Taylormade Rescue Dual Hybrid Review

Rescue Dual Graphite
Grade: A
Teacher’s Comments: Forgiving and Versatile.

With the Rescue Dual, TaylorMade has created another excellent addition to its growing line of adjustable weight clubs. Long, forgiving and versatile, the Rescue Dual is a worthy successor to the TaylorMade Rescue, which has been the number one hybrid club on several tours.

I’ve been playing the Rescue Dual for about a month now, and it has found a permanent place in my bag, replacing my seven wood (which in itself had already replaced the three iron).

The advantage of the Resuce Dual over the seven wood is that it can “rescue” me from places that hte seven wood never could—while still producing great shots from the fairway.

Since I switched to the TaylorMade R5 TP Driver, I’m hitting many, many more fairways than I ever did, but I still sometimes will pull one into the rough—or more often, with the extra distance, drive one through a bend in the fairway.

My previous solution had been to blast it out of the grass with a five iron. On Par 5s, that would still generally leave me with a long shotto the green; on par 4s, I also fell short.

The Rescue has taken the place of my five iron in those situations. Using it, I can blast my way out of the rough with enough distance to leave me with a decent iron shot at the green. I also can hit it high enough to make it stick as an approach shot.

One of the principal advantages of the Rescue Dual, of course, is the ability to manipulate the weight distribution. While I don’t think that changing the weights affects the Rescue Dual as much as it does for the R5 TP Driver, it does make a difference. I used an extra weight from the optional kit to set it for a more neutral bias.

I’ve found the distance and trajectory control with the Rescue Dual to be excellent. I can hit it high or low as required, with my distance spot on (For the record, when hitting it normally off the fairway, it goes about 185, which fits in perfectly as my three iron).

The Rescue Dual also gets high marks for versatility. I’ve used it to get balls out of the fairway bunkers, for chips around the green, and for pitching the ball out of the trees, under branches and back onto the fairway (I just got back from a trip to Northern Michigan, where fairways tend to be narrow an dlined with deep woods.)

As with the R5 TP Driver, and the R7 TP Three Wood, the best thing about the Rescue Dual is its forgiveness. I’ve been playing poorly lately—having trouble making solid contact—but the Rescue Dual doesn’t seem to mind.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, I give it middling marks. On the one hand, the Rescue Dual is a whole lot better looking than the Snake Eyes hybrids I’ve been playing with. It sets up relatively square and has a balanced look. On the other hand, I don’t think it looks as good as the Hogan hybrids (which I think are the best looking out there.).

Overall, I think that the Rescue Dual would be a great club to add to your bag—especially with the ability to manipulate the weight distribution.