Steve White

Hello golfers,

In this week’s email, we ask you to consider what's most important to you in a golf shoe, we take a look at how you voted in January's poll, and we look ahead to what's coming in February.

Enjoy the read.

Pro's news

It's a new era

Our January poll captured the imagination of many of you as we asked you to consider whether Tiger Woods would make a triumphant return to the fairways in 2018. Here are the final results:

58% think Tiger will fail to win a tournament this year
33% believe the American will win a PGA Tour event
9% believe he’ll get one closer to Jack Nicklaus’ major victories record

As we head into February, keep an eye out for our new poll later this week. With lots of the major brands releasing new products over the coming weeks, we want to know which one you’d like to try the most. Of course, we will be receiving lots of exciting bits next month so be sure to pop your head into the shop next time you're at the club.

Equipment news

Callaway Rogue Driver

Last week I talked to you about the arrival of the brand new Callaway Rogue Driver which has been doing so well with a number of wins already on the world tours.

Following last week’s email Liz Hay kindly offered to trial the new Callaway drivers for us in our indoor Studio, like us she was intrigued to find out how good these Clubs really are.

Liz has a 15 handicap and described her driving as 'pretty good' and 'reasonably long' compared to her peers albeit she did admit that in her opinion her ball flight seemed to be 'a little bit low'.

After warming up I asked Liz to hit a few shots with her own Driver which is a 10.5’ Titleist D2 Driver with a men’s regular shaft. Liz was not fitted for her current driver.

Having hit 7 or 8 shots with her own Driver I explained that there were a number of improvements we could make to improve her driving performance using the Callaway Rogue driver fitting kit.
I explained that I wanted to improve her driving statistics in the following 3 ways:

If possible I wanted to increase Liz’s Club Head speed- This in turn should increase the speed the ball comes off the Club face and will deliver more distance.
If possible increase the launch angle of the ball. This is the loft that the ball takes off from the Club face when being struck and would send the ball on a higher trajectory.
I also wanted to reduce the right hand spin that Liz put on the golf ball. By reducing the slice spin we would increase the distance that the ball will roll.

I wanted to show Liz that her low ball flight, which she thought was a good thing at Thurlestone due to the wind, was actually reducing her overall distance due to the ball hitting the ground so early in it’s flight.
If you look at the figures you can see that Liz’s driver took off on average at 12.5’ which meant that her ball flight averaged 9 yards height giving her a 115 yard carry distance and on average, a 150 yard overall distance.

I switched Liz to a Rogue Driver with a ladies shaft with 12.5’ loft. This increased Liz’s Club head speed by about 3 mph which improved her ball speed and also her launch angle which meant that she carried the ball 18 yards further on average. This was great but it only gave Liz a 6 yard distance gain on her overall distance.

I then decided to try and reduce the right hand spin on Liz's ball. I switched the Rogue head for a Rogue ‘Draw Biased’ head which had the weighting closer to the heel on the Club . The change in the positioning of the weighting would help to reduce the slice spin by closing the club face earlier in the through swing. I also felt that the ladies shaft was a little too flexible and light for Liz. I could tell this because her swing rhythm was a little more sporadic. To help her with this I needed a shaft heavier than the ladies but lighter than her own. The next shaft I wanted her to try was a seniors light flex.

If you look at the statistics you will see that her Club head speed increases further to 72.5 mph and also becomes more consistent as her feel for the Club improves.

The launch stays the same but the ‘Draw biased head’ reduces her right hand/ slice spin on the ball by over 1000 rpm. The combination of the extra Club head speed and the reduced side spin resulted in a 139 yard carry and a 169 yard average total distance with some of her drives getting close to 180 yards. I think you will agree that an average of a 19 yard gain from her own driver is really quite impressive.

Liz thought that the new Rogue driver looked and felt really nice, she particularly liked the larger head and the feel of the softer grip on the ladies shaft. Liz also learnt that because the shaft in driver she was trialling was softer she didn’t need to hit the ball as hard as she thought which to her surprise increased her Club head speed as she was able to make a more balanced and controlled swing.

What you can’t see from the statistics is that not all of Liz’s shots (like most golfers) were out of the middle of the club face but the forgiveness from the head of the Rogue driver was astonishing with the ball speed being consistent from almost anywhere on the Club face. In my opinion being longer off the tee is great but this Driver really shows its worth when you miss hit a shot and it nearly goes as far as a good shot. I guess that is why the Callaway Rogue Driver warrants it’s £469 price tag.

If you would like to challenge us to find you some extra yardage or forgiveness off the tee then give us a call as we are offering FREE custom fits in February. Maybe we could find you an extra 19 yards from the tee?

The biggest shock in testing

Mizuno's JPX900 Series woods really impressed, but they've taken things to a whole new level with the new ST180 Series. Rather than basing their attention on maximising adjustability, Mizuno has focused on delivering high-speed, low-spin performance in their 2018 line-up and it's safe to say these clubs have shocked a lot of people in testing. Be the first to try the ST180 driver and fairway by registering your interest below.