Hi guys it's rick shields down here at quest golf academy here at prairie sports village i'm going to be testing the last five years worth of tailor-made drivers from 2012. For right now in 2017. my good friends at golfbidder have sent me all of the drivers there have been 20 drivers brought out in that period of time not as many actually as callaway that brought 24 but taylormade had brought out 20 drivers and i'm gonna test one from each of the years so i'm going to test six of the drivers. So technically it's kind of six years but not fully yet so it's still a five year test so i'm going to start with r11s the first one we're going to test then.
We're going to move over to taylormade r1 then.
We're going to go to the very popular sldr driver then.
We're going to go into the r15 followed by the m1 from 2016. And to mix it up a little bit i'm going to go m2 from 2017. all these drivers are in as close spec as possible all at nine nine. And a half degree heads i'm going to be using the same shaft the aldila rogue with five of the drivers apart from the r11s because the r11s just has a slightly different connector. So i've got a project x six point shaft six point zero shaft in the r11s but after that every one of them will be tested in the aldila rogue i'm gonna carry out the test i'm going to hit 10 drivers with every single golf club i'm going to go two rounds of five shots each. So that i'm kind of splitting the wear and tear of me hitting them really the shots that count are shots that hit the fairway. So i'm going to imagine they're going to be it's going to be a 40-yard fairway. And it's been the best five shots hit down that 40-yard fairway that's going to count towards the comparison at the end the more shots the club hits on the fairway it has got an advantage because the best five is still going to be used instead of just scrapping five down there. So i'm gonna start off with r11s first i've set all these golf clubs as much as i can in neutral. So all of them have little functions and features i've set them all in neutral to get the best test within this i'm looking forward to giving this a go stay tuned what do you think is going to do it what do you think is going to win it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts down below try. And predict right now i'm also going to do the ping drivers as well that's coming soon. And also comment what other manufacturers would you like me to do this five year testol right r11s we need five pro vs then.
Switch over to the r1. And then.
Switch around and then.
Have one more round so we've got 10 shots from each so the r11s one of the first drivers that came out in white it was very very stand out it had the compass at the bottom which you can adjust to have the face more close. Or open at address and it had the weights in the toe and the heel and it was one of the first drivers as well with an adjustable neck. So you could actually tink with the loft well that is as good as they're gonna get i think today.
Okay. So that is the first five carried out with the r11s i'm now going to switch over to the r1. So r1 wasn't massively different than r11s it still had the compass on the bottom it was just a slightly bigger compass to have more of an influence when i say compass it's a dial that would sit the golf club more open. Or closed still the weight in the heel still had a weight in the toe still the adjustable sleeve but the head didn't have a loft so the the actual sleeve that you placed in actually determine the loft of the drive which i thought was very interesting at the time very cool. And it's one of the crazy drivers that had this unbelievable graphic on the top and that was helping with alignment. So to say it was bold at the time i'll tell you that. But i'll tell you what it was a super successful driver. So i've now got the aldila rogue shaft in this driver and i will do. For the next.
Uh the next.
Few until i get back round to the r11s there we go struggling to find the fairway a little bit then.
But that last one has made up for it literally on the line okay moving now into the sldr which came out in 2014 super popular driver okay. So the tail made sldr this was the big loft up campaign when this came out this really did cause quite a storm because a lot of tour players won very quickly with this driver as it got into the hands of the average golfer they realized actually can hit it long. But controlling it was slightly harder all about central gravity moving forward with this driver. And kind of really the the pioneers within this category they pushed the weight as far forward as they could made the sliding bar so you could put it in draw and fade but it was ideal. For ultimate distance and low spin let's give this a hit so i put this in a tiny bit more loft than the rest because that's really what it was about all about loft up drivers they were starting to see 13 14 degree drivers with this i can remember it not being as forgiving that was definitely more erratic. But the long one was super long right let's move next.
Into the r15 which was very similar to the our sldr. But it's got two sliding weights at the front instead of the one so r15 this came out in 2015 back end of 2015 as well and this was a modified version of the sldr they brought an extra weight. But still kept the weight forward all the way to the front so it's still a low spin driver just that with the two weights you could separate and give it a little bit more forgiveness i've kept these weights fairly neutral in the middle and the white head returned this did also come out in a 430cc head. And it did come out in a black version as well moving into the m wall now this is the 2016 model. So the first m1 that they brought out again a step up from the sldr and the r15 they continued with the weight at the front but they also introduced the weight at the back to get more forgiveness and more variation between low spin and high spin so again i've gone neutral with both of these lofts both these weight positions one of the other standalone features with the m1 and this was m1 m2. And the new m1 and m2 is it had this multi-material construction on the top it's not only titanium. But it also had this carbon top as well which gave this incredible white and black contrast on the crown of the head and really stood out from the crowd it was such a big talking point when they brought that contrast out. So this is the m1460 they also brought a m1 430 out this year as well i've just got this in in neutral let's give this a hit. So that was m1 2016. i'm now going to move into m2 from 2017. i thought i'd throw the m2 in the mix just to vary up a little bit each year this is the 9.5 degree head as well similar to the rest it's had no adjustability on it apart from the neck that's the only thing you can adjust the weight sits a little bit further back in the head it's got this more of a channel behind the face to help with that low spin that fast ball speed. And it has the same head design as the m1 from 2017 but the difference between the 2016 and 2017 is that whiteboard is just a little bit slimmer. And there's even more of a carbon back which i actually really like the look of the pack [Music] okay. So that is the first round of all the drivers five shots with each we're going to circle back again go back to r11s. And then.
We'll have a finale of all the 10 shots stay tuned i need to hit some fairway second time round there wasn't any fairways being hit as it's on fairway second time round r11s back up first oh 60 shots knackered right in guys so the results are in now as i mentioned at the start of the video what i'm going to do is take five of the best shots. And use the averages from those and that doesn't mean the longest actually means the ones that hit the fairway. So within that kind of 20 yard either side of center line they're the shots that are going to count now all of them managed to hit five fairways the one that was struggling the most was the sldr seemed to only just about find the right amount of fairways. And the rest of them had six driver shots hitting the fairway so out of the six would choose the best five so results are in i'm gonna go through all the club data first just to show you how similar i was hitting every single one of these drivers in the same kind of specs. And shafts so down the left hand side we've got a 2012 r11s all the way down to 2017 m2 the important column first to look at is head speeds that's what that's the average club head speed that i was presenting at contact with every one of the drivers you can see there less than less than a mile per hour on average between any of the drivers i hit from 110 miles per hour 110.5 down to 109.6. So very very similar clubhead speed i was presenting you can also see there the path angles. And the face to path angles and the angle of attack again all very very similar strike location there top right as well you can see the average of the five shots strike location was pretty bob on pretty central. So that's just showing that the shots i hit were pretty similar throughout the test let's have a look at now the ball data how much difference was there between these drivers because if we would led to believe what the marketing guys say these drivers should at least be 10 to 15 yards further than the previous model. So we should be hitting it 40 50 60 yards further right now let's see if that's the case so as we see on screen there i'm going to go straight to the carry number because i think that's obviously the most important. And then.
We'll have a look at the reasons why there is any differences r11s the oldest one of the bunch uh this one which actually felt really good when i was hitting it i like the feel of this one a lot um this was giving me a carry distance of 270. For a total distance of eight nine the average spin rate there was two thousand seven hundred. And eighty three and the ball speed was one five eight that's the oldest driver carrying at 270. the second oldest driver which was the r1 i like the feel of that i just didn't massively like the look of it it kind of it's really dated now with the design on the top. But i did like the feel of it this was giving me an average carry distance of two six nine the shots that hit the fairway. For a 288 very similar numbers than what i was getting with the r11s 2700 spin. And 158 ball speed almost almost identical the two older models the 2012 model and the 2013 model so then.
We move into the next.
Two years we have sldr and r15 this is where we see a bit of a jump certainly between these two. And the previous two models sldr possibly one of the most successful drivers taylormade ever made carrying at two seven eight now that is eight nine yards longer than the r11. And they are one it was the least controllable the misses were big big big. But it seemed to when it was hit straight it was long the reason. For it being so long wasn't any extra ball speed because we can see there it was still 158 it was the backspin the spin rate i was getting off this driver was 500 rpm less which makes a big difference. And this is again the pioneer in this spin low when they moved this track forward they realized the driver was spinning really low. And then.
Out came the big loft up campaign if you remember it from 2014 i'm really even leaking into 2015 that was their big talking point with this. And it was long. And that's why so many tour players did. So good with that driver the r15 similar idea to the sldr which is that we had two tracks. And we went back to the white head this had similar carry distance at 276. uh ball speed was just a tiny bit lower only a mile per hour slowly if that half a mile per hour slower. And the spin rate had just gone up again to two and a half thousand so not quite as low a spin you gotta remember all these models are the 460cc heads there were smaller head options in the 4 30 cc options which actually produced lower spin. But were even more unforgiving. So sldr and r15 we definitely saw a jump up do we see as much of a jump up when we moved from m1 2016 to them to 2017. the answer is no the answer we almost say identical carry distances again in fact these two drivers were very very similar we have 275 carry. For both of the m1 and the new m2 spin rate on the m1 was at two. And a half thousand spin rate on the m2 was 2 300. And both had almost identical ball speeds at 158 miles per hour ball speeds fascinating really interesting more adjustability as you move into the longer set so i could move that centre of gravity forward or back on the m1 where the m2 was a fixed you couldn't really change anything at all it just looked awesome from above these two were the best feeling driver. And for me the best looking driver i've always been a huge fan of the white and black contrast between the m1 and m2 and i love it still after all of the decades or the few drivers that we've tested there and probably all of the drivers for me the m1 m2 definitely looks the best did we see a bigger difference did we see that bigger difference we saw a gradual step. Or a quite a steep step actually from r11s and r1 to then.
Sldr and r15 there was a big step up there distance went up nearly 10 yards which is pretty impressive spin rate dropped distance went up forgiveness seemed to get a little bit more sketchy did the distance improve then.
From m1. And m2 no. But i actually found them a little bit easier to hit straight so as much as they weren't as long they definitely found it a little bit easier to hit straight you've got to remember all of these drivers there is a limit of how fast the ball can come off the face. And that's why we've not seen any big massive leaps of ball speed when i was almost always presenting 110 miles per hour club head speed we weren't seeing huge jumps of ball speed because these driver faces are regulated. For me there's a big thing there's there's a driver that's going to spin low it's going to get you more distance. But it's unforgiving typically certainly if you swing it fast and then.
As drivers are going to give you more help. And there's drivers with less adjustability which are going to be a lot cheaper 20 drivers. And i reckon there'd be no difference almost between any of them we saw a really good slice between the six drivers i tested today.
At taylormade. And we did see a grand a step up at one point. But then.
It kind of plateaued out again and and i almost i can remem i can remember that step up of the sldr it was a big leap forward. But it's kind of plateaued out again thanks to the guys at golfbidder for helping me out this driver also thanks to sam punchard who's a local golf professional because i just needed a couple one more driver as well and he helped me out last minute which was great. So golfbidder and uh sent me all these drivers it's great to test them i'm now going to do the ping video i might not do it today.
I might have a rest. And then.
Let me know in the comments below which brand you want to see next.
I'd love to hear your thoughts down below what do you think of the drivers 20 drivers i don't don't think we see that much of a difference it's a lot of the idea of marketing. But then.
Also on looks feel and then.
The sound as well you got for driver i think that's more of a bigger factor when looking. For a new driver look for one that you like the look of back it up with some gc quad numbers and then.
Look at going playing with the driver. And enjoying it guys thanks for watching hopefully you enjoyed the video if you did hit that thumbs up button is it what you expected. Or did you expect differently thanks. For watching if you're new to my channel hit that subscribe button watch the callaway video in the in the corner if you've not seen that already and stay tuned for the ping video coming soon thanks for watching guys and we'll see see you next.
Time another relax a coffee a red bull at the same time.
