TAYLORMADE r7 460 Draw Driver w/ Reax Shaft

TaylorMade’s latest is the R7 Draw Driver, which takes a 460cc head and concentrates weight on the heel, helping to close the face and encourage a draw. The clubface also features TaylorMade’s inverted cone technology, which is designed to expand the sweetspot for maximum forgiveness.

I am a big fan of the inverted cone tech. TaylorMade clubs are for me the most forgiving I have every played. Surprisingly, it even works on the R7 XD irons I play.

You can preorder this one from Golfsmith.

TaylorMade has a blog about their activities during the US Open. There’s a good post there about activities inside the Tour van, as players adjust their equipment for the treacherous conditions of the Open. Most interesting to me is that Kenny Perry wanted a lighter putter for the slick greens—the opposite of what I would want. I like a heavy putter on fast greens, as I feel it slows down my swing and helps me control distance. On slow greens, I like a lighter putter for a quicker stroke.

TAYLORMADE TP-Red

TAYLORMADE TP-Black

Grade: A
Teachers’ Comments: There’s a lot to like about these balls. They’re long enough, have lots of carry, good spin and a nice feel. I like them better than the Pro V line.

I was fortunate to be given a chance to test the TaylorMade TP Black and TaylorMade TP Red balls well before they hit the general market. I’ve been playing the TP Reds and Blacks for the last month or so and have lots of good things to say about them.

The TP Black and Red are TaylorMade’s foray into the premium golf ball market dominated by Titleist’s Pro V line. Every major manufacturer has its own pretender to the throne, and every ball in that market has to be compared to the Pro V. 

For whatever reason (and I suspect that it has to do with swing speed), the Pro V line has never really worked for me. I’ve written about this in the past on this blog, but I’ll repeat my complaints here: I don’t get nearly as much distance with the Pro Vs as with other balls I’ve tested, and I never could get the spin around the greens. I also don’t like they way that they feel off the putter.

Still, since I was trying out a new premium ball, I took a sleeve of Pro V1s along for comparison. And in a head to head comparison, I prefer the TaylorMade TP. But I am not sure that I prefer them to the Redmax and HX Hot—the other balls that I have been playing (more about that later)

The Taylormade TPs address many of my concerns with the Pro Vs.

I was in Dick’s Sporting Goods today looking for a TaylorMade glove (no luck), but found something more interesting: a line of clubs called the TaylorMade R5 XL.

Did I miss this in the past somehow, or is this a new line? I can’t find them on the TaylorMade site either in the “new” section or in the “vintage clubs” section.

The drivers, fairways and hybrids look a lot like the R7 line, sans movable weights. There also was a set of R5 XL irons, which looked somewhat like the R7XD irons that I like so much.

UPDATE:

An executive at TaylorMade tells me that the R5 XL line is made by TaylorMade exclusively for Dick’s Sporting Goods in the US. The design is TaylorMade, the quality is TaylorMade. These are NOT knockoffs.

Here’s a link to the webpage at Dick’s with the irons:

TaylorMade r5 XL Irons - Dick’s Exclusive

TAYLORMADE r7 XD Irons 3-PW w/Steel Shaft

Grade: A
Teacher’s Comments: An apparent oxymoron: a good looking set of game improvement irons. These clubs are just begging to be hit hard.

Thanks to the nice spring weather we’ve had here in Michigan, I’ve now had a chance to play five complete rounds with the new TaylorMade R7 XD Irons.

I’ll have to admit that after the first round, I was not at all sure that these irons were good for me. I got good distance but the balls tended to fly every which way but straight. But I thought that it could just be spring rust, so I played on.

Things didn’t improve on the second round. I loved the R7XD sand and pitching wedges, and the seven iron was a perfect chipping and pitching weapon, but I couldn’t get any of the rest of the clubs to behave on a full swing.

Finally, on the third hole of the third round, I got angry at them. I was around 155 to the hole on a slight uphill lie. Normally a six: but I felt like whacking something hard and pulled out the seven. Making a full turn, I laid into the ball hard. That’s normally a disastrous recipe for me, but I didn’t care. And to my surprise, the ball took off like it was shot out of a howitzer and flew straight at the pin, landing behind the hole

That’s interesting, I thought. I finished the hole for a par. On the next, I hit a good drive that left me in the fairway. Again, I took one club less and belted it. Same good result.

As it turns out, that’s the secret: these clubs are just begging to be hit hard. The perimeter weighting keeps the ball on line, and the wide soles prevent digging—even on Michigan’s soft spring fairways. Even better, the tuned performance cartridge keeps the impact from sending shockwaves through your arms.