Playing again and did I buy the right new driver

[myndcraft]

The last two years saw me playing a lot less than the few years before, but thats changing this year!  I've played a few rounds already and also joined a Thursday night league.  My goal for the season is to play at least 6 times a month with 4 or more range sessions.  Since I'm going to be playing much more often I decided to buy a new driver (I'm a club ho at heart), but first a bit about me…

I'm currently hitting a 10.5° Ping G10 with the stock stiff shaft. My ball flight is a fade that, way too often, turns into a slice. My average distance so far this year has gone down from the years prior and I'm only getting a smidge over 200 yards.

So I hit the PGA Superstore near me and went through a fitting…

Club Head Speed: 95 MPH

Launch Angle: 10(ish)°

Spin Rate: 3879

Flight: Dead Straight/Baby Fade

I only ended up trying the following drivers based on the recommendation of the fitter guy: TaylorMade SLDR, TaylorMade JetSpeed, Callaway X2 Hot.  The X2 wasn't for me and it was immediately apparent so let's remove that and here was the TM results:

• SLDR - I carried this longer than the JetSpeed, but pulled almost every shot left & spin was significantly more than the JetSpeed
• JetSpeed - Carry was shorter, but including rollout the shot was longer.  Pattern was tighter and down the middle and spin was significantly less

So walking out of the store here is what I ended up with and the average stats

TaylorMade 10.5° JetSpeed w/ Stock Stiff Shaft

Club Head Speed: 95 MPH

Ball Speed: 134 MPH

Launch Angle: 11.9°

Spin Rate: 2111

Total Distance: 230-240 average

So I was super happy with the outcome (greater distance, tight dispersion, down the middle, and I got a free fairway wood), but I have a few nagging questions

• Why was every shot going down the middle (except for like 1 shot every 10)?  Thats not my usual ball flight so was it a 'good day' or is there some trickery/faulty sensor stuff going on?
• Should I have tried some other drivers (any recommendations)?
• Based on my swing profile should we have explored some other shafts (any recommendations)? (We didn't try anything other then the standard regular flex and stiff shafts)
• We didn't really play with the weights, shaft, or anything on the SLDR -- Did we count it out to early?

Sorry for the novel everyone.  I'm just super excited to be golfing again and wanted to give as much info as possible.

[SavvySwede]

Yeah a lot of in store launch monitors are very forgiving and give you a bit of a distance boost. I played on a simulator and the software actually had a "boost" feature which affected the distance readouts. It had a scale of -10 to +10 (which I assume is a percentage of total distance, but could very well be an arbitrary scale). Standard setting was a +7 but I actually had to go down to -4 or 5 to getting my yardages reasonably normal. I hit more than one shot that read zero sidespin so I knew I gives a little directional help as well.

[Dave40]

The Jetspeed is a good choice. You can mess around with different shafts, but I doubt you would notice too much difference. A single digit handicapper might have a consistent swing that would benefit from more optimization, but don't second guess yourself on this purchase. Besides , this will probably not be the last driver you will ever buy.