Upcoming Most Wanted Driver Testing

[Thin2win]

35 minutes ago, cnosil said:

 it will become free and you can query based on this type of information. 

LOL, based on Adam's all fittings should be free rants I would hope so

[GregGarner]

On 2/21/2022 at 5:42 PM, Thin2win said:

But if you were going to take a random person and get them a driver, the ping has the best chance of being a good choice for them out of the entire field. 

This is why Club Champion and Golf Galaxy and PGASS and and and... will never go out of business. They can just play the probabilities and they don't actually have to fit or optimize for the individual. ESPECIALLY if someone is rocking a TM R7 Quad or something and you can use data (ooooooh!!) to show them whatever improvement metrics (aaaaahhhhhh!) you want. And that's already a step up from the dudes buying off the rack based on whatever marketing strikes a chord with them.

</rant>

[RickyBobby_PR]

4 hours ago, fixyurdivot said:

I say this primarily because most "average double digit golfers" do not have consistent swings and the multiple sessions would (IMO) do a better job ferreting that out in the final results. 

They have a lot more consistent swings than people realize. You can pick some of the videos of swings posted on this forum and others and watch how over the course of months of swings they look pretty much the same. They just aren’t efficient. Matt’s swing is efficient and in good sequence. 

[jddaigneault]

2 hours ago, ChitownM2 said:

I think you are slightly missing the point.  The test procedure is not measuring some sort of repeatable statistic where we need a lot of data points.  The test is measuring how well that particular club works for an individuals swing.  After 5-10 swings, the tester is, consciously or not, going to start adjusting their swing to get the desired result with that club.  You don't want that to happen. If that was the case, we should all be playing the same exact clubs, shafts, etc and constantly taking lessons until we all had the exact same perfect swing.  

The whole point of the test, and a fitting in general, is to find the club that works best for your existing swing. Going beyond 15 swings (some would argue less) would actually defeat the purpose.

I do not think that is the point of the test. If you are saying that, statistically, this is the first driver everyone should try, you need to have the statistical basis to support that. This test does not. That isn’t subjective, that’s a mathematical principle. I think there are some drivers that no matter how many shots you take with it you won’t hit it as well as others. There are drivers I’ve hit 10-15 times poorly and after some time with it hit better than ones I hit well in those 10-15. Most golfers can’t just magically adjust to any club after 15 shots, so no, it isn’t irrelevant. I’m not saying this isn’t a fun test every year, I’m just surprised it is such a limited data set. In reality, all it is is fun. There’s nothing anyone can actually draw from this data with any realm of certainty. 

[jddaigneault]

5 hours ago, fixyurdivot said:

Interesting point and, from my background, a basic tenant in testing.  I do think a smaller sample of say 10-20 shots can serves as a first order filter to seperate wheat from chaff but, once you get down to a 2-3 contenders, more shots and on different days would be more telling.  As @cnosilpoints out, I have to keep reminding myself that the testers are not "fit" for their clubs as we now think of that process.  Also that these represent the "off the rack" configurations.  

Since I suspect a good many buyers simply use the likes of MGS Most Wanted results as a supplement to OEM marketing, and do not invest in a quality fitting, that's all the more reason to think about detailing the various testers profiles.  In contrast to numerous Matt Blois-like, near pro level players doing club reviews, this test group probably has a player and swing type that matches we mere mortals.  Knowing that Tester X is a 10-ish index who tends to hit fat, has a natural baby fade ball flight and other similar swing path data attributes would be beneficial. 

This nails it. If MGS is going to advertise themselves as the place to turn to start your club journey, they need effective data to support it. I LOVE that they always say you cannot replace a quality fitting, because these tests simply lack the data necessary to really isolate if one driver is truly a better driver than another. 

[jddaigneault]

1 hour ago, cnosil said:

Was chatting after my iron session today and what you are looking for should be available soon.  Apparently, They are working on getting the data into truegolffit and once it is complete it will become free and you can query based on this type of information. 

The challenge is, if only one of the testers fits the profile to sort and only took 15 swings with each club, it just doesn’t provide a good enough basis for anything. I don’t say this to be overly critical. I think MGS does a good job of listening to readers and adapting to feedback. There needs to be more data for the tests and sorts to be valid and reliable. 

[fixyurdivot]

36 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

They have a lot more consistent swings than people realize. You can pick some of the videos of swings posted on this forum and others and watch how over the course of months of swings they look pretty much the same. They just aren’t efficient. Matt’s swing is efficient and in good sequence. 

Is it Ricky or Bobby that you go by?  I wouldn't put the majority of folks on this forum into the "average player" I'm referring too.  As a whole, and particularly our more active forum participants, are IMO better than average and not inclined to simply buy off the rack without having done a fair amount of research.

In any case, I think we've pretty well rounded off our nail heads here in this discussion and will just have to agree to disagree on a few points.

[RickyBobby_PR]

7 minutes ago, fixyurdivot said:

Is it Ricky or Bobby that you go by?  I wouldn't put the majority of folks on this forum into the "average player" I'm referring too.  As a whole, and particularly our more active forum participants, are IMO better than average and not inclined to simply buy off the rack without having done a fair amount of research.

In any case, I think we've pretty well rounded off our nail heads here in this discussion and will just have to agree to disagree on a few points.

There’s plenty of high handicaps posting their swings here and other forums. They all have swings that are consistent from swing to swing. Go talk to some pros or fitters and ask them if they thing high handicaps have swings that are repeatable. These guys all make the same moves in their swings. The problem is they don’t sequence properly so the club face gets out of position and they have to compensate for it. The inconsistency is in the contact point on the face due to compensations and not inconsistency in the swing. 

[Thin2win]

@cnosil

Any memory /thoughts on the Tour Edge C722? It pops top 3 in basically every category I sort by in my comparable swing groups. 

[BMart519]

Any of the testers have any idea what buckets are used for the Attack Angle? Is Neutral -2 to +2, Positive +2 and greater, etc? 

I don't see it mentioned in the article or the extra data page. Even averages or medians for this category would be interesting. 

[GregGarner]

8 hours ago, BMart519 said:

Any of the testers have any idea what buckets are used for the Attack Angle? Is Neutral -2 to +2, Positive +2 and greater, etc? 

I don't see it mentioned in the article or the extra data page. Even averages or medians for this category would be interesting. 

Unfortunately, this will probably only get sorted by swing speed and not club delivery. I don't care at all about someone's swing mechanics, mostly because neither does the ball. The only thing that matters is club delivery. Swing speed is only one component and arguably the least important. Someone swinging 110 mph, 8 degrees in to out, with a face slightly closed to path, and an attack angle at +5 is going to be supremely unrelatable to someone swinging 110, 0.5 out to in, with a slightly open face, and a -1 AoA. Sure, they both swing 110, but there is ZERO chance they should use the same driver. 

If we were gonna get "tester profiles" with the data, I'm looking at path and face angle first, then dynamic loft vs static loft tested, then AoA. If I needed a tie-breaker, swing speed. But also I'm not buying a driver based on a blog post, sooooooooo

[RollingGreens]

On 2/21/2022 at 9:25 AM, LeftyMatt89 said:

Just got the email. I was surprised to see Ping on top. Happy to see the TD as a runner up as it has been performing really well in my personal testing recently. 

Really interesting that it scored well this year but did not test as well last year

[cnosil]

9 hours ago, BMart519 said:

Any of the testers have any idea what buckets are used for the Attack Angle? Is Neutral -2 to +2, Positive +2 and greater, etc? 

I don't see it mentioned in the article or the extra data page. Even averages or medians for this category would be interesting. 

Tony provided an answer in one of his tweets

 

 

 

10 hours ago, Thin2win said:

@cnosil

Any memory /thoughts on the Tour Edge C722? It pops top 3 in basically every category I sort by in my comparable swing groups. 

Tour Edge Drivers were hit or miss for me.  One of them was #7 on my most wanted list but it had a lot of outliers so I would say it was artificially high.   I love tour edge equipment and for the price they are great,  but for me they are a little behind the big OEMs.  

[cnosil]

17 minutes ago, RollingGreens said:

Really interesting that it scored well this year but did not test as well last year

The changed rankings are due to a slightly different tester group…maybe a little better group of golfers and as is normally done MGS refined the algorithms that compute the winners.  

[RickyBobby_PR]

5 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Tony provided an answer in one of his tweets

 

 

 

Tour Edge Drivers were hit or miss for me.  One of them was #7 on my most wanted list but it had a lot of outliers so I would say it was artificially high.   I love tour edge equipment and for the price they are great,  but for me they are a little behind the big OEMs.  

That’s crazy. +5 is alot up.

 

38 minutes ago, greggarner said:

I don't care at all about someone's swing mechanics, mostly because neither does the ball. The only thing that matters is club delivery.

The swing mechanics are what affects delivery. 

[cnosil]

40 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

That’s crazy. +5 is alot up.

. 

Note, He correlates that to 0-3 on trackman based on how they read differently 

[RickyBobby_PR]

8 minutes ago, cnosil said:

Note, He correlates that to 0-3 on trackman based on how they read differently 

Which is in itself also crazy when trying to compare numbers between different monitors. 

[tony@CIC]

Remotely related to the topic, some time ago I saw a chart that listed all shafts and their torque #'s. I can't seem to find that chart either here (mgs search) or google. Can anyone point me to that chart? 

[RickyBobby_PR]

7 minutes ago, tony@CIC said:

Remotely related to the topic, some time ago I saw a chart that listed all shafts and their torque #'s. I can't seem to find that chart either here (mgs search) or google. Can anyone point me to that chart? 

Have never seen that and other than providing just a comparison of a measurement of a shaft it doesn’t provide any useful info. I’ve held and swing a 2.1 torque shaft installed in a TM head that PX made for us to guess the torque. It moved like a noodle in the swing. 

[Thin2win]

51 minutes ago, tony@CIC said:

Remotely related to the topic, some time ago I saw a chart that listed all shafts and their torque #'s. I can't seem to find that chart either here (mgs search) or google. Can anyone point me to that chart? 

That wasn't a chart, it was the garage at @dlow206 house. Some weeks he organizes them based on color, other weeks he goes by graphite layer count, but I think this week he has them sorted by torque value. 

 

[GregGarner]

2 hours ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

The swing mechanics are what affects delivery. 

Sure, but the club can be delivered identically with very different swing mechanics. There's no point in comparing Rahm's swing with JT's, from a fitting perspective. The only thing that matters is the physics at the point of impact. What journey the club went on to get to that point is irrelevant. 

[RollingGreens]

2 hours ago, cnosil said:

The changed rankings are due to a slightly different tester group…maybe a little better group of golfers and as is normally done MGS refined the algorithms that compute the winners.  

I think in general it is nice to see that the newest products aren’t always the best. It’s really what makes me intrigued with some of the progress with technology vs older products. Are we still at the point where the numbers can’t be pushed much further even with a significant change such as the stealth driver 

[RickyBobby_PR]

9 minutes ago, greggarner said:

Sure, but the club can be delivered identically with very different swing mechanics. There's no point in comparing Rahm's swing with JT's, from a fitting perspective. The only thing that matters is the physics at the point of impact. What journey the club went on to get to that point is irrelevant. 

But if someone is looking at the data to compare against their swing. Someone with a late release is going to have different results than someone with an early release. Someone with an aggressive transition will have different results than a smooth transition. 
 

 

[cnosil]

38 minutes ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

But if someone is looking at the data to compare against their swing. Someone with a late release is going to have different results than someone with an early release. Someone with an aggressive transition will have different results than a smooth transition. 
 

 

 Think those will have an impact on how the person gets to impact and how the club looks at impact but if I said:

• 100 MPH at impact
• 150 ball speed
• path 1 degree in to out
• Face square to path
• dynamic loft of 15*
• AoA 2* up. 

what was my transition and release?  

[cnosil]

48 minutes ago, RollingGreens said:

I think in general it is nice to see that the newest products aren’t always the best. It’s really what makes me intrigued with some of the progress with technology vs older products. Are we still at the point where the numbers can’t be pushed much further even with a significant change such as the stealth driver 

As one if the testers I hit all of these clubs and in general I do not see a lot of difference at the top end, but there are performance tiers. These tiers  are more about due to how I respond to the club, shaft, and other factors.  Are clubs maxed out?  Probably not.   While there are COR/CT limits,  there will be improvements on misshits which will help the amateur golfer.  This is where stealth shines IMO.  Small gains this year,  but it starts to set a stage for bigger gains over the years.   Will we see significant gains next year?  Probably not; just subtle changes.   The other area for growth is swing speed….can the club be designed to help me swing faster?  Faster speed with same COR equals more distance.

  The biggest unknown is determining when there is a significant enough change for you to move to something else.  

[PMookie]

Separated the data to “low hcp, positive AOA, high swing speed”. Only brought-up TWO clubs. So odd.

[chisag]

6 minutes ago, cnosil said:

As one if the testers I hit all of these clubs and in general I do not see a lot of difference at the top end, but there are performance tiers. These tiers  are more about due to how I respond to the club, shaft, and other factors.

 

... So true. 25 years ago when I first started going to the pga show and writing reviews for The Best Of .... there was almost always 1 club that stood out in any category. Sometimes 2 of them. But roughly 10 years ago that started to change and it almost became a matter of personal preference as the differences between the top clubs was very little, if any for performance. Looking at Drivers, Players irons and Distance irons, GI's, hybrids and Utility clubs the difference is subtle. It is one of the reasons I say these MGS test are great starting points and then up to the individual to narrow it down to the clubs that will enhance their individual swings. 

[fixyurdivot]

1 hour ago, greggarner said:

Sure, but the club can be delivered identically with very different swing mechanics. There's no point in comparing Rahm's swing with JT's, from a fitting perspective. The only thing that matters is the physics at the point of impact. What journey the club went on to get to that point is irrelevant. 

Okay, this discussion has unequivocally determined that we simply need way more MGS Hit Squad Testers .

[tony@CIC]

2 hours ago, RickyBobby_PR said:

Have never seen that and other than providing just a comparison of a measurement of a shaft it doesn’t provide any useful info. I’ve held and swing a 2.1 torque shaft installed in a TM head that PX made for us to guess the torque. It moved like a noodle in the swing. 

It was more about curiosity rather then using it for shaft selection. Note - my fitter uses it as one component of his shaft selection process for fitting clubs. 

[chisag]

1 hour ago, greggarner said:

Sure, but the club can be delivered identically with very different swing mechanics. There's no point in comparing Rahm's swing with JT's, from a fitting perspective. The only thing that matters is the physics at the point of impact. What journey the club went on to get to that point is irrelevant. 

 

... Delivery differences effect the shaft much more than any head. This was the principal behind the Nunchuk shaft that basically had no bend or kick so types of release were completely irrelevant. My son is still using a Nunchuk in his Fly Z and as a very strong young man it fits him well and he won't even look at another driver.