TaylorMade 2023 Product Testing and Fitting Experience Live At The Kingdom! Follow Along Here!

[Kylekoz17]

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

[radiman]

7 minutes ago, Kylekoz17 said:

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9540.jpg.db56d846f88bfd82437f2191ca5d3de0.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9544.jpg.f66c7d7114752ebdea740f9f56e94263.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9551.jpg.3de2173fe2d9aa05592898c7d1597757.jpg

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9552.jpg.4683bcb43bf9a4edb1cdd047d80fa7eb.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9553.jpg.ae6944bdd726c5846f4e3e475de143f0.jpg

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9554.jpg.c33743667d0cb8f7b251616cbd12008d.jpg

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9555.jpg.d30ce9eceb147407770715345868220b.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9559.jpg.710b1c6000ee5243275839e4b45f67fe.jpg

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9564.jpg.90f4e5a47f38fd3ba74a5ef4443e5609.jpg

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9561.jpg.3e06f5bcea68fb0ad937145f4b8991f8.jpg

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9588.jpg.1fa769f86152453dabad7a902be2f11a.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/610045b6f775786869a4f03bbc6ea866d3e558421809bdcec86344355da3a40c/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9592.jpg.e8467a883a3e2c9410adc5db90c676fc.jpg

Very good recap man. 

[boggyman]

27 minutes ago, Kylekoz17 said:

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9540.jpg.db56d846f88bfd82437f2191ca5d3de0.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9544.jpg.f66c7d7114752ebdea740f9f56e94263.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9551.jpg.3de2173fe2d9aa05592898c7d1597757.jpg

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9552.jpg.4683bcb43bf9a4edb1cdd047d80fa7eb.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9553.jpg.ae6944bdd726c5846f4e3e475de143f0.jpg

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9554.jpg.c33743667d0cb8f7b251616cbd12008d.jpg

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9555.jpg.d30ce9eceb147407770715345868220b.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9559.jpg.710b1c6000ee5243275839e4b45f67fe.jpg

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9564.jpg.90f4e5a47f38fd3ba74a5ef4443e5609.jpg

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9561.jpg.3e06f5bcea68fb0ad937145f4b8991f8.jpg

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9588.jpg.1fa769f86152453dabad7a902be2f11a.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9592.jpg.e8467a883a3e2c9410adc5db90c676fc.jpg

Awesome recap, much appreciated!

[TiScape]

5 hours ago, blink3665 said:

 

The machinery they use to test the balls is amazing. They can change all sorts of metrics at ball launch and then they use high speed cameras to verify results. Kinda reminded me of a bigger, longer, black batting cage.

 

 

Boo this man…

I get it! Here in the Bay Area you either pull for the Santa Clara 49ers or the Las Oakland Raiders. I’m def a Raiders fan. But there’s no denying that he is a baaaad man! And that the 9ers are really good this season. Painful but true. 

[HackinNut]

Wow congrats to the testers/Wrx'ers .... So jealous 

Edited January 18, 2023 by HackinNut

[blink3665]

14 hours ago, gticlay said:

Yeah, even the way they described the ball launcher but I didn't want to share too much about that stuff because I just don't know what is ok and what isn't to share HQ tour wise. One place they asked us to keep our phones in our pockets and didn't let their own film crew in.

 

I assume it's ok to talk about (since we all talked about it during our trip recap), but I dont think we were allowed to take pics either (since I have none in my camera roll). Same thing goes for the room where they have a bunch of milling machines. I'd also assume that things have changed in the 5 years since we got a glimpse behind the curtain.

 

We might have had a bit more in depth tour at HQ, and it sounds like you definitely got more time at TK. We were only there for a driver fitting and then got to demo all the other clubs. Either way, you'll remember that trip for the rest of your life!

[Viper4225]

14 hours ago, Kylekoz17 said:

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

 

nice write up, the woods look so good! Were you able to test the standard stealth 2 vs the stealth 2 plus? 

 

 

[QuigleyDU]

14 hours ago, Kylekoz17 said:

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

 

Some very pretty pictures there. 

[J_Tizzle]

I've always wanted to do this to see what they'd come up with trying to replace my side saddle putter.  It would have to be a complete custom job, and I would love that.

[Cwing]

19 hours ago, blink3665 said:

 

The machinery they use to test the balls is amazing. They can change all sorts of metrics at ball launch and then they use high speed cameras to verify results. Kinda reminded me of a bigger, longer, black batting cage.

 

 

Boo this man...

Yes, this was a very cool piece of the 2018 TwistFace Experience trip.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Cwing

[Cwing]

3 hours ago, blink3665 said:

 

I assume it's ok to talk about (since we all talked about it during our trip recap), but I dont think we were allowed to take pics either (since I have none in my camera roll). Same thing goes for the room where they have a bunch of milling machines. I'd also assume that things have changed in the 5 years since we got a glimpse behind the curtain.

 

We might have had a bit more in depth tour at HQ, and it sounds like you definitely got more time at TK. We were only there for a driver fitting and then got to demo all the other clubs. Either way, you'll remember that trip for the rest of your life!

I think you hit it correctly as I’ve got no photos from these areas either.

[gavinski91]

On 1/17/2023 at 10:11 AM, gticlay said:

We are thinking to do the 10 or 11 "special" at Padden on Friday if you are available.

I have a can't miss meeting for work, otherwise I'd be there.

[Kylekoz17]

8 hours ago, Viper4225 said:

 

nice write up, the woods look so good! Were you able to test the standard stealth 2 vs the stealth 2 plus? 

 

 

I did hit a few with the standard.  I actually really like the red ring around the back.  Cool little touch and it sat really nice.  Ultimately I needed the lower spin head as the regular model was a bit higher spin and had a descent angle similar to what I was seeing with my tsi3

[gticlay]

8 hours ago, J_Tizzle said:

I've always wanted to do this to see what they'd come up with trying to replace my side saddle putter.  It would have to be a complete custom job, and I would love that.

Is it a Bomar?

[Mookie91]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:16 PM, Kylekoz17 said:

Going to apologize now for the long fitting recap, but I also could've made it much longer!  

 

After our time in HQ, we took the short walk over to the Kingdom ready to hit some balls.  Once inside, we met our fitters.  Everyone had their own, so we had their full attention the whole afternoon.  I was with Greg who is the Director of The Kingdom.  While we were meeting them, we noticed our bags had been put in the locker room off to the side where a Tiger bag and clubs were sitting, and where my bag was sitting next to Tiger’s.  You can be sure that I took about 50 pictures of that alone!!  It was unbelievably cool to see that and I’ve looked back on those pictures every day and I get so many jealous comments from friends when they see it. Above the lockers sat several more staff bags which appeared to be the staff’s major winners.  It was such a cool room.  We then walked through the facility, passing the putting studio, and through an indoor bay area that looks out onto the range and has staff bags outlining the whole room filled with every club and shaft you could possibly imagine, finally reaching the best manicured range I’ve ever seen, with our names next to our hitting areas.  This is golf heaven!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9540.jpg.db56d846f88bfd82437f2191ca5d3de0.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9544.jpg.f66c7d7114752ebdea740f9f56e94263.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9551.jpg.3de2173fe2d9aa05592898c7d1597757.jpg

 

DRIVER:

The guys were all trying to figure out what they wanted to do first, and who was going to the putting studio first.  I said screw it, let’s start with driver because why not?  After getting warmed up, I hit a bunch of shots with my TSi3 (9* set to 8.25) to get a baseline.  I was sitting at about 165 ball speed, 2500-2600 spin, 270-275 carry, and descent angle of 40.  For a January swing living in WNY, I was pretty happy with that.  I typically hit up on the ball 2-3 degrees, but was mostly living in the -1 to +1 area that day.  So right away, Greg set out to beat the ball speed, spin, carry, and descent angle numbers.  We were also talking through the whole fitting about what my misses are, and trying to come up with a fitting that will also hold up when I have a mid-season swing going so it was great that he was taking that into account as well.  My miss with driver is an open face high spinny right shot that goes nowhere.  I despise this shot.  We started into the Stealth 2 Plus.  It is a great looking driver, and the shape is perfect to my eye.  We tried out a few shafts every few balls as Greg tried to learn about my swing.  Seemingly with every shaft we tried, he was able to take something from it and know where to go next to find better and better fits.  He asked if I liked something that felt softer or like it to feel like it is staying with me, and my preference is something that will stick with me which is why I’ve gotten along with the Tensei White and White Boards.  We tried the 8,9,10.5 Plus and core model head.  The core model is great looking and that red ring really is well done and adds a nice touch.  But we could tell the Plus was just a better fit.  We quickly moved away from the 10.5 head as it launched a bit high. So the rest of the time was spent trying to find the right fit between the 8 and 9* heads.  We went from Ventus Black, to Tensei Orange 1K, to Tensei White 1K, and he had a shaft in mind he wanted to try but didn’t have one built.  He asked if I wanted to go find and build a shaft.  Uhh, absolutely!!  So we went back inside to the shop, found a Ventus Blue TR 6x in the drawer, tipped it, added the adapter, cut it to length and threw a grip on in 5 minutes.  How cool is that?!  We let that sit for a few minutes and got back to hitting the others in the meantime.  The 8* head was giving some seriously impressive numbers with ball speeds heading to the upper 160s at same swing speed, and spin in the 1700 range which is absolutely unheard of for me, and the descent angle sub 30*.  They had the flight where you could tell this thing would have some serious roll, but to me seemed like it was falling out of the air because it wasn’t what I was used to seeing.  I had my doubts that I could make the 8* head work so we kept swapping between it and the 9* head.  Spin kicked up to the 2000-2200 range on good hits and ball speed still in the upper 160s, so at worst we made gains on speed, spin, and carry distance, and lastly that descent angle down to 30-35*.  Some serious gains over my driver that I really have enjoyed and had success with over the last couple of years.  So that is some info for the good strikes, but I was even more concerned with the bad strike results and that is what has me more excited.  My right spinny miss that I hate was all of a sudden far more playable.  I was sure to always check back to see what my misses were doing.  What I thought was a weak flare way right that was as much as 40 or 50 yards short of a good strike, ended up right side of the fairwayish or at least playable right rough, sub 3000 spin, and ball speeds 162-164, only losing 10-15 yards of carry.  I couldn’t believe the numbers so I’d walk back and check them with my own eyes and sure enough, those misses that I hate were so so so much better.  I couldn’t fathom only losing 10 yards on a low and heel strike.  To the point where I’d say I missed it, and Greg didn’t really believe me because the numbers were that good and we’d verify the strike on Trackman that I really missed it where I said I did.  I was sold.  Only thing left was which shaft we would go with but we took a little break and pick it back up a little later to see if something stood out more than the rest.

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9552.jpg.4683bcb43bf9a4edb1cdd047d80fa7eb.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9553.jpg.ae6944bdd726c5846f4e3e475de143f0.jpg

 

IRONS:

To save a little energy, we stopped about ¾ of the way through the driver fitting and start on irons.  I hit a few of my 716 CB 7 irons out there for a base.  One thing that jumped out was spin was a little higher than we would like, approaching 8k spin.  We tinkered with the 770 and MC mostly, changing out a few shafts in the MC and adjusting lie angles.  Coming from KBS Tour, we tried to replicate that and $ Taper, then finally X100 which just felt like the one.  We had the numbers to match the feeling, where it brought spin down into our range.  My borderline hook iron shots also straightened out quite a bit with the new irons into a more normal draw, so that has me pretty excited as well.  Next was figuring out the rest of the set and whether or not to combo.  We hit several other irons, including PW and 4 iron.  That 4 iron sure looks like a blade to me!  There was more comfort in looking down at the P770 4 iron, and the strike and launch improved a little.  I mentioned the 4 and 5 iron have historically been the blend spot for me so we ultimately said we’ll start the P770 at the 5 iron, and strengthen the MC lofts a touch to match.  Finally, we started on the 3 iron replacement for my 716 TMB.  I had a Tensei White graphite shaft in there, but never really felt like I could feel the head very well with a graphite shaft.  So we hit a few with mine to start, then he grabbed the Stealth UDI with a similar graphite shaft.  This club looks amazing at address, by the way.  Numbers were great too, getting about 230 out of it which fits a gap nicely.  But I still didn’t feel great about graphite.  Greg put an x100 in there that would match my irons, and that was it—I had a much better sense of the club through the swing and strikes improved, so I was perfectly happy stopping there and being done with my graphite driving iron experience.  I absolutely love the look from address of all of the irons I was fit for.  They blend well, and they look great in the bag.  Doing this write up made me that much more excited to get these things as I remember more and more bits and pieces of the fitting!!

Here is a comparison of the 4 iron 770 and 4 iron MC:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9554.jpg.c33743667d0cb8f7b251616cbd12008d.jpg

 

3 WOOD:

Judging by the driver fitting, we figured the Stealth 2 Plus head was going to be it for the fairway.  I hit a few with my M5 and immediately, Greg said we can get more out of the new head.  I hit a few with the core model, but the spin and launch was more than I needed, but both heads look just about perfect at address.  The shape of the Plus is close to the M5 which is my favorite, so it was about finding a shaft and the right settings.  I hit everything off the deck here, and launch isn’t an issue, so I didn’t end up hitting the HD head although I wish I did anyways.  We went through Tensei White, Orange, and tinkered with the 80 gram shafts and the results were solid, but not being used to the heavier weight definitely had me slowing down in a hurry so we jumped back to 70 grams.  We were getting a little more distance out of this, and spin a little lower than the M5 (I believe with the weight forward, but may have been neutral--have to double check), so it was about finding the right shaft for strike and shot shape consistency.  We were going from one shaft to another, back to one, then to another (this was absolutely amazing) and we kept coming back to the Tensei 1K Orange 70x as it just seemed to produce the most solid contact and results consistently.  After failing to replace the M5 3 wood for several years, I finally have a winner!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9555.jpg.d30ce9eceb147407770715345868220b.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9559.jpg.710b1c6000ee5243275839e4b45f67fe.jpg

 

PUTTER:

A much needed break from banging balls!  I walked back inside to the putter studio with Duane and my putter.  Putting has been a strength of mine and I really love my custom putter, so I was excited to see the results on the screen.  The studio they have is super cool--cameras all over the place and all of the data you could possibly imagine available.  I hit a few putts with my putter and Duane asked if my miss was a push, to which I replied yes.  While I was squaring the face at impact consistently just fine, I was pulling the takeaway to the inside, so just squaring the face at impact wasn’t enough to make putts.  He grabbed a Juno putter head with a longer hosel and therefore a little less toe hang.  The takeaway straightened out, and the face was closing exactly as it needed to in order to make putts.  The degrees of face being open or closed at impact were all inside the cup so it was basically a perfect fit.  All it took was 3 strokes with my gamer for Duane to know what to do. The roll it was putting on the ball was near perfect, with it rolling end over end almost immediately.  I don’t think I missed a putt with it, and went 5 for 5 while the camera guy was trying to get some shots of me putting and following the ball to the hole.  However, looking back now I wish it wasn’t that easy because I didn’t get to spend much time with their new unannounced putter that I think is really, really great.  But hard to argue with the results!  As he looked through the order sheet, he said he could also match my Nike putter’s site dot, and threw in that he was sorry and that he will have to send my order to the Tour Department to be built.  Oh, sure, whatever it takes, if you must!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9564.jpg.90f4e5a47f38fd3ba74a5ef4443e5609.jpg

 

DRIVER:

Back to driver we go to finalize—essentially had to re warm up after hitting so many balls and taking a break for the putter, and I could feel I was getting tired but there was no way that was stopping me as it may be a couple of months before I can hit balls outside again!  We had it narrowed to 3 shafts, so we swapped between the Ventus Blue TR, Tensei White, and Tensei Orange.  I could have gone with any of the three really, but we ended up with the Tensei Orange 1K 60x as it was producing consistent results again.  So in the end, we picked up about 2-3 MPH ball speed vs mine, several hundred RPMs less spin, a much better descent angle, and a club that made my dreaded miss much, much more playable.  Very excited to get rounds in with this!

 

WEDGES:

We saved the wedges for last and I very much enjoyed this part.  Short game is a strong suit, so I was curious to see what we could do.  We started with 50 yard shots to a pin out on the range.  I hit a few with my Nike Engage 60* Dual Sole, which I like but always thought it might not have been the best fit for me as I would sometimes feel a bit too much bounce leading me to catch some shots thin.  The divots on the 50 yard shots were steep (which was normal for me) as it felt like I needed to work hard to not experience that thin shot.  He asked me to flight one down, but it came out of the same window as I was making sure of solid contact first.  In comes the LB 8* bounce wedge, and all of a sudden I was able to just let the club go through the turf without much effort, and the result was these low, controlled spinners that were exactly what we wanted.  Even staring down at address, I can’t explain it other than the way it sat on the ground made me feel confident that I’d be able to clip it nicely.  They were effortless, not having to worry about catching them thin, and I hit a bunch of really good ones in a row that you could throw a blanket over most of them.  He handed me a higher bounce wedge, and there we went back to the higher, less controlled shot.  We tried out the TW grind after that, and while it was better, it just didn’t have as crisp of a sound from the strike or result.  So he handed back the LB 8* and the quality of strike was perfect so we went with that for the 60*.  We did a similar but more full shot test for the 56*, and ended up with the standard bounce.

 

I felt so lucky to work with Greg as it was a nice, easy, relaxing experience and he understood quickly what little adjustments we needed to make to get me in the best setup we could.  I am very appreciative of his expertise and wish I could do this on a semi regular basis!  Just an awesome guy

 

The after:

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9561.jpg.3e06f5bcea68fb0ad937145f4b8991f8.jpg

 

Final bag:

Driver:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 60x, standard length

3 wood:

Stealth 2 Plus- Tensei Orange 1K 70x, standard length

Irons:

3 iron- Stealth UDI X100

4,5, iron- P770 X100

6-PW- MC X100, stronger loft to match 770s

Wedges:

50,56 SB, 60 LB

Putter:

Juno with long neck

 

Although we didn't get to play a full round the next day, it felt good to get out there with the new driver and rip a tight draw down the middle of the first fairway.  Many more to come!

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9588.jpg.1fa769f86152453dabad7a902be2f11a.jpg

/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/e7549045455b02c1e4dd55cd9c158750b835c990d012716c6b42e7ec2c92bbec/1280/https://wrxcdn.golfwrx.com/uploads/monthly_2023_01/IMG_9592.jpg.e8467a883a3e2c9410adc5db90c676fc.jpg

You mentioned a core model.  Is that just the Stealth 2?

[mrbh]

So now the Spider GT Max is out, what was the scoop on it from the Kingdom fittings?

 

[Golfer_1993]

I'm guessing the focus of the release today is on the the Spider GT Max and GTx. 

 

For those of you that went to the Kingdom, without breaking any embargo or anything, is there a more traditional lineup of putters coming out this year?

[Kylekoz17]

3 hours ago, Mookie91 said:

You mentioned a core model.  Is that just the Stealth 2?

Yes, sorry that is how they referred to it.  Core = Stealth 2

[Mookie91]

I really wish Taylor would offer an 11 degree like Titleist 

[Kylekoz17]

54 minutes ago, mrbh said:

So now the Spider GT Max is out, what was the scoop on it from the Kingdom fittings?

 

Yes looks like everyone is posting about it now and they did tell us the 19th.  So the sliding weights have the ability to affect both toe hang and launch.  So depending on your stroke, whether you hit up on it or down on it, moving the weights can help get the ball rolling.  And the toe hang aspect is genius as you can find a setting that really fits you within a single putter.  The idea is when you move one weight, you move the other weight equally with it, but if for whatever reason moving one and not the other works for you, there’s no reason you couldn’t play it that way but that isn’t how it’s technically intended.  
 

As you might remember, they’ve had a bunch of different variations of spiders leading to this.  The FCG for example would be the weights forward setting, helping a push tendency with less toe hang.  I can’t remember the exact differences in toe hang between the settings, but it is significant.  And more importantly for retailers, they now have new products that go back to spider roots and look like spider, which I guess was lacking with their prior GT putters

 

We all thought it looked great!  I think I was the only one that didn’t get fit into it, which after seeing all of these pictures again I’m feeling the FOMO!  Here are a couple in hand pics from the studio:

[Kylekoz17]

1 hour ago, Golfer_1993 said:

I'm guessing the focus of the release today is on the the Spider GT Max and GTx. 

 

For those of you that went to the Kingdom, without breaking any embargo or anything, is there a more traditional lineup of putters coming out this year?

I was fit into the Juno head, but we didn’t see anything for new releases along the traditional line.  Doesn’t mean they’re not in the works, just that we aren’t aware of them.  The focus was the new spiders

[jholz]

Appreciate the detailed write ups and photos everyone. Very interesting to follow the experience.

[gticlay]

You can see that going from my putter to a properly set up Spider GT Max my face angle went from consistently open to square at impact. Just look at the yellow and blue lines!!! 

[Carolina Golfer 2]

Wow on the GT Max.   Our Rep told us back in November there was something coming that he hadn't been this excited about in almost 15 years.  He wouldn't give a clue other than to say it wasn't Stealth related.    He surely wasn't blowing smoke.   This is really potentially game chaning.

[getair23]

How is sound/feel with the GT Max.  

 

Amazing concept for fitting.

[MFBach]

1 hour ago, getair23 said:

How is sound/feel with the GT Max.  

Sound and feel were very similar to my current Spider X. I’ve been trying to detail the MAX in the 2023 Spider thread as well, but TK thread seems a lot less volatile 😂

[gticlay]

My favorite YT guy Trottie on the Stealth drivers. 

 

[KK44]

I always love all the insights that everyone brings back from these trips. Congrats to all that got to go. Thanks for sharing your experiences and pics!

 

The new gear sounds incredible from what everyone is saying. Looking forward to testing out the Stealth 2 line.

[Kylekoz17]

Things are happening!  More to come

[radiman]

2 hours ago, Kylekoz17 said:

Things are happening!  More to come

Hell yeah! Look great!