Category: Clubs

Anybody who watches the Golf Channel has seen the infomercial. I’ve seen it and I’m betting, since you’re reading this review, a good portion of you have seen it as well. It’s for the Bobby Jones hybrid by Jesse Ortiz.

Now I’m not the kind of guy who sits around watching infomercials. I’m also not the kind of guy who will believe the five minutes or so that I catch of one. That being said, if the Bobby Jones Golf Company hadn’t promoted their hybrid as much as they did, I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to review a couple of them. I’ve been on the hybrid bandwagon since 2005 and haven’t gotten off.

The Bobby Jones hybrid hasn’t had a breakthrough in a tournament like the Sonartec in the 2004 British Open. What it has had is some of the highest rankings in the Golf Digest Hot List in the past couple years though. Are those high rankings deserved? Can we actually believe an infomercial? Is this club worthy of having Bobby Jones’ name on it? Read on to find out.

Continue reading “Bobby Jones Hybrid Review”

If you’re the kind of golfer who tends to hit the ball all over the face and would still like to hit a club less than everyone else in your group, then this review may interest you.

TaylorMade may just be the hottest brand in golf. Over the past few years, a ton of r7 drivers (followed by r7 fairway woods and, to a lesser extent, r7 irons) have found their ways into a host of pro bags, and subsequently into the bags of amateurs of all abilities with varying results. The new kid in the TaylorMade family is the Burner line. Released (or re-released) only a year ago, the Burner driver and fairway woods have been played on the Tour by players like Kenny Perry, Sergio Garcia, and Sean O’Hair, and has been well received by the masses, as well. Where the r7 line is most associated with movable weights, the Burner line hangs its hat on hot clubfaces and technology that increases clubhead speed. Now, the Burner line has brought that same technology to the irons arena.

Continue reading “TaylorMade Burner XD Irons Review”

Cleveland Golf builds some of the finest iron sets in the world, yet rarely seems to receive the recognition rightfully heaped on other manufacturers. Despite having a small PGA Tour staff – Cleveland famously dropped David Toms at the beginning of 2007 – Cleveland players such as Jerry Kelly, Vaughn Taylor, Brett Wetterich, and Vijay Singh continue to have success on the PGA Tour.

Cleveland marches to a slightly different drum than the other manufacturers. They don’t offer a square or triangular driver, instead choosing to stay with the swooped-back HiBore model, which met with lukewarm reviews in its first incarnation before delivering an incredible club with the HiBore XL.

In 2007, Cleveland added to its venerable irons lineup with the CG Red and the CG Gold – a pair of cavity-back irons aimed squarely at separate niches in the golf community.

We’ve given the CG Reds a thorough testing, and the results are in. Read on to see what we think: are they duds like the first-generation HiBore drivers or has Cleveland skipped that phase and gone on to greatness?

Continue reading “Cleveland CG Red Irons Review”

I love putters. All shapes, sizes, lengths, and colors. Mostly I love putters that are different or unique.

My Scotty Cameron Newport putter is not a very unique putter since the Anser-style is the most copied putter design ever. My putter is – or I should say was – a very ugly one in need of a drastic restoration. I had to change it.

I could have sent my putter off to Scotty’s Custom Shop, but they only don’t offer very many finishes Enter Colbert Putter Plating, owned and operated by Kevin Colbert out of Blaine, Minnesota. Colbert Putter Plating came highly recommended from some acquaintances and other putter aficionados who, like me, were looking to give their putters a little TLC. Great thing about Colbert Putter Plating is that he can refurbish nearly every make and model out there, so it’s a great one-stop-shop for putters.

After visiting the Colbert Putter Plating website, my imagination quickly began to race with ideas of how to transform my ugly duckling into a sexy swan.

Continue reading “Colbert Putter Plating”

Grooved putter faces have emerged in the last few years to open up yet another option when choosing a putter.

Yes! Golf was perhaps the first to use grooves on a putter face and were quickly followed by the likes of Guerin Rife and the TaylorMade Rossa line. Proponents say the grooves get the ball rolling much more quickly off the putter face thus reducing skidding and hopping that can cause the ball to wobble off line.

GEL (Groove Equipment Ltd.) entered the U.S. market at the 2007 PGA Merchandise Show with a line of six putters all featuring a grooved aluminum insert and named for precious stones. For our review, we chose the Ruby model. It’s an Anser-like head with a plumber’s neck. Here’s what we think after using it awhile…

Continue reading “GEL Ruby Putter Review”

The fairway metal may be the most under-rated and least publicized club in the bag. It doesn’t command the $400 price tag of some drivers, nor does it supply as much drama as “letting the big dog eat.” It’s not the newest rage in golf – that honor belongs to hybrids. It can’t make a ball spin like crazy or hit a glamorous flop shot like the modern wedge. It doesn’t make 50-foot putts (or miss three-footers) and it isn’t used on virtually every hole like irons.

Still, as a player’s handicap drops, he typically relies on his fairway woods more and more. Whether it’s playing safe on shorter, tighter par fours or hitting to long par threes or trying to reach long par fives, many better players will use their fairway metals more times during a round of golf than their driver.

Titleist has long held its own in fairway metals. Tiger Woods held onto his Titleist PT 3-wood for years after signing with Nike for a reason: he couldn’t find anything better. Last year, Titleist replaced the 904F with the 906F2 and, this year, supplements the lineup with the 906F4. I’ve had a chance to play both, and I believe Titleist has another winner on its hands.

Continue reading “Titleist 906F4 Fairway Wood Review”

Roger Cleveland founded Cleveland Golf in the 1970s on the strength of his wedge designs. They’ve long been renowned as some of the best in the game, but Cleveland has been slipping in this category since Roger’s departure in the mid-1990s. Bob Vokey at Titleist, Roger’s new employer Callaway, and even TaylorMade have made great inroads in the wedge game and the top spot now belongs to Titleist’s Vokey line of wedges.

That has not stopped Cleveland, of course, and they’re looking to get back on top with their new CG12 wedges with “Zip Grooves™” – deeper U-grooves than found on previous models (like the CG11s we reviewed) that aim to add juice to your wedge shots much like TaylorMade’s “Y” grooves, Callaway’s “Mack Daddy” grooves, and Titleist’s Spin Milled grooves.

As a long-time Vokey fan, I put these wedges to the test: I took my Vokeys out of the bag and played with these for a month straight. Did they pass the test? Read on to find out…

Continue reading “Cleveland CG12 Zip Wedges Review”

The Adams Idea a3 Hybrid Irons are the latest offering intended to blend irons with hybrids in a seamless set. Adams Golf has been an innovator in the blended-iron/hybrid market for a few years. Their concepts have been ahead of industry trends.

While the general golfing public hasn’t picked up on the usefulness of such sets I see the wisdom in seamlessly pairing irons and hybrids. The days of your average golfer carrying a 2-iron (or 3-iron, or 4-iron…) are officially over. It’s become an anomaly to see a 2-iron in a professional’s bag. Hybrids hit the ball longer and higher than similarly lofted irons. The biggest draw for the average golfer is that hybrids are much easier to hit than irons.

Adams Golf obviously sees the potential of blended sets for making golf easier for the average player. The Idea a3 Hybrid Irons are intended to fill this niché. See how well they do…

Continue reading “Adams Idea a3 Hybrid Irons Review”