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Reasons for sharing I have not been very active as a poster of reviews on this site. One I don't have the occasion to do so very often and two I seldom find the results to be worth sharing which is not the case this time around. So moving on please disregard poor grammar, rambling, excessive use of "..." and the like They are simply a result of excitement and possibly a good looking English teacher I had once. Never heard a word she was saying. Thanks Mrs Z The next thing I want you to know is that I am not a brand guy. I am a performance guy. . My golf bag looks like a race car driver shirt and represents just as much loyalty. Those guys need money and will take it from anyone ...condoms, liquor, women's products, to genital enlargement... you name it just send us the check and the patch and we will sew it on with the rest of them. I'm the same way but with performance. I need performance and I'll take it anywhere I can get it I dont care where it comes from. Again not a brand guy. What I am is a tinkerer. A tinkerer of my swing and in turn my equipment. I spend a lot of my time over the winter making changes - hopefully the right ones- and attempting to ingrain them before season starts. This year has been no exception. The last few months I switched over to a new workout regiment that is more centered around golf and have made some big strides, surprisingly quickly I might add, in speed and overall performance. Amp Cell Pro and Fuji Fuel X combo has been in my bag since last spring but is now underperforming (or performing just as it should) ....but I consistently see the following. *fairways set on hard in this image hence the roll out. Changed the setting to medium after warming up with my club. Excessive draw due to the clubs bias many misses well out to the left. No spin 1300-1800 9 or 10 degrees launch. = less carry and a land angle that was too flat - if it hit hard fairway it would run forever but its wet here way too often for that to be the ideal flight - increasing the loft setting seems to make the over draw issue in to an even larger hook as the face closes down slightly weakening grip any further would require some sort of bone removal so its time for a change Since the changes in path and technique have improved my consistency, speed, and accuracy considerably it seems wise to change the setup rather than further adjust the swing. So I bundled up over the last week and headed to the my local fitter over several days for testing last week hoping to accomplish two things; To find a combo that I could control with my swing speed but that would also bump the launch and spin up for a more ideal ball-flight, and to find a setup with less draw bias allowing a full release. As always I came in with my "short list" of setups I wanted to demo and I would trust the fitter with any other options. Callaway Big Bertha BBA Cobra Bio Cell Ping line (i25 g25) TM SLDR Nike line LIMTING FACTORS FOR THIS FITTING ( basically things that took away from the clubs that I did not pick that might be fixable but not in the testing options I have available) Shaft that were too long. -make it difficult for me to control with upright lie and my 5'10" frame Anything with a lot of draw bias is going to be terrible for me....period. Too light weight- I prefer a heavier feel in my clubs. Limited shaft offerings for testing RESULTS Callaway- Callway BBA - excellent ball-speed , Superb feeling off the face. **I prefer a softer solid feel to a loud ear ringing pwang**. The BBA has a great look as well. This was an outlier for this club the highest spin i saw and the longest overal. But 1 in 20 big shots wont help my game and unfortunately absolutely nothing that got the launch/spin up where i needed it with the optoins they had available. If you are a high ball hitter this club should be on your list to try. One thing I did notice was that for me it wasn't very accurate. I have always found this with Callaways over the last couple of years. For myself I think it is the head-shape and shaft length. Pings- Firmer feel and louder. Feel is powerful but somewhat "separated" (softer clubs feel like the impact of a well hit pitch of a wooden bat hitting a softball,,,the pings more like an aluminum cork filled bat hitting a regulation hard baseball ) Stock shaft is surprisingly good though Would be surprised if most golfers could not find a good fit with their options. I wouldn't turn my nose up at them till you try them that's for sure.. Anyway...Good numbers,not outstanding but good. Much more accurate than the callways for me most likely due to the shorter shaft that I was using. Could not find combo that was right for me however. G25 spun much to much no matter what shaft I put in. I25 had the opposite problem. With this and the Lack of adjustability, and the price, I decided to pass on Ping this year.....****do love the racing stripes though TM SLDR- Guys I dont know what to say here. TMAG is a good company and has made some big moves this year. This club even won another blog sites test for club of the year. That being said * just for me now* i hated it. Didn't sit right by the ball in my eye. I cant put my finger on what it was. The face seems really tall. I don't know but I couldn't find the center with it which normally isn't an issue. In my experience any club that starts off that poorly will never make th bag so I stopped before testing many options. From the short time hit it I can say it does not have the forgiveness of any of the other clubs that I hit on missed strike. Couldn't tell you what a good strike is like Nike-- Last year I tried, and really wanted to like the, both Covert drivers. The CT was the club that I wanted to play. I loved the looks but the club just wasn't forgiving enough for me to be comfortable over some of those shaky narrow holes. The performance head was much better in this regard. In fact I would say it was by far the most accurate of any that I tried last year. At that point I was only testing in stock shafts, possibly a mistake, but that was all they had available at the time. Anyway where the performance head shined inaccuracy is was quite noticeably behind everywhere else. I found that It launched a bit too high, spun too much, and was under-performing in ball-speed by almost 3 mph to all of my other options..............That ..........was last year. -back to the future- While hitting the BBA again my friend and fitter at the shop and I were talking options. We both thought I might benefit from a higher launching head with what might be considered a lower launching shaft to my current setup to get where i wanted to be. I was ready to move on to the Nike line so he threw one together out of the fitting cart and handed me the performance head in the stock xflex. Something about this club just gives me confidence. Shape and color are familiar to my current cobra and there is something else that just makes me feel as though I cant miss. I took two swings, both of which hit right off the screws went right down the middle with a little too much draw and slightly more spin than i needed. Superb feel just like last year soft and Ballspeed was comparable to my setup which was promising since last year the performance head was lacking in that aspect. Seeing these results he mentioned that he had just recently returned from a managers seminar (in...well I cant remember the name of the place.... just think some place warmer and sunnier than where you are now) where he was able to demo the Nike line in all their aftermarket options and choose one for his own use. He chose a Covert 2.0 head in a Fujikura Motore Speeder Tour Spec 2.0 X. This was a shaft I had not tried to date at least not at any length and a head that i was two swings in to so far but already liking it. Just so you know I realize that I get side tracked a lot and if you are still with me to this point I just know this is the last time...at least on this little review. One thing I really dislike about testing clubs is the lack of aftermarket options available on any one cart especially when it comes to Nike. If I want to go aftermarket I have to go get fitted in whatever heads our local club builder uses to test shafts in ( a Whishon head or the like) I then have to order the shaft and head combo that i "hope" will work out end the end..... No big deal just a 500-700 dollar gamble. The other option is get invited to the oven but i'm not holding my breath for that. Wanting many options and the opportunity to test them in hand before I buy might put me in the minority. But if anyone is wondering, and i'm sure they are not, I think NIke would benefit from following the lead of some of the other manufacturers in fitting systems. Titleist has a superb fitting cart with many , maybe not as many as I would like, but still many well organized options. Again I know nobody is asking ....still i can wish....right? So that being said I did not pass up his offer. He got the club set it to 8.5 R . The white shaft with red graphics were loud compared to my old setup..but I liked it and it blended well with the red crown and white swoosh on the head. It had the stock Golfpride 2g grip on it which I have a bad history with but this one being so new had plenty of tack. The shaft was a half inch short of standard and setup to stock swing weight which I much prefer at my height and build. I seem to be saying this a lot lately and if its not already apparent "I'm not writer". For that reason and others this part of the write up is always tricky for me. I never know how to transition from description of the clubs to the finale by this time I've gone from talking too much to rambling so I'll try to keep this simple..... - POOOW! That really says it all. Over and over....- The shaft was much more stable in my hands and was producing the exact launch i was looking for and with accuracy I wouldn't have thought I could produce. Ball-speed was up an average of 2mph and launch and spin where perfect. Misses were forgiven as much or more than any club I've ever tested. Thought I didn't miss much there were at least two occasions in the almost 2 hour hitting sessions where I looked up at the trackman expecting the results would be disastrous as my history with that type of miss would show. I was shocked to find I had lost only 3 mph+- ball speed and still with decent numbers on those missed shots. Missed shots were good and good shots were... well....great! I eventually did try the tour head which produced much lower launch and spin and needed to be lofted up 2 degrees to get the same results. . In the end even though I preferred the look and it gave me the same numbers as the performance head ,I was definitely not quite as accurate so I didn't waste much time going back to the performance. "No exaggeration ..By far the best results I have seen from any club to date." The feel was as spectacular as the results and I couldn't stop hitting it. The shot below was a great one. Most were in the 168 bs range and had proportionally lower spin. Still the carry on this one and all the others were spectacular for me. *fairways set on medium *note on smash factor- I want to share that this number 1.51 is what saw nearly every shot. I dont know what it is about this trackman but I have my doubts on this. I see numbers in the 115-117 ss range on the TMAG system and fligthscope... that would put my smash at about 1.48 a much more realistic number.* Nike Performance head with the MOTORE SPEEDER 6.2 x TOUR SPEC. -----WINNER! My only regret at this point is that I really cant expand this setup in to the fairway woods and possibly hybrids right now. I hit them briefly and they seemed equally well suited for me. My 913's are great but once again I found the Nike to be more accurate if not in the stock shaft they would most likely be a perfect fit. Though this is nit picking I also prefer a smooth transition from driver to fairway in looks which is something I didn't like about going from my cobra to the 913 setups. But for now my titleists 913's will stay in the bag for those clubs. Summing up. This was an exciting experience for me and probably the most positive review I could write without being full of it. There are a lot of great options this year. Makes for a very hard choice. For myself I'll have one more swoosh on my bag for 2014. The second one I have added in as many weeks which is something I quite honestly never would have expected. Nike mod 30 , now the driver , my MP69s are safe I would say but the rest of my bag.........I dunno. I always recommend that everyone test as many options as possible and with a good fitter that is willing to spend the time....but this year whether you try everything or only a few I'd be sure to put this one on your list. Be happy to answer any questions you might have, hittem straight A