Tour Issue Callaway Epic Flash Driver

What is the difference in spin and ball speed (performance) from the Tour Issue Epic Flash regular drivers (not diamond or Sub Zero) compared to the retail Sub Zero for those that have hit both?

Short answer: Same difference you would see between retail Epic Flash and retail Sub-Zero.

Long Answer: If you’re just comparing a same model and loft there’s no intentional performance difference from the manufacturer. The difference is in the loft, lie, and weight tolerances which, obviously, affect performance.

There are huge manufacturing tolerances in drivers with respect to loft and lie. It’s necessary to keep costs down. This is why we can often hit a demo or a friends club great then buy one for ourselves and it just doesn’t perform as well. The demo “10.5” could have actually been anywhere between 9.5 and 11.5 degrees of loft. Same goes for lie and weight. You just never know the true specs of an off the rack club. It’s best to buy the friend’s or the demo club when you find one that works.

Tour issue heads have been measured after manufacturing so the van and players know the true specs. They’ll still be stamped 9 or 10.5 (or whatever) but should have the loft, lie, and weight written on a sticker or piece of paper attached to the head. If you buy a tour issue head you may also find a hot melt port already drilled in.

In my opinion the advantage in buying tour issue is knowing exactly what specs you have in case you lose/damage a driver. You can likely find a tour issue head within a few tenths of a degree and/or grams of weight of the original driver. Don’t buy tour issue if the seller can’t provide that information. Otherwise, you may as well buy off the rack. Also, pay attention to the listed weight especially if it does have a hot melt port. It’s possible it’s already been altered with hot melt and that could be something you do or don’t want.

All that said occasionally there are models and lofts which are only made available to the tour players. Club hos and collectors like to get their hands on those. More power to them since that’s something they enjoy but, outside of the different specs those models offer, there’s no magic juice in those bottles.

Thanks for the reply. I do have a lot of experience hitting Tour heads. In particular for this Epic Flash Head, I was just curious if anyone had hit this version compared to the Diamond Sub Zero heads. I am guessing the regular non Sub Zero heads spin more than the Sub Zero diamonds? Just curious if anyone hit them.

Diamond heads tends to fade a bit more then normal heads.

14 hours ago, TonyKim said:

Diamond heads tends to fade a bit more then normal heads.

True for double and triple. Single diamond is in fact draw bias. 

It's a bit out there to think that an OEM would have several different molds or components for "tour" heads when they are changing their entire line over every 18-24 months. That would represent an incredible expense for a tiny marginal outcome.

More likely they could have different faces, crowns, weights and adjustment sleeves to tweak the clubs to better suit their staff players.

The *most* likely thing is that Tour heads are hand selected from among the normal production output due to specific characteristics that those players prefer. I suspect that the final quality control people are instructed to set aside any heads that meet certain specs (like a slightly more open face). 

On 5/13/2020 at 4:20 AM, wdaig1 said:

Thanks for the reply. I do have a lot of experience hitting Tour heads. In particular for this Epic Flash Head, I was just curious if anyone had hit this version compared to the Diamond Sub Zero heads. I am guessing the regular non Sub Zero heads spin more than the Sub Zero diamonds? Just curious if anyone hit them.

In the past it's been:

Single - Same spin as retail, Draw biased. Mavrik had 440cc single diamond. 

Double - Lowest spin, neutral.

Triple- Fade biased, more forgiving, and actually higher spin than retail SZ.

TI regular Mav and SZ are the same heads, just weight and loft sorted.