question about driver for a newbie

[grn.eyed.bandit]

i'm a new golfer and was wondering if this is a workable driver for me that i bought for cheap.

its a taylormade burner tp driver, 10.5 degree loft.

the shaft says "flex X" and i'm guessing the 65 is the weight in grams?

when i looked at the TM website, it says the driver is for "skilled players", so that kinda scared me off.

anyways, what are your thoughts?

[m11]

i'm a new golfer and was wondering if this is a workable driver for me that i bought for cheap.

Ideally, you'd want to get fitted before buying any golf club to determine which is best for you. You may hit Ping better than Taylormade with your woods and Cobra better than Ping with your irons. Any major retailer can fit you and they'll usually get your in the right track for free...and a full fitting is usually included in the cost of a club. However, yes...the Burner TP is meant for players that consistently hit the center of the face. The club is designed to maximize on shots hit flush...and because of this...it doesnt allow for much forgiveness. You'll find that shots hit on the heel or toe will generally lose more distance than hit..say.. on the regular Burner. Another issue is the shaft flex. The 'x' stands for extra stiff. I'm about 99.99% certain that that shaft is far too stiff for your new swing. Maybe in time, you'll swing speed will be in the appropriate range to use an extra stiff shaft, but in the meantime...its very unlikely that you are. You'll find yourself pushing a lot of shots to the right because of the stiffness of the shaft. The third issue is the loft of the club. Again, you want to get fitted. The launch monitor will look at the launch angle of your shots and determine what loft you should be using. As you said, you are a beginner and you likely you wont show patterns and relatively consistent ball flights. Therefore, some of the information may be getting a little ahead of you. Using the launch monitor to get fitted only really works to its full advantage if you have a repeatable swing. In general though, that club may be a little much for you..and my recommendation is getting rid of it. There's always the position that it'll teach you to hit the ball better...but i think it'll just bring more frustration than good. If you are buying the club in a store..like i said...fitting is included...so you'd want to do that. But if you are eBaying or something like that than I'd recommend the 2007 TaylorMade Burner. You can buy a brand new one for like under 200 retail...so i believe a used ebay one you can get pretty cheap.

[ping_guy]

To be honest, as a beginner golfer, the last thing you want to worry about is "workability". Thats why beginners tend to play high loft drivers and low spin balls.

Workability implies that you want to be able to create spin with your club. When I began, the last thing I wanted to do was to create spin.

While spin can mean fades, draws and cuts, bump and runs, and pitches that bite, it can also mean big slices and hooks off the tee.

I'd say. since you are a beginner, worry about getting a driver that is forgiving over one that features workability.

[Snake]

Yeah, that driver sounds a little advanced even for just your average golfer, much less someone new to the game. If you're going to buy something off the rack (without a fitting), you'll probably want to avoid drivers with stiff shafts, low lofted heads and anything called Tour, TP, Pro, etc.