Cleveland HiBore XL Initial Thoughts

Last night I had the opportunity to hit the HiBore XL (both Tour and Standard) in my golf dome. These are my initial thoughts, which should be taken with a LARGE dose of salt, given: a) I haven't played golf in months, and b) the dome is only 70 yards long, and c) the dome uses range balls, of course.

It's Loud . Not as loud as a lot of drivers these days, but louder than I'm used to from a 460cc driver. Louder than the Callaway, Titleist, previous HiBore, or TM drivers. Not as loud as perhaps some of the new(er) drivers like the Sumo2 or the old MacTec NVG, but loud, again.

The Ball feels Heavy coming off the face of the club. I didn't really like it. There's a definite "lighter" or "springier" feeling when you nail the sweet spot, but misses definitely felt very, very "heavy" as if you were pushing the ball more than it leaping off the face. Given the dirty range balls, I was able to tell how far from center I was hitting, and while the HiBore XL does do a massive amount of correction for you, and while the ball still seems to reach the end of the range very quickly, it feels dull.

Thin grips feel a wrap or possibly more thinner than I'm used to. Could be in my head, but I had a TM driver that felt thicker and is nothing but a standard wrap.

Tip-stiff shafts, 65g made it difficult to turn the ball over without getting overly aggressive and duck-hooking, on both models. I'd rather see a 70 gram shaft, maybe 75, with a tiny bit less tip stiffness. It was very hard to hit a high draw. In fact...

Everything had a Low Trajectory . This is incredibly difficult to judge in a dome and with range balls, but my TM r7 425 launched the ball higher.

It looks a tad bigger. I should pull out the original and have a look. I very much like the deeper face, though - that helps.

I did want to append my original review to note that I have the red shafts. These are "low trajectory" shafts, unlike the golds, which have a mid trajectory. So, maybe too much "low" in the clubs for me.