Scott Hend and Bridgestone

donnyp · December 30, 2005

Bridgestone J33R

I was just flipping thru my January '06 Golf Digest, looking at the fold-out swing sequence of Scott Hend. The first page is a picture of Scott just past impact. The bottom of the page shows that Scott uses a Bridgestone J33R driver with 8.77 gedgrees of loft. Is this what the world is coming to? Now, not only do I have to sift thru the 40 bagillion shaft options out there, but now I have to worry about lying awake at night worrying about whether my driver is 8.5, 9, 9.5, 8.77 or 3.14 degrees of loft. Is this exclusive just to Bridgestone? Is this for Tour Staff players only? Are other manufacturers going to follow suit? Maybe it's just me but this seems like a bit of overkill.

Thanks gang for letting me vent. I feel better already!

Donny P.

MORTOYZ · December 30, 2005

The funny thing is, all that distance and nowhere to play. Unfortuantely for Hend, he's the poster child for drive for show and putt for $.

However, just because Bridgestone tweaks his driver to 8.77* for his best launch, I think it's safe to say that nobody will follow suite with that type of degrees settings for the masses.

CRutherford · December 30, 2005

If you've never been inside a tour van, I can see what you mean. It's a fact that all drivers may not EXACTLY be 8.5* or 9* etc. You may buy one that's really 8.62* but still says 8.5 on the bottom. It's not bad equpiment, it's just a sense of what people buy. Such as if you buy bed sheets, it may say 300 count thread, but may actually only have 298. A normal golfer goes out and buys a driver that's mass produced. A tour player has a driver which is also mass produced, and then fitted to his specs. The tour people measure down to a 100th of a degree as to what degree the face is, test it, and then can bend the head slightly to manipulate launch. Vector launch monitors help in giving these specs.