HikingMike

Proud of you guys picking the crazy bright ones

TaylorMade Qi10 testing attempt on MyGolfSpy Funny thing - Roll back a couple days before my TaylorMade Qi10 fitting at Golf Galaxy, and I noticed there was a MyGolfSpy forum testing opportunity for TaylorMade Qi10 drivers. Whooooaaaaa there. That was perfect timing! Hey I probably wouldn't be chosen, and it turned out there were an astonishing 6,000 signups for the test for 6 spots. But I made darn sure to go to the fitting, and I applied to the test. Exciting times! Here are my posts to the Testers Wanted thread- https://forum.mygolfspy.com/tests/110-taylormade-qi10-drivers/?do=findComment&comment=20547 and https://forum.mygolfspy.com/tests/110-taylormade-qi10-drivers/?do=findComment&comment=20712 I wasn't chosen, but I definitely enjoyed following the testing. They are still going, and I'm still following, now on page 33 of the thread! Visit to Solid Impact Now around this time I also found another driving range fairly close by, Solid Impact, that I hadn't known existed until now. The place looked great actually. It was a driving range, pro shop with 2 sim bays, and they provide fittings and lessons. The driving range also had a sheltered section and was supposedly heated. And on top of that, it was an independent place, not a big box. And unlike my other range, they should be open with regular hours even in winter. They actually have range passes priced by month, year, and April thru November, very cool. I wanted to check it out, so I drove there when I had time to kill on a slightly snowy day actually. I ended up talking to the guy there, John, for a while about the driving range, fittings, used clubs, etc. Great guy, and I liked the store. Also let me say I wasn't planning to spend $600 on a new driver. So I had started looking up drivers to check used prices and availability on Ebay, 2nd Swing, GlobalGolf, Mike's Golf Outlet, etc. From that lurking, it seemed possible that I could be fitted into a driver that wasn't a new release, with fitting info for the model, loft, shaft, etc. ... and then I should be able to find one used on the secondary market, as long as the specs were common enough, especially the shaft. For example, I checked out Ping G430 line, G425 line, Cobra Aerojet, etc. This might not be news to other people that switch out clubs frequently, but I didn't know how possible that would be. I mentioned this "plan" to John, and he said yeah that's totally doable. I could get a regular driver fitting with him at Solid Impact, focus on stock shaft options. And then I could take my fit options and go look on Ebay or whatever afterward. I went back there to hit on the range twice in March, and then scheduled a driver fitting session! Keep the rust off Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line, steepening, swing path)

Hey all. I just dug into the 2023 ball test data again. I had looked at it again as I just posted my review of the Wilson Triad, and then it kind of went from there with scatter plots for ball speed and spin comparisons for driver/iron. But I had always wanted to check out the data closer. So I found a good way to gather all the data in Excel (similar to what others have posted here earlier). The main reason was so I could analyze things that weren't possible to do with the Tableau plots available. It looks like it was September so it will still be a while before we have a new big ball test from MGS. There are definitely some new balls/versions out there though so keep that in mind (AVX, Staff Model, Chrome Tour, Chrome Soft...?). Below are a couple scatter plots I found interesting - Driver Spin vs. Iron Spin and Driver Ball Speed vs. Iron Ball Speed (both for fast club speed). I'll take requests for other scatter plots! Which two data points would you like to see compared? Be sure to give me club speed and club as well. And I can exclude some brands/models if you want since it's kind of busy.

Great choice. That would be my color pick too I think. My thought is, it's an Autoflex and you're going to have a fun time testing for us all, so you might as well pick something bright that stands out. It's no time to be reserved

Great review. I'm glad you did this, and it's good to see they have a lot of colors. I have a new bag that has a black and heather gray scheme, so the navy blue towel I have might have to be changed out (though it's from the PGA Championship I went to, doh). Maybe I'll get a bright one for some pop. Since these are waffle weave, I have to mention that my wife and I switched to waffle weave bath towels, hand towels, wash cloths, etc. Those things really do great. I'd have to guess waffle probably absorbs more per fabric. They absorb like crazy, they dry pretty quickly, and they are less of a beast on the washing machine. However, the "Hand Wash and Air Dry" tag right on the Ghost towels really gives me pause. Huh, now I see your later post with the washing machine icon and "toss the towel in the washing machine, and let it air dry". Hmm Hopefully that works fine.

Here are some Trackman numbers from my Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke and TaylorMade Qi10 driver fittings. This includes numbers from the 2 setups I was fit into, and from my gamer. I got a Trackman report for the first one, but not for the second, so I just had to get what I could from the photos I took. Analysis: Looks like I had higher club speed with my gamer, but lower ball speed. The Callaway gave me 13 yards more carry, 24 yards more total distance. My gamer had much higher spin. Ball: He had me hitting a Callaway Chromesoft Analysis: Looks like same club speed and ball speed. But with the Qi10 I was getting 10.5 yards more carry, 21 yards more total distance. This is due to the spin difference. I hit my Ping G20 gamer slightly better this time compared to last fitting. I had been doing more swinging lately, and none last time. Ball: He had me hitting a Callaway Chrome Tour I have to admit, I'm surprised my gamer did not do better. I've played with it a long time. And my Golfshot app showed I average longer than that. There was some rust in there... maybe that was it, hmmm.

TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting The next weekend, I did a TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting at Golf Galaxy! Keep the rust off At the TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting, I had a new fitter. Good guy, but I didn't mesh with him as well as I did the last one. I was still hitting strong draws and some hooks, but it was a little better. We went through different shafts with the vanilla Qi10, stiff mostly, 65g and 60g. He did have me try regular flex for the heck of it in case I was used to that on my current gamer. We didn't try extra stiff this time. After the vanilla Qi10, he switched me to the Qi10 LS. He moved the slider weight to the fade position to counteract my draws and hooks. This one is interesting in that the screw is stationary and it just tightens the weight behind it which slides. At first I didn't realize what position the weight was in because I didn't realize how it worked. I tried both the 10.5 and the 9 degree. I think he said the standard Qi10 has a slight draw bias, and it doesn't have a slider. And he said the Qi10 Max has more draw bias so he didn't bring that one near me, haha. My final fit was: Qi10 LS, 10.5 degree, slider to fade, Tensei Blue stiff shaft 65g I did take a couple swing tips - he said I had a nice swing, but... He didn't have all the numbers up there on the screen like I did last time. But I think he showed another screen just one time with all of that info. He made a point to look at this to check my swing path, and I did come inside-to-out a lot, 6 degrees. That makes it tough to have square club at impact also, not just creating hook spin. As I hit up on it, I may be having the club in front of my hands at impact, releasing fully at or before impact. Dustin Johnson for example he said still has hit hands way in front of the club with driver. Hands pull up and left when club impacts ball, finish high. Open face at address, hands forward, left shoulder high. Thinking about all this all screwed me up a bit, but the idea makes sense. 2 big things on my swing- I need to straighten out my swing path and be less inside to out so it’s easier to square the face at impact. I need to not hit up on it as much, if possible. The swing path seems like a more critical thing for my driver play than the hitting up on it. I'm glad he flagged that. I will say the Qi10 was a super-attractive club. On looks alone, I much preferred it to the Ai Smoke. But for hitting, I liked them both. I'm not sure which I liked better. It was really neat to be able to try out these brand new clubs, a new experience for me. Based on the numbers, I was also hitting the Qi10 LS better than my gamer driver. I also kept up my practice driver swings in back yard, now with knowledge of my hugely inside-to-out swing path that I wanted to straighten out a bit. I worked on what feel I needed to have to accomplish my swing fixes, and came up with a good adjustment. Next, to keep that up and take it to hit some more balls. Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line, steepening, swing path) A couple of my best shots, that I photo-ed-

Thanks! That's good to bring that up. Wilson did just update the Wilson Staff Model, and now there is a new Staff Model X in addition to Staff Model. Those two could set up very well and I'm interested to see them in this year's ball test. I have no idea about updating the Triad, though it is slightly discounted for a while now. I have not tried any Snell balls yet myself. Thanks for your input.

Here is Driver Spin vs. Iron Spin now with a trendline added. I didn't say much before for this one, so here we go. Balls above/left of the trendline have more iron spin relative to driver spin compared to the others. Balls below/right of the trendline have more driver spin relative to iron spin compared to the others. So you can see that the Titleist Pro V1x, Pro V1, Callaway Chrome Soft X, and Wilson Staff Model all do a good job having relatively high iron spin while keeping down driver spin. The Wilson Staff Model is on the higher end for spin with both driver and iron there, but the iron spin is pretty high given its driver spin. Eyeballing, it looks like the Pro V1 and Pro V1x have below average driver spin and above average iron spin. Gold star to those two . Ooh actually let me put an average point in there too. Yep, confirmed. The average point is the dark purple one on the line by the Vice Pro Plus. The Bridgestone Tour B RX, Tour B RXS, and Vice Pro Soft have high driver spin relative to iron spin. The Tour B RX is pretty off-the-chart there . It does have a near average driver spin, but the iron spin is waaaaaay low. The Callaway Chrome Soft and Chrome Soft X LS are also below the line there, though not as far. This is interesting because it makes these two very different from the Chrome Soft X, which had the second highest iron spin. Basically the others are right on the trendline, including the Wilson Triad on the higher spin part of the line and the Titleist AVX on the low spin side. We'll just pretend the Kirkland isn't there

Yeah maybe this fits somewhere better. But I've been wanting to get more information out of the ball test data for a while now. I thought about typing out everything in there into Excel, going robot mode for a while, but never got around to it, since that would be a big pain. Way back, I did try getting Tableau and checking if there was a better way to access the data. As is, it only allows for export to image, PDF, PowerPoint, which is not exporting the data at all, just an image. But with a Tableau account it still did not allow me to download the data. You do have to pay for a lot of things with Tableau it looks like, but my guess is downloading the data is just disabled, which would be completely understandable. This review, and talk of some of the other ball options, prompted me to give it a go for at least some of the data. I appreciate it.

Now let's do some new never-before-done scatter plots! Driver spin vs iron spin... you can see the average trend here is a diagonal line from bottom left to top right, as something with high spin kind of has high spin on both driver and iron. But, there is variation of course, and that's where the interesting stuff is. Driver spin is on the X axis, iron spin on the Y axis. Similar deal here. You would expect a ball with high driver ball speed to also correlate with higher iron ball speed, and vice versa. But there is some variation. That Bridgestone Tour B RXS on the left for instance has a lower driver ball speed than the rest but an iron speed that basically matches the group - odd. The Vice Pro Zero has a similar driver ball speed to the group, but a lower iron ball speed. This one below might be interesting if you want both high driver ball speed and high iron spin. That would mean you want to go for what's in an arc on the top right - best ones would be Chrome Soft X, Wilson Staff Model, Pro V1x, Maxfli Tour X

Nice, cool to know, thanks. It sounds a lot more advanced than the Mizuno tool to me from what I've read, particularly that it records a lot more swing parameters and the use of AI to convert that to recommendations. What do you mean shot scope sensor? I'm thinking the Shot Scope club tags, and I think those are just RFID tags, not sensors. The Arccos ones have sensors but I believe they are only sensing the impact (by sound with a mic).

Sounds great. I'm glad this can be an option that is still straight, so it's got my attention. I could see myself buying one of those Maltbys to try for sure. That sounds great about the Chrome Tour. I definitely know way more about what the golf ball does and the different models than I did at the end of last season. I keep a handful of crap balls on hand to donate to the driving range for just such occasions. Or just to hit extra balls when I'm trying to get rid of some that I don't play. They're in a grocery bag at the bottom of my big side pocket, haha.

Thank you. That is VERY helpful. I have to agree there! I've been staying away from the TaylorMade TP5 mostly due to the spin. I'm going to take a close look at the Chrome Tour once MGS has the new big ball test. Luckily I did get a couple freebie Chrome Tour balls from the Callaway Ai Smoke driver demo. I haven't played them yet. That's awesome you were involved in the MGS test for that ball. I need to go back and find that thread to see how that went. I will be back, lol. I wouldn't mind trying OttoPhlex, as long as I can do it without spraying more left/right/mostly left than I do since that's my bigger goal. And our swings seem kind of similar. So if/when I do, I'll certainly come here and ask for input!

Here is an updated table with a bunch more stuff. Added the 8 balls from Vice and Bridgestone, though haven't compared them yet. I think this rounds out a good group. Added the yellow Pro V1, just because it is oddly quite a bit different from the white Pro V1. They didn't have the compression on that one, FYI, but surely it's the same as the Pro V1. Added Iron Ball Speed column. I also discovered that MGS's Tableau scatter plot shows numbers to 2 decimal places on the Y axis, but not the X axis. So I also regathered all the numbers and juggled axes to get the more precise data. (Data from MyGolfSpy 2023 Ball Test) I will be able to do different scatter plots with this data than what MGS had displayed. Club (Driver/Mid Iron) and Club Speed (Fast/Mid/Slow/Wedge 35 Yards) are separate dropdowns on MGS's scatter plot, so it was not possible to compare driver spin to iron spin for instance, driver ball speed to iron spin, or driver ball speed to iron ball speed. But first, here is something neat you can see with that MGS Tableau scatter plot. The Titleist Pro V1x Left Dash has the highest driver ball speed (fast club) among these. And the spin is on the low side, whereas the Maxfli Tour X which is nearly tied in driver ball speed has 185 rpm higher spin. The Pro V1x is not far behind in driver ball speed, and also lower spin. The Wilson Staff Model (yellow-green) is there in 4th spot for highest driver ball speed, and its spin is 221 rpm higher than the Pro V1x Left Dash. And the Wilson Triad is the other yellow-green spot near the top of driver spin, and I guess I'd say for driver ball speed it's within the main grouping though near the lower end of that (close to Maxfli Tour). Looking at iron ball speed (below), you can see they are all quite close in a horizontal grouping on the right side . Basically the bulk of the group is between 117.69 and 118.23 ball speed, a difference of only 0.54 mph (throwing out a few outliers). It makes sense there would be less range on that. Driver ball speed range in this group more spread out, you can see the dots are less clumped horizontally in the above diagram. Driver ball speed is between 166.45 and 170.94, for a range of 4.5 mph. So iron ball speed is not very interesting, and I might disregard it, except just for checking the outliers. The Pro V1x Left Dash has lower iron spin, close to the AVX and Chrome Soft X LS, so that matches what it did with driver, but interestingly it isn't at the top of the pack for iron ball speed. The Kirkland is bottom of the chart low iron ball speed here at 116.67. The Vice Pro Zero is also there at 116.93. And the Bridgestone Tour B RX is on the low side with 117.40. Again the Wilsons are yellow-green spots with the Staff Model having higher iron spin and iron ball speed. Both are on the higher end of iron spin, as they were with driver spin. And they're both in the core grouping for iron ball speed, with the Triad on the low end of that. But again, caveat all this - for iron ball speed, the differences are tiny numbers. Iron spin is interesting. Iron ball speed is mostly not interesting. Oh I do see here that the Vice Pro and Vice Pro Plus are solidly in the core groupings in both plots. For Bridgestone, the Tour B X is the only one that is solidly in the core grouping for both.