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OFFICIAL CALLAWAY XR 16 DRIVER AND FW REVIEW Please join us for the following forum member reviews of the Callaway XR 16 driver and fairway woods. Lets find out if their performance can stand up to their looks. txgolfjunkie Stage One Stage Two Stage Three N8ball Stage One Stage Two Stage Three sp0rtsfan86 Stage One Stage Two Stage Three Eseay32 Stage One Stage Two Stage Three Let us know what you think! Visit Callaways website HERE Like Callaway on Facebook HERE Follow Callaway on Twitter HERE

Awesome! you decided to review some equipment on the MGS Forum. We are not looking for everything to look the same, show your personality, tell a story! What we are looking for is quality and honesty in your review. We do, however, want to provide some tips should you be looking for some guidance. Forum Member Review Tips: We love looking at pictures - augment your review with them! All pictures should be 750 - 800 pixels wide. This is to make sure the reviews load quickly for anyone reading them. Please take photos and/or video in landscape orientation - this fits the screen better and ensures that there is not unnecessary whitespace. Tell a story! We want to be entertained as well as enlightened If you love the product and how it is performing, say so. If it don't meet your expectations say that too. Feel free to contact one of the Forum Directors if you need help resizing your pictures, photo editing (enhancing the image, cropping, etc), or just have questions There are some great examples of member reviews on the forum in case you need ideas, but ultimately we want to hear how the equipment you shelled out hard-earned cash for is working, and whether you'd be happy recommending it to a friend. Some tips for taking pictures: Natural light is always preferable to artificial light. If you're taking a picture inside, use the light coming from a window. In general night pictures aren't great unless you have a good camera and light setup. The best time to take pictures is an hour or so after sunrise or before sun set, right when the sky becomes a bit golden. A slightly cloudy day is ideal, but you can't really control that. Overcast conditions are the worst. Cell phone cameras are OK, but if you have a good digital camera, you should use that. Picture composition tips: You can use a flash to counterbalance sunlight. For example, if the sun is behind your subject, usually that'll make everything dark. If the sun is behind your subject and you use a flash, then the subject is well lit still and you have a lot of light in your picture. If your camera supports HDR photos or multiple exposure shots. HDR photos are a combination of 1-2 underexposed, 1 normal, and 1-2 overexposed shots. The software puts them all together. If you camera can't do HDR, but can do multiple exposure, then there's plenty of software out there to combine the shots. If you have a zoom lens, you can play around with depth of field by taking shots of the same subject all the way zoomed in or all the way zoomed out. If you can change the aperture of the lens, you can play with the depth of focus and light. A very open aperture (f1.4-f2.8) needs little light, but the depth of focus is very shallow. A closed aperture (f7+) needs a lot of light and has a much deeper depth of focus. ISO is the quality of the image. The lower the ISO, the better the quality, but requires more light. Picture editing tips: Use www.picmonkey.com , www.photoeditor.polarr.co , the snapseed app on iOS/Android or any number of other software options to edit your pictures. A lot of times, simply pushing "Auto Adjust", or playing with some of the preset filters will make your picture(s) look a lot nicer.

Srixon have been good enough to enable ten forum members to put the new, 2015 editions of the Srixon Z-Star and Z-Star XV through their paces. As was established last year with ball reviews, rather than have every one of them post a 3 page dialog about what they thought about a golf ball, we are having testers answer questions in several pivotal areas of ball performance and give their observations so we can get a collated overview. We wanted to get an understanding of the collective perception of Srixon balls before the testing got underway in earnest, so this first post focuses on preconceptions of Srixon golf balls. Srixon… they make the yellow balls, right? What's being tested? The new Z-Star and Z-Star XV are said to combine “next generation SpinSkin™ and Speed Dimples™ innovation to give the “Tour” player unmatched feel and control, and the energetic gradient growth™ core delivers incredible distance.” Z-Star: Z-Star XV: MGS Forum Members: Who's testing what? Each tester received one dozen balls, either the Z-Star or the Z-Star XV, based on the details that they had provided in the testing application process (SS, current ball, etc). Tester group experience with Srixon balls Somewhat surprisingly, only 7 of our 10 testers have played Srixon balls previously. Of those that have played Srixon balls previously, two have used freebies given out through event sponsorships and two others haven't played Srixon balls for a number of years. Conversely, one of our testers has played Srixon balls regularly since 2008. What brand of ball are you primarily using (prior to testing the Srixon balls)? [Note, where testers mentioned multiple brands of ball, all have been included] What comes to mind when you think of Srixon balls? As you can imagine, the responses to this question were pretty varied. Some of the common themes that emerged were that Srixon is seen as: Graeme McDowell's ball, but not one played by anyone in my golf circle Not highly advertised, not marketed as well as it could be Innovation in Color Quality and Durability A player in the premium ball category, but not really on the radar to actually game. Titleist has been the standard, then Cally/TMaG. Srixon maybe a tick below those companies A decent ball, but at similar price point it's not good enough to force a change from Titleist What characteristics make a good ball? The last series of questions was to find out our tester group perceptions of what makes for a good ball. As expected, the answers were mostly all over the place, but there were a few commonalities – if you're watching Srixon, this is our wish list … good luck getting all of these in one small, round package… Driver – Distance with low spin and a flat, penetrating trajectory Irons – Consistent and predictable trajectory and distance Wedges – Consistent trajectory and ‘hop & stop' (high & predictable) spin Putter – Predictable distance, softer feel, clean alignment mark Other – Durability and excellent visibility Final pre-testing thoughts… Everyone is really excited to be testing these, and to see how these compare to their current gamers. Srixon balls have been in the conversation for a number of the guys, but the consensus has generally been that there hasn't been a strong enough reason to make a switch from their current gamer ball. Watch this space to see if the latest generation of Srixon balls can change this… Testing Process The testers have actually had their balls for a couple of weeks now and have been playing with them regularly. I've had some of them give me little snippets of how the testing is going, and I can guarantee this will be really interesting to follow. You'll all get to read about them in a week or two, as soon as I can get all of the survey results together. The main focus of the results will be how the Srixons compared to their gamers, who wants to keep playing the Srixons they received, and how the testing strengthened or changed their opinions of the balls after playing them for a while. In the meantime, feel free to ask questions or leave comments about your own balls (golf balls only please), or what you think of Srixon in general.

Received a package in the mail today: Let's see what's in there: All snuggled up! Purty! The main competition... Soon - out to the course we go.