XTD driver

I told you!  Still waiting for a good and warm weather day to test it at 12 degrees loft...Friday AM is a possibility.

Hope you find the magic in the XTD or sell it/trade it.
The Launcher is a great stick...but you should find more distance and forgiveness from newer technology.

Now that it has warmed up some, I'll try to get some time at my private range soon.  I think they cut the grass on Wednesdays, so maybe I'll go there early Thursday AM.  I bought a dozen new Maxfli Softli orange balls to make a valid comparison between both my drivers.  I looked for orange balls on the theory that I can find them faster than white balls.  The USGA rates them as low spin off a driver and high spin off a short iron.

I hope the grass it cut this Wednesday.  I was there on Tuesday of last week hitting 7-irons only...started with a dozen crummy Top-Flites and came home with only seven.

Many events have passed since my last post, so here’s the timeline:

Late April: Visited my secret range with the Cleveland and the Adams XTD (set at 12 degrees). I wanted to conduct a fair comparison and brought a dozen new orange Maxfli Softfli balls. I assumed that orange balls would be easy to find in 2 to 2 ½” high grass/weeds (wrong, it still took me forever to find the balls and I came home with only eleven).

I set two broken shafts as “goalposts” about 165 paces from the teeing ground and 15 paces apart. I measured only the drives that finished downrange between the extended parallel lines of the goalposts. The Cleveland was way more accurate and almost as long when pacing off the combined best three drives of each club.

May 31: I thought about taking the Adams for my golf round at Mays Landing CC on June 1, but left it at home.

June 15: Played Cream Ridge GC with the Adams…totally unpredictable, some good drives, some really bad.

June 28: Played golf outing (scramble) at Forsgate CC with the Adams. Did some experimenting at the range, like playing the ball on a high tee and hovering the club before beginning the backswing.

The team captain of my foursome was by far the longest driver, but when he was wild the pressure was on me to bail us out...and I did. I hit one drive that was OB, but otherwise the rest were all playable. The best-looking ones were straight balls…I don’t know how far they went, but the Cleveland would not have been as long. We finished at -2, three birdies and one bogey(a par-5, pathetic).

What I noticed was how physically taxing the Adams became for me. In an unconscious attempt to get ANY bend in the shaft, I threw my lower body into the swing like never before. I think it worked, but I ended up with a charley horse in my front upper right thigh. It did not affect my swings, but I hobbled back and forth from the golf cart.

Strange coincidence: somebody forgot their driving during the outing. It was resting next to the snack stand at the 10th tee. Except for being a lefty, it was an exact duplicate of my Cleveland 460 Launcher Titanium with 55g R stock Fujikura shaft.

BTW, I played with a new-looking Nike 20XI X ball for the whole round and it performed well with the Adams...I also recall smoking it with my Titleist 906F4 3-wood on a fairway shot. I can’t say how it played with the irons, as all my iron shots were mediocre to incompetent.