Category: Clubs

Cleveland’s HALO Hybrid is one of the more unique hybrids to hit the market. Featuring a “scooped back” design, the HALO succeeded at getting the ball in the air with a good amount of spin. Consumers voted with their wallets, and the HALO is the third-best selling hybrid at retail.

Cleveland, spurred on by the success of the HALO, has forged forward with the scoop-back design with the HiBore driver. The HiBore driver not only features the same dome-less crown as the HALO, but also the wider stance and lower center of gravity (CG). These changes, Cleveland says, marries the location of the CG with the center of the clubface, resulting in a super-long, super-forgiving clubhead.

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The distinctive black and grey color scheme of Never Compromise’s putters make them a stand-out on the PGA Tour. It doesn’t hurt that Cleveland Golf – Never Compromise’s parent company – has two of the world’s top eight golfers stroking putts with the black and grey putters. David Toms and Vijay Singh guarantee Never Compromise abundant airtime.

There’s a story behind the color scheme (though it’s not nearly as exciting as the tale about lightning striking a black putter and burning off the finish, leaving only a silver/grey strip in the middle) but at this point it’s become more a marketing gimmick. After all, TV viewers may not be able to tell a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 from a Ping Anser, but they can pick a black-and-grey Never Compromise putter from anything else.

Unfortunately, marketing doesn’t make putts. I had the opportunity to try the Gray Matter 2 – Half Mallet (or “GM2-HM” for short) the past few weeks, and I made my share of putts. Read on for more.

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Tour Edge Golf is celebrating 20 years in the golf biz this year – and the company is also celebrating its recent move from the value segment of the industry to the thick of the performance segment. After several successful years of selling solid products at a price below the big names, Tour Edge introduced its Exotics line of high-performance, premium-priced equipment last year. The first product was a line of fairway woods that garnered good reviews and a vocal group of fans.

New for this year is the Exotics driver. Does it live up to the promise of the Exotics fairway woods? Read on to find out.

Tour Edge has long had a well-deserved reputation as a hidden gem in the golf club market. The company has always made good equipment at reasonable prices, and in recent years Tour Edge has been tinkering with some cutting edge technology.

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We’ve all seen the commercials. And they’re true: TaylorMade, for all intents and purposes, “owns the tee box.” Having established a dominant position in drivers with the r5 and then the r7, TaylorMade is making believers out of even the staunchest of opponents. Dave Koster, who has used Titleist drivers much of his life, recently put the r7 460 in his bag after reviewing it.

Leveraging the success TaylorMade has had with drivers, the Carlsbad, CA company is seeking to “own” other product categories as well. They make great hybrids (their “Rescue” clubs) and are widely regarded as the leader in that category. They recently introduced “TP” golf balls to compete with Titleist, Callaway, and Nike. Even their putters and apparel (via Adidas) have gotten a fair amount of acclaim.

Lost in the shuffle a bit have been TaylorMade’s irons. Despite tremendous retail success with the higher-handicapper irons (see our RAC LT review), the company’s better irons have fought an uphill battle against the likes of Titleist and Mizuno for the attention of lower handicappers. With the 2006 revision to their high-end model, TaylorMade’s RAC MB TP irons what may be the best irons they’ve ever produced for better players.

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Riding the success of its 3DX hybrid line, Nickent Golf entered the short-game fray last year with the Pipe line of putters. These mallet putters featured a visually distinctive rounded white “pipe” section that served as an alignment aid and as a way to shift weight away from the putter’s face.

Let’s put it this way: if an Odyssey 2-Ball and a Futura Phantom got drunk and popped out a kid, the Pipe may be it.

Nickent has added two new models to the, uh, Pipe line this year. The Pipe PP004 and PP005 are both blade-style models that feature a modified version of the Pipe design. Is the Pipe hype or is it just your type? Read on to find out.

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Hybrids were once known as golf clubs for the elderly. My how times have changed. Not only do Champions Tour golfers swear by them but now even the PGA Tour pros are choosing these easier-to-hit clubs in exchange for their longer iron counterparts.

Tom Watson is the most famous face associated with the Adams a2 OS hybrids. Every time I watch a Champions Tour event on The Golf Channel there he is with his graceful swing along with the statement claiming that these are the easiest to hit hybrids in golf. I had already taken my long irons out of my bag and stashed them in my “holding bag” in the basement. These clubs were heading for the trade-in bin at the local golf store but they needed replacements. An Idea? How about giving the Adams a2 OS a try?

It was almost twenty years ago that Barney Adams created the Tight Lies fairway wood. If you look around, many golfers still have these woods in their bags today. The phenomenon of the original lower center of gravity “upside-down” design changed the way clubs were created. Could it be that as recently as 2002 Adams’ earnings and stock prices were declining with naysayers claiming the hybrid as a “fad”?”

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Bobby Grace has been at the heart of putter design for many years and his designs have been a hit for all that time. The original design of The Fat Lady Swings was in the bag of Nick Price when he went on a tear and won the 1994 PGA Championship with it on August 14. On August 15, Bobby Grace had 25,000 orders and a legacy to uphold.

Grace then took the momentum from The Fat Lady Swings and parlayed it into a deal with Cobra to design putters. Now with MacGregor, he has taken the famous putter and given it a totally new look and feel. The result is a better looking and feeling version of the classic that some touring pros may find in their bag.

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When it comes to the tee ball, TaylorMade leads, it does not follow. The 300 series driver was #1 on tour in 2000 and 2001 and TaylorMade followed with the successful r500. More recently the r5 and the r7 quad have been found worldwide in the bags of Tour professionals and amateurs alike.

While it is rare to see a new driver accepted so quickly by tour players, the new r7 425 was in the bag of nine players at the season-opening Mercedes Championship. Even with the new Nike SasQuatch and the highly anticipated rollout of the Titleist 905R, the new r7 still seems to be the talk of the industry.

I’ve been using a Titleist 983K and then a 905S for years, and I’ve come to appreciate the traditional pear-shaped design and playability in the Titleist drivers. I’ve spent a few months with the r7 425 as well as the larger r7 460. For $399 a pop, one would expect a solid club with excellent performance. Read on to find out if that’s what we found.

Continue reading “TaylorMade r7 425/460 Drivers Review”