2020 TaylorMade SIM and SIM Max drivers (in hand photos, M5/M6 comparison pics)

[Brooks_Cupcake]

So are you saying that you added hot melt, or that it has a muted sound like it has hot melt?

[GooseHook]

Yeah, it's almost exactly 1.25" added. Most of the variation will be in the device you use to measure and the lie angle setting. I would at least say more than 1", less than 1.5"

[Cruisin1966]

If you ordered online, the earliest ship date we've seen on taylormade.ca is Feb. 7th

[Brooks_Cupcake]

Correct, TM and Callaway are 1.25” and Titleist is 1” I think Ping might be 1.25” as well, but unsure.

[JasonPetermann]

So, I was hoping to order a Max at 45" directly from TM and have the swing weight adjusted accordingly. TM customer service agent said they do not adjust swing weight. Is he just being lazy or do the not do swing weight adjustments? I have never directly ordered from them.

[humps]

Damn..... I had the M3 the year before, then got the M5 and now the SIM...

Honestly can't keep up...

[Kale_m]

My fitter said tm would bring it back to stock head weight

[Krt22]

I will verify once I get mine, ordered it at 45.25". If it comes at the stock D3, I will hot melt it to D5

[bladehunter]

Was melted before it was sent to me.

[bladehunter]

So rain went away roughly 50 minutes before sundown here. So I had no choice but to get a little time outdoors with the max.

Hit it with ventus red and synergy black.

 

Pretty impressed thus far.

#1. Head looks smaller than it is.

#2 maybe the best sounding head I’ve hit since my oven TW vapor speed ( huge compliment ) muted solid thwack

#3 it feels really fast. Ball just explodes off the face.

#4. The ventus seemed to fit my swing and put the ball on the middle of the face on every swing. Meaning it’s delivering it as planned.

#5. I had no issue turning it both ways at will. Huge for me. I hate a driver I can’t turn over , or that wants to turn a fade into spinning nothing burger. This was just hitting high fades or draws at will.

 

I dont have any numbers to post. But directly comparing to g410 LST with PRo orange V2 for feel and flight. I’m impressed.

[Krt22]

Do you know how much melt was added?

[bladehunter]

Honestly no. But I weigh the head at 203.3g on my scale. So I’d guess at around 5g. Give or take.

 

This head wasn’t built for me. Just an opportunity that I was given. Someone else’s cast off. Which Works well for me allot as I like a head with some draw in it. Lots of people would call what I like draw biased. But I hit a fade that’s mostly straight until I have to draw it. So I don’t like a head that is hard to close.

[awtryau89]

Seemingly way late to the party here but just got back from a scheduled session on GC Quad. They seemed to have the Quad juiced a bit to me on rollout as seen by the TM but the Ping produced my normal numbers so I an apt to believe it was giving me good readings. I hit the Sim Max, Callaway Mavrik then Sim. I had my G410 Plus Ventus Black combo for comparison. I'm posting here because I do not want to bash Callaway in their thread but it was the worst of the bunch for me and it wasn't close. The Ping was well ahead in every category of the Mavrik. I won't write a long drawn out review but will say I haven't gamed a TM driver since the M2. I've been in Pings since the G30 LST and never found anything that beat them for overall consistent distance. TM may have my money very soon. Sim Max 9* with stock Ventus Blue averaged 2348 spin and 245 carry/ 258 total with my speed averaging 101mph and smash only at 1.38. Sim 9* with stock Diamana averaged 2101 spin and 251 carry/ 267 total same average SS and smash 1.40. It took a bit of time to find the swing for the center of the club face and my strike pattern on the Sim was better than the Sim Max. I think the Diamana fit me a bit better. The Ping was only carrying 238/250 total for me due to higher launch and average 2600 spin. The Ping is a 9* turned down to 8*. It did produce a straighter ball flight and a smaller dispersion area but its going to be really hard to give up that kind of distance. I am waiting on my club to get their demos in to hit them outside and see if I can keep these drivers in the fairway. After that if it is going to work, I have to decide if I am going max distance with the Sim or hedge my bets a bit with the Max. 2100 is a bit low spin for my SS. I just had to drop this in to say TM really has a winner this year. In the past I haven't been a hater but I always erred on the side of not trusting their marketing. I'm slowly coming around.

[Kamen]

Just spent an hour at my club going back and forth between the Sim and Sim Max. Had no trouble launching the Sim 9 degrees. The max felt more forgiving but the sound on the normal sim was more muted and pleasing to me. The standard sim also was fading more but moving the weight towards draw helped me. My miss is usually low on the face/thin when I get jumpy so the shallower standard face felt good for me too.

The stock lengths are too long for me so I was choking down an inch.

I will also note the standard sim felt very stable as well. I hit my G400 max afterwards and it was so loud in comparison I almost felt embarassed.

I had the standard sim 9 deg in a stiff Diamana black shaft and the max in 10.5 reg ventus red. Switched the heads around etc it all felt good.

Never thought I would get to this point but I'm leaning on ordering a standard sim 9 degs at 44.75" to kick the g400 max out.

[hurley999s]

Didn’t consider that possibility! I assume everyone else is stuck at sea level like me. Good stuff!

[Lobber]

I preordered a couple of weeks ago after taking advantage of the 50% trade in bonus.  Also ordered the SIM Irons, 3 wood and Hybrid a day later.  Received the 3 wood, irons and HB today but no driver.  Headed to the range and hit the 8 iron, 3 wood and HB.  Irons are Game Improvement but not overly chunky.  Very impressed with feel for cast club and distance (yes I know lofts are jacked and don't care) ball flight and forgiveness on the range.  Intended on selling them but may have to take them all to the course in the morning.  The SIM HB and 3 wood were very easy to elevate and felt/sounded great.  Look good too!  Will put them to the test in the morning.

[pfw19]

Following up on this. I went through a fitting today for a new driver. Had similar results as @halfsumo.
Current driver is a TS3 w/ stock hzrdus smoke stiff. SS is 99-103, low 140’s ballspeed 1.42-1.45 smash. 3000’s spin. Between 235-245 avg carry, sometimes getting into 250’s. I’m a 7 HC who drives it straight but needs more yards obviously. Here were my numbers today for my fitting. I did not take pics, but these are honest (not exciting) numbers.
TS3 10.5* (gamer) - 98 SS, 140 ballspeed, 228 carry, 1.41 smash.
After trying several shafts we settled on Accra TZ6 as the best shaft for me. It felt amazing and brought my spin with TS3 to the mid 2,000’s and carry up to 235. My Smash got up to 1.44. On to heads...
We tried TZ 6 in Mavrik, Speedzone, SZ Xtreme, SIM Max and 410 LST. Here were my results (note: all these heads are good)...
SZ Xtreme 10.5* at 10* - 99, 144, 240 carry, low 2,000’s spin - felt great
Mavrik 10.5* down to 10* - 98, 143, 238, mid 2,000’s - Did not spend much time on this one. I didn’t like the feel or love the results, though I did love the look of the Mavrik at address.
SIM Max 9* at 9.75* - 102, 149, 246, Spin right around 2,000. All shots spun between 1,800 and 2,400. Feel was really powerful and “live.”
SZ (Heavy Weight forward) 9* at 10* - 100, 146, 241, spin less than 2,000. This driver should be a BEAST for a bigger hitter but a few dropped out of the sky for me. My swing won’t be consistent w/ it, but it is a great feeling driver. Weight switch could’t beat SIM Max either.
410 LST 9* - 100, 146, 242, mid 2,000 spin - this was the closest thing to the SIM Max, but I hit SIM Max at 9.75 and had 2,000 spin, while 410 LST was at 9* and still spun more than I liked.
I did not try regular SIM as the spin w/ Max was already where I wanted it, and was getting great launch.
Anyway. This is my fitting story. I could not remember my launch numbers, so sorry for not posting them.
I’m pumped to get the SIM Max, TZ 6 combo. Should be able to get consistent 250+ carry and ~270ish total distance this season, which will be great for me. I’m a decent player who doesn’t hit it hard enough to be too crooked, but all heads seemed forgiving. Mavrik was least forgiving (for ME), but not bad at all. All other heads were really straight.
The TZ 6 felt amazing for such a low spin shaft. Also, the SIM Max looks great IMO and better in person. Face seemed more “lively” than my TS3. Similar to Cobra, not as springy as 410 LST. TS3 and Mavrik are most muted “thuds.”
Hope this review helps the slower 100-105 swinger who hits its pretty straight and is looking for distance. SIM Max definitely fit that bill for me. I’m excited to try it out this year.

[ttm27]

I ordered Sim Max driver about 5 days ago directly from TM and it shipped out yesterday. Just FYI.

[Brooks_Cupcake]

US vs Canada

[Cruisin1966]

Yup. I should have made that abundantly clear.

[kiddoc]

Real Ventus Blue 6X today. Not too high laugh with 9.0 Sim.

 

 

[Valtiel]

I honestly think that in addition to the likely MOI increases with SIM that the face depth is playing a part here. I know there seems to be a lot of love for deep face drivers around here, but they will flat lose to shallower faces when it comes to spin consistency averages every time. Vertically, everything is closer to the sweet spot on a shallower faced driver which leaves less room for the all too common low strike spinners.

[GolfSwang]

Good comparison between the SIM lineup and M5/M6, for those interested.

Spoiler alert: Looks like the clubhead speed gains are real, albeit marginal. M6 seemed to be the most consistent overall.

[Smitty120]

When I ordered my SIM Max, it was direct through TM like many others, taking advantage of the trade in bonus. I never order direct from manufacturer bc of full retail, but with trade in bonus, getting rid of a few clubs sitting around makes it to easy. I gamed the Ventus Black 7X tipped 1/2” for a bit a few months ago, but went with a Ventus Blue 6X tipped more. Always nervous with Taylormade’s tipping on the Custom Shop. The Ventus Blue showed tipping 1” soft which I have always found to mean they are tipping that shaft 1” standard. When someone has a known un-tipped Ventus Blue 6X with TM Adapter, I would be interested to know measurement from Adapter to VeloCore graphic.

When the weather improves I will test the Ventus against my go to shaft, Tensie PW 70TX.

[drbonesvt]

Not that the performance / gains are not real, did you hit your gamer back to back with the sim on the same launch monitor ?

[drbonesvt]

You could try the “custom site” on taylormade, also where the 8* heads are.

ive never had any luck, for the most part , club companies hitting specs. Mass production is what they are good at , I buy the stuff from a smaller golf shop and their awesome at honing the specs I want ,whether irons or hot melting heads Vs big box or buying direct.

[Smitty120]

I was told from a well known high up Taylormade employee, that Custom Shop SIM driver orders, now will be brought to standard swing weight when a shorter length is ordered. In the near future custom swing weights in general will be able to be requested.

Perhaps Taylormade Golf can respond and confirm that. I believe if that was well known many orders would be placed.

[Natural1]

I certainly hope this is true. To date, Taylormade's practices in terms of swing weight are unacceptable. Of course certain combinations of length and swing weight cannot be accommodated, and folks need to realize this. But not taking requests, shipping irons at C9 or drivers at D8 due to spec changes screams "we don't care about amateurs. Just buy our stuff and go away".

If they fix this it would certainly help. The next step in the right direction would be tightening up on loft/lie with respect to "custom" orders. The P790s I just got are the most out of spec I've ever seen. If I didn't own a good bending machine I would never order TM irons. Titleist is the best I've personally seen in terms of iron specs built as requested (loft/lie/swing weight). Taylormade would do well to close that gap.

For the most part we are paying $175+ per iron these days. To help justify those prices, the least they can do is get the specs right.

[JasonPetermann]

I called them late afternoon and asked (had only used chat feature the first time where they told me no custom swing weights) and they confirmed that they put all custom lengths to the standard swing weight. I placed my order and will hope for the best.

[Smitty120]

The chat feature on TM’s site is not even employee’s. I have never heard of anyone receiving correct info from the “chat” service.