2024 TaylorMade

[TERRORMOTO]

On 9/3/2023 at 7:37 AM, liamw said:

Without knowing the numbers, it feels like since Stealth was originally released there have been more free agents using TSi3/TSR3, PING G425/430 LST which are all (exception of 430) titanium. Morikawa opted to use SIM. 
 

Going to be very interesting to see how they explain their way back to using some titanium components again.

 

Drivers and fairways are what they’re known for and feels like all carbon everything hasn’t quiet revolutionised the industry they would’ve hoped.

 The way they will explain it away is by full marketing bonkers on: AI. How do I know, look at the p790s....

[BCC1898]

They wouldn't "explain" anything!  They'd just move onto the next release...gotta remember 95% of people couldn't care less about whether the driver is carbon, titanium, or something else!

[MakersMarsh3]

TM seems to be pretty on point with their offerings right now

 

I hope they can get the driver face figured out and get back on track

[TERRORMOTO]

4 hours ago, BCC1898 said:

They wouldn't "explain" anything!  They'd just move onto the next release...gotta remember 95% of people couldn't care less about whether the driver is carbon, titanium, or something else!

Exactly, that's my point. The marketing guys won't explain anything and will just go bonkers on wowing golfers with their: "new AI speed hyper flight improved face design with progressive AI optimizations for different handicaps and ball types KAPOW." They won't bring up carbon at all if the actually move away from it and will just distract people with the new hotness.

[BirdieBoy1]

9 hours ago, Illinilocal92 said:

Sounds like the user not the driver. Carbon isn't garbage. Or are you saying the longest driving player on tour uses garbage to do it? 

You think those same players wouldn’t hit the same distance with another top of the line driver? 
 

get real 

[Illinilocal92]

31 minutes ago, BirdieBoy1 said:

You think those same players wouldn’t hit the same distance with another top of the line driver? 
 

get real 

The point is, nobody's hitting 340 yards constantly with control from a garbage driver. They're good drivers, just don't work for you. This is coming from a callaway player btw.

[Cwing]

On 9/3/2023 at 10:37 AM, cmatthews77 said:

Yeah when you market the “carbon wood age” as the era of titanium is over it sort of puts you in a box. 
 

I think the best driver Taylor Made makes right now is the much cheaper M4. 

Agreed. I’ve not liked the TM drivers since the “M” series.

[TheMoneyShot]

Like others, I hope TM goes back to the all Ti heads or something similar.  Been pretty much a TM guy my whole life until the Stealth was introduced. 

[Chopper Dave]

2025 will be the go. 30th anniversary

[TheMoneyShot]

On 9/4/2023 at 7:56 PM, QuigleyDU said:

Where is @TaylorMade Golf with the “oh so many sleeps” count down..

Probably at least two months until that starts😄

[ignitewvu]

If they "stay" carbon I can almost guarantee they will need to do a completely new Face where it isn't a "insert" glued to Titanium. 

[the_Danimal]

On 9/2/2023 at 10:40 PM, hammergolf said:

They’ve done a great job of ball speed retention with the carbon face, but they have had issues with inserts breaking or coming loose. It happened in the original and 2nd generation Stealth drivers. No doubt the concept is sound in physics, but they don’t seem to be able to get a hold on how to bond the carbon face to the body with no failure rate. If, and that’s the key word here, they can fix the bonding issue they may continue, but those engineers are smart and they haven’t been able to fix it so far through 2 releases.

Just when i thought Stealth3 meant a stable build upgrade.... you had to bring everyone back down to earth... oh well, guess im sticking with my SIM for another year!

[khalespace]

On 9/2/2023 at 3:18 PM, JDSPGA said:

Really good. Hate the price, but an absolute rocket. Everything else in their line right now is great, just not the drivers. 

It is crazy that a 3 wood costs $450. I am waiting for something used at around $250. The lowest I have seen on offerup is $300.

[hammergolf]

7 hours ago, ignitewvu said:

If they "stay" carbon I can almost guarantee they will need to do a completely new Face where it isn't a "insert" glued to Titanium. 

I agree, maybe a all Carbon cup face attached to a titanium chassis.

[MountainKing]

On 9/5/2023 at 4:59 PM, TERRORMOTO said:

Exactly, that's my point. The marketing guys won't explain anything and will just go bonkers on wowing golfers with their: "new AI speed hyper flight improved face design with progressive AI optimizations for different handicaps and ball types KAPOW." They won't bring up carbon at all if the actually move away from it and will just distract people with the new hotness.

 

So basically doing their job? 

[MCoz]

On 9/5/2023 at 5:24 AM, third-times-a-charm said:

Taylormade is an ROI-first company. They probably saw the carbon faces were too costly in warranties since they kept breaking.

I know and play with a lot of top level players from College to Senior tour level. Stealth 2s are the most used. I know of no one who has had a face failure!

[MountainKing]

12 hours ago, MCoz said:

I know and play with a lot of top level players from College to Senior tour level. Stealth 2s are the most used. I know of no one who has had a face failure!

 

Of the guys I regularly play with, there's a total of 5 (including myself) Stealth or Stealth 2's in play and all have been well so far.  What I have seen fail this year is a Cobra driver, a Titliest driver and a Ping driver last weekend!    Obviously there is failure, but it's a numbers game that people don't want to recognize, when you have a lot of product out there, the number of failures will naturally be higher.  With the way drivers are made these days, they're all susceptible to failure, especially if you're pounding away with range balls off the heel of the club.    I don't think TM would put a club into a tour players hand that had any sort of failure issues, last thing they'd want is one to blow up on TV.

[hammergolf]

11 hours ago, MountainKing said:

 

Of the guys I regularly play with, there's a total of 5 (including myself) Stealth or Stealth 2's in play and all have been well so far.  What I have seen fail this year is a Cobra driver, a Titliest driver and a Ping driver last weekend!    Obviously there is failure, but it's a numbers game that people don't want to recognize, when you have a lot of product out there, the number of failures will naturally be higher.  With the way drivers are made these days, they're all susceptible to failure, especially if you're pounding away with range balls off the heel of the club.    I don't think TM would put a club into a tour players hand that had any sort of failure issues, last thing they'd want is one to blow up on TV.

I don’t have a dog in this fight since I play a TM driver, but several Tour players have had failures on their stealth driver faces during events and had to change heads mid tournament. It’s an issue. It was an issue with the previous model. Hopefully they can get it fixed in the upcoming model. 

[leftygolfer15]

Heard rumors Scheffler was testing the new stuff this week before heading to Rome. No other details, but the TM engineers came to him to get his feedback on it.

[getitdaily]

40 minutes ago, leftygolfer15 said:

Heard rumors Scheffler was testing the new stuff this week before heading to Rome. No other details, but the TM engineers came to him to get his feedback on it.

I heard rory had it in play for the tee shot on 14 in this week's euro tour pro-am.

[BirdieBob]

Irish Open and still red-face TM driver in play on 18th.

 

[leftygolfer15]

40 minutes ago, BirdieBob said:

Irish Open and still red-face TM driver in play on 18th.

 

Wouldn’t be in play yet since it’s not USGA appproved but could have easily tested briefly in the pro-am.

[gbang15]

2024 taylormade drivers are gonna be epic

[PickItUpGolf]

 

Looks like that Spider Tour is featured in the video at around a minute in

Interested to try them when they come out!

[PickItUpGolf]

25 minutes ago, gbang15 said:

2024 taylormade drivers are gonna be epic

 

Nah, Epic is Callaway 

🤭

#sarcasm 

[BirdieBob]

53 minutes ago, leftygolfer15 said:

Wouldn’t be in play yet since it’s not USGA appproved but could have easily tested briefly in the pro-am.

Yes, and he is not playing a STEALTH+, SIM, TITLEIST or PING just the STEALTH 2 +.

[Valtiel]

On 9/3/2023 at 7:40 AM, JDSPGA said:

Yes. It's simply not forgiving. It's great out of the middle but compared to a TSR2 or a G430, Paradym X, it is awful on mishits. 

 

On 9/2/2023 at 2:16 PM, JDSPGA said:

They need to go back to the non Carbon. Stealth and Stealth 2 have been.....not good for the general public. 

 

On 9/2/2023 at 12:46 PM, BirdieBoy1 said:

I’m over the carbon garbage. Go back to titanium or whatever please 

I'm confused by these complaints because they just seem to be based on.....just feelings? @JDSPGA you're comparing higher MOI heads designed to be more forgiving on mishits, that has nothing to do with the carbon face. Drop the front 15g weight on the Stealth2+ down and increase the rear weight until it has a similar MOI as the TSR2 or any PING model and you'll see predictably better mishit performance at the expense of some spin reduction on higher strikes. I saw zero drawbacks when testing the OG Stealth against my SIM from a ballspeed standpoint, and if anything it was a fraction faster, and the only reason i'm not playing it was the lie angle differences (Stealth sat uncomfortably upright for me). And your suggestion that they just release an old model? That would be marketing suicide and would inevitably create an avalanche of "Taylormade is out of ideas!" sentiment that every other company would feast on. You were spot on with almost every other comment in the thread so i'm confused, lol. 

As for failures....think about it. TM has easily the highest volume and biggest marketing presence across the industry and made a *giant* leap with going to a non-metal face insert. If the failure rates were even the SAME as traditional metal drivers we'd be hearing about it more, but we aren't from a consumer standpoint. I wouldn't be surprised at all if internal Taylormade data showed that the failures across the two Stealth driver lineups were actually lower than average across the industry, because that is literally the only way doing something like this survives selling millions of units to the general public. The entire concept is DOA with a failure rate that is even *perceived* as being higher, even if it isn't, and I can guarantee that was a huge part of the R&D conversation around even attempting something like this. The fact that it didn't flop is evidence of its success, because everyone was looking for it to fail. 

[underwater]

Here is my scary event.  I was warming up on the range for a money game with a +2 capper, myself @ 4hc, and a couple guys getting strokes at ~7-8hc.

 

I arrived at the range early and was going through my bag and got to driver (Stealth 2+ with Ventus Velicore TR Blue).  After about 6 balls, the sound on my Stealth changed.  It went from that pleasing carbon crunch sound to something that sounded like a PING G425.  I checked the head over for any flaws or face popping out and couldn't see anything wrong, but it sounded awful...metallic with a fluttering reverberation sound.  And my clubhead speed is only around 110 at best.

 

...I ended up playing it through the round and didn't drive the ball very well...but on my way home stopped by my local loyal golf store and changed to a different brand driver - and they let me hang on to my premium shaft which was really cool.  (the manager stuck a "made for" demo shaft in my flawed head and sent it back in to TM.).  The manager of the golf store tapped the butt of the driver on the hard tile floor and could tell something was not normal with the head.

 

That's the scary thing.  No obvious face popping out or compromised frame evidence, but something clearing changed/shifted with the structure of the head.  Even my playing partners notice the sound was off.

 

2024 TaylorMade needs to go back to the OG Sim v1. with Ti face.  Quit trying so hard to be funky.  The TM Ti-face fairway woods are iconic clubs and have been for years..

 

 

Edited September 9, 2023 by underwater

[Valtiel]

1 hour ago, underwater said:

Here is my scary event.  I was warming up on the range for a money game with a +2 capper, myself @ 4hc, and a couple guys getting strokes at ~7-8hc.

 

I arrived at the range early and was going through my bag and got to driver (Stealth 2+ with Ventus Velicore TR Blue).  After about 6 balls, the sound on my Stealth changed.  It went from that pleasing carbon crunch sound to something that sounded like a PING G425.  I checked the head over for any flaws or face popping out and couldn't see anything wrong, but it sounded awful...metallic with a fluttering reverberation sound.  And my clubhead speed is only around 110 at best.

 

...I ended up playing it through the round and didn't drive the ball very well...but on my way home stopped by my local loyal golf store and changed to a different brand driver - and they let me hang on to my premium shaft which was really cool.  (the manager stuck a "made for" demo shaft in my flawed head and sent it back in to TM.).  The manager of the golf store tapped the butt of the driver on the hard tile floor and could tell something was not normal with the head.

 

That's the scary thing.  No obvious face popping out or compromised frame evidence, but something clearing changed/shifted with the structure of the head.  Even my playing partners notice the sound was off.

 

2024 TaylorMade needs to go back to the OG Sim v1. with Ti face.  Quit trying so hard to be funky.  The TM Ti-face fairway woods are iconic clubs and have been for years..

 

 

The problem is that same thing happens to all drivers, i've had a similar experience with a couple Titleist's (915D3 and TSi3). "Getting funky" is necessary to continue pushing for incremental performance gains, and that will inevitably involve weight saving strategies (like carbon faces) to achieve. Trust me I love the OG SIM, nothing has kicked it out yet, but insisting a company "stay behind" so to speak is a recipe for getting lapped by the competition, something TM obviously tries hard to stay ahead of.

[TiScape]

6 hours ago, gbang15 said:

2024 taylormade drivers are gonna be epic

I’m guessing we will be hearing about 10+ mph more BS with the same CHS over the previous model soon enough 😊