 once I get used to it. I used to hit drives of over 300 yards and then go into places like Golf Town, and could never hit balls that distance on the simulator.
Plus, I was hitting drives in my running shoes, without having warmed up. Just walked in out of the parking lot and decided to hit a few. If I was getting the readings I got with the Diablo, I figure in good conditions, 350 will be the low range of my best drives with this club.
P.S. – Those yardages… all carry. Less than 5 yards roll, with the trajectory. They just dropped out of the sky at 350 and basically stopped there.
Why do bratty kids always end up working in Pro shops Socrates was known to ask.
DJ, I have a Titleist 975D (http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Titleist_975_D_Driver) with a 7.5 degree loft that I would love to send you if you are interested. It is the same model club Tiger won his Tiger slam with.and with your swing speed, and accuracy, this club might be a good fit for you or at least I would be curious how you bang this thing. It has the feel and shape of a persimmon club with its heavier club head. If you can afford this club for free, will send it.
I love a heavy club head, that’s for sure, CC. I appreciate the offer!
Did you happen to catch your spin rates?
With a swing speed in the 130s, I would say to get the most distance keep going down in loft until your spin is around 1800-2100. I suspect that this will be a driver somewhere between 4-7 degrees for you. Krank, SMT, Adams (only through Sellinger’s Golf), Cobra and Alpha (special request), MOI, Tech Power, Vector, etc are some companies that go that low in loft.
I had no idea it was that high, Jake. I thought high-120′s, maybe 130. 135mph walking off the street probably translates to 140 when I’m good and warmed up and going after it.
I agree on the loft. My spin was crazy, between 5000-3500 rpm on the different drives. Probably losing tons of yardage on that factor alone. Chief is sending me that Titleist driver, which while it’s an older model, should give me a good indication of how I’d do with a modern 7.5 degree head.
You emailed me awhile back about playing with two drivers. Not a bad idea, because with a 7.5 degree driver, another driver or perhaps a 2-wood or strong 3 would make for a great driving club when having to keep it in the fairway or at around 300 yards or so.
I’m beginning to give serious thought to looking at some competition next year. With a good Driver in the bag, some work on dialing in my short irons and wedges and even an average short game…
P.S. – That story about what happened in the testing centre with the young assistant pro reminds me of the time you went to have your swing calibrated and they told you the machine was broken when they saw your readings
Eyup D.J……nay lad, an average short game!!!!
If you want to play the greatest game and be competative in competion, you need a top banana short game! On and around the greens is what golf is all about, where it’s won and lost, turning a 5 into a 4.
Whacking long drives is all well and good but if you have’nt got the feel??????
You certainly seem to stroke that ball well….good on yer!
Aye, indy … was afraid of that
I guess it’s time to turn the attention to the greenside play…
I agree with Jaacob, you need to get a lower lofted driver. I’ll put a plug in for the Krank Rage [6- 7.5 loft]. I’ve hit the crap out of it and it’s the only one I haven’t been able crack the face on. As for your swing speed, I’d love to hear you’re looking for a Swing Speed Radar to see where you are at. My golf store swing speeds are always all over the charts so I don’t put much stock in them…but the fact that your readings were at least consistant is more indicative of their unit being reasonably accurate. I think you’d have a lot of fun using a SSR to see what little tweaks to the MCS produce the most speed. I’ve found it to be a very reliable and durable unit for $100.
That’s what I went into the store looking for. They had them listed online last year, and then for some reason they stopped selling it. Funny thing for the biggest national golf store to do, but they did.
I’m going to try out Chief’s old 7.5 degree Titleist, and then if I like the flight on that thing, I’ll probably do what you did and get a Krank 7 or 8 degree driver head with a 45″ stiff or extra stiff shaft. No need for anything longer for playing regular golf.
Gonna keep looking for that SSR, gotta be one somewhere. I’m pretty sure the swing speed readings were accurate, though. My warm up drives were around 125-130 mph, and when I started going after it, they were consistently 133-136.
I’m selling the SSRs if you’re interested.
http://www.swingmangolf.com/golf-swing-speed-radar.asp
Regarding your other comment, a two driver setup is an interesting way to go. You can get a lower lofted one maximized for distance…and one with higher loft for accuracy. If you get a higher lofted driver with enough spin, it can be a “land and stick” type of driver, which can be useful for certain holes and/or types of courses.
Speaking of different types of courses, experimenting with shaft length (even for regular golf) is okay too. For example, on a tight course you might use a 44″ high lofted driver. But if you have a course or a few holes that are wide open and you have room to miss, using the 48″ low lofted driver might be good because you can get so much closer to the green.
Another way to do the two driver setup is to make a draw and fade driver. If you’re maximized for distance for a straight ball, you won’t be for a fade because opening the face adds spin and knocks off a bit of distance. So to still get the distance with a fade, you’d need to go lower in loft. For the fade driver you can also put the grip on so that when it’s in the neutral position, the face is actually sitting open. In that way you can make sure the face is always open the same amount.
I guess it just depends on the type of courses you play as far as what is best to build.
I’ve never hit either, but Krank and Adams (the long drive head is only sold through Sellinger’s Golf) seem to be most popular with the long drive guys right now. SMT, Bang, MOI, Cobra, etc have gone through their cycles too…and probably would be just as good of choices provided you get fit optimally using a launch monitor. With most of these smaller companies, you can actually call them up and request heads with certain specs (open/square/closed faces, specific lofts (I think Joe Miller has a Krank Rage that’s between 3-4 degrees), etc). I believe Adams cleverly makes their long drive heads at a lighter weight since they’re usually glued on to longer 46-48″ shafts.
I was looking online for the SSR and did notice you were selling them, Jaacob. But wouldn’t you know that Phil Reed emailed me and offered to send me one, an offer that I readily accepted!
I imagine all of this driver loft and distance business must sound daffy to a lot of people. I was complaining to the Golf Town guy that my Nike Sumo only got me 330-340 yards on maximum drives, and his face was priceless. But my question to anyone would be, “If you knew that you could add 30-50 yards on your drive just by getting a driver suited to your swing (namely for me, a lower-lofted driver with a very stiff shaft to eliminate the balloon balls), wouldn’t you run to go get it?”
For those of you emptying out your closet of minimally lofted drivers to send to DJ to either assist him in actualizing his distance potential or to gain release from the mental image of driver with a ball flight similar to that of a pitching wedge traveling 330 yards, packages sent to Canada is cheaper and more efficient through United States Post Office and not UPS.