Sunday, May 29, 2011

King's Walk Golf Course TaylorMade Demo Day

Last week I got to experience another Demo day at King's Walk Golf course.  This time TaylorMade was the company that was there.  It was windy that day with the winds at around 23 miles per hour straight down the driving range helping make all your shots go longer (go figure a windy day in North Dakota).

The first club I tried was the Burner 2.0 6 iron.  The distance seemed O.K. with the ball landing just past the 150 yard flag.  The club did not seem as easy to hit though as the Callaway and Ping clubs I hit.  The TaylorMade iron seemed smaller.  I couldn't compare it side by side with anything but it seemed smaller.  The one thing I really didn't like about the iron is the vibration.  When you hit the ball the vibration was annoying and didn't make it feel like a solid hit.  After hitting about 50 balls or so I really couldn't take the vibration anymore and put the club down and grabbed a Burner 2.0 pitching wedge.
The pitching wedge was not anything to special in my opinion it felt just like the 6 iron.  It was difficult to hit compared to other clubs I hit and had the same annoying vibration when you hit the ball.  Even compared to my cheap Golden Bear clubs the Burner irons were not enjoyable to to hit.  In the defense of the Burner irons though, they are apparently longer than the irons from any other company according to the TaylorMade website.  I cannot vouch for that though due to the wind conditions at the driving range.

The final club I tried out was a 10.5 degree Burner Superfast 2.0 regular flex driver.  Let me tell you this driver is light.  It almost feels like your just holding a graphite shaft.  With this driver being so light you can really whip it around fast.  Distance on the driver is pretty decent.  I was easily blasting the ball over the 250 yard flag especially with the help of the wind.  I can't compare it to the other driver's I hit on distance again thanks to the wind, but the ball went pretty far with this driver.  I had a few issues with the driver though.  The first one was the feel.  Since the driver was so light I really could not feel the club head when I swung.  Like I stated before it just felt like you were swinging the shaft.  Also when you hit the ball with the driver the sound and feel is not that satisfying either.  The ball flies far, but you don't really feel like you killed it.  For a lot of people this doesn't matter as long as the ball goes far, but if i was paying over $300 for just a driver I would like it to feel like it is somewhat worth the money spent every time you hit it.  The final and bit thing for me was the club seemed very inconsistent on where the ball was going.  When I'm not swinging well my ball starts slicing to the left (remember left handed).  When I was hitting this club the balls were going every which way left, right even every once in a while straight.  I hit the irons straight, but not this driver.  I can only assume it is because this driver is not very forgiving compared to the other ones I have hit.  I was pretty disappointed I didn't get to hit the almighty R11 driver.  This is because by the time I got done with the Burner driver the TaylorMade rep was packing stuff up.  Hopefully sometime this summer I will get a chance to try the driver out at another demo day.

In conclusion, I guess don't believe the white driver hype until you try the club out yourself first.  To me it seems like TaylorMade just like every other club company tries to promote distance in their clubs.  In TaylorMade's case though it seems to be at the cost of feel from what I've experienced.  I still like the Razr Hawk driver best and the Ping irons.  These TaylorMade clubs may be for you, but at this moment they are not for me.  With that I will end you with a quality Callaway ad and some pictures I took of the demo day.
The almighty white driver

TaylorMade's demo day setup

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