Titanium drivers are dead according to taylormade guys [Music]. So it's been no huge secret that taylormade have a brand new driver out this year with a bright red face we also tiger woods using it at the back end of the year. And there's been loads of leaks on the internet but in this video i'm gonna give you my honest opinion of the brand new taylormade stealth drivers so before i start talking about what's brand new with these tailor-made drivers let's take a walk down memory lane back in the day woods were wood that's how they first started that's where the name really came from one was three woods etc then.
That developed into the steel era the heads got a little bit bigger the distances increased a little bit more following that was the titanium era this is where we saw the 460cc head sizes this is where the sound of golf clubs change enormously. And this is where we're at right now however. taylormade now claim we are moving into the carbon era we've seen carbon feature on clubs before yes on the top on the bottom. But now taylormade are experimenting with carbon on the face now this has been done before. And i'll come on to that in a moment but let's talk about why they reckon it is better. So on this face it's not just red just to be able to stand out more it is 60 layers of carbon fiber all laid on top of each other. And the idea of that it strips weight from the face so they can distribute it around the back of the clubhead. So how i got this explained imagine a car traveling down a road and it hits a wall there's obviously going to be a level of collision there now imagine the same scenario. But this time the boot or the trunk for you guys listen in america is full of bricks when that same car hits the wall the collision is going to be greater. So if i was to translate that into a golf club design effectively we've got more weight in the boot in the trunk. So when this club face the front of the car hits the golf ball we're gonna get more impact more ball speed more distance that's the theory taylormade have also implemented nano texture now effectively the face is a little bit rougher than the normal titanium face. But also it's got this kind of softer material almost like rubber material on the face now taylormade are claiming again that's going to help the performance in dry. And wet conditions because it's going to help manage the spin characteristics of the golf ball not sure how much i believe in that because typically obviously when using driver you've taken the ball out of your pocket you've put it on a tpeg. And it doesn't really get chance to get that wet let's be honest but it's another story that taylor made are obviously implementing this driver. And this carbon face still features twist face a way of taylormade changing the shape of the face slightly to help you hit more fairways off off-center tips this is what taylormade claim i have tested twist face in the past. And it's it works a little bit it's not a game-changer and it's certainly not a magic wand this clubface does not need to be ready either like there's no reason. For it by the fact it's a marketing story when you see all the taylormade players playing it this year you i mean it's. So recognizable i was unsure about it at first. But i must admit when you actually put the club behind the ball you see a slither of red face i suppose if you're using a lot more loft you'd see a bit more but really it's not that noticeable once it's behind the ball and we've not quite finished with the technology story just yet as we've seen on the sim and the sim 2 the stealth also features this asymmetric inertia generator yeah you heard me right this section here at the back of the club which is slightly angled apparently taylor may claim as you start to swing the golf club on the way down it maximizes the club head speed also speed pocket behind the face we've seen taylormade do this in the past apparently again a way of generating more ball speed across the face certainly off of low strikes. And finally there are three head models to the stealth this one in my hand which is just a standard stealth model no adjustable weights this is how it comes then.
You've got the stealth plus which has a sliding bar at the front of the face which you would imagine is going to be slightly lower spin find out in this review if it is it very much reminds me of the sliding bar they had in the sldr one of their longest drivers they've ever made then.
Finally there's a stealth hd hd meaning high draw. For you kind of slices out there you might want a little bit more help now before i dive into how i got on with these clubs out in the golf course and also collecting data i wanted to really talk about the looks because this year this is a a nice looking golf club it is you kind of look past the red face because i think it's not going to be to everybody's taste as such. But as i mentioned you don't really see it from behind the ball i'm actually a big fan of the colorway it's kind of my logo my on my rs logo i like the black crown they are really good you've got carbon on the crown still there's a slight kind of thinner lipstick glossy section around the front again i think that looks really good. And even the colors on the back i like the kind of black stealth look to it and also you've got these little flicks of red i must admit the first time i saw this driver and still even now it kind of has some hints of nike when nike were making kind of the covert drivers it looks a little bit like that. So for all of that technology what taylormade going to be charging you well each driver is going to be 499 pounds. So they are pretty expensive what's really interesting taylormade have really made this kind of line in the sand to say from this point forward carbon is the way. And they reckon it's taken 20 years to get to this point with the club face this isn't the first carbon face driver we've ever seen back in 2001 some of you might remember this driver the callaway c4 driver which had a carbon crown a carbon face with a kind of steel bottom this coincidentally was brought out 20 years ago i wonder if this driver sparked the thinking behind 20 years ago taylormade starting to think about carbon now let's be honest though in that time frame we've not seen carbon on the face before is that a good thing. Or a bad thing well let's find out we took out on the golf course and i wanted to smash both drivers so i found over the last few years there's not a great deal of difference between the two models taylormade normally have out i.e sim2 and sim2 max so i wanted to hit stealth and stealth plus to find out what i saw so on the golf course i was impressed i really liked the flight of the golf shots i couldn't say i was preferring one. Or the other both of them felt very similar the only difference i could see is the stealth gave me a little bit more forgiveness on those off-centered hits however. the stealth plus definitely gave me a little bit more distance. But it's not as forgiving sound wise this is really interesting to share they actually do sound quite different. For me the stealth had that slightly more dead that satisfying noise where the stealth plus just didn't sound as good it was hard. For me to put my finger on exactly why there was a few times where i've absolutely crushed it. And i'm looking at the flight and i'm thinking that's an amazing shot but i wasn't getting that positive feedback on the strike the feel off the face or the sound and those two are very much closely linked overall wasn't disappointed. And honestly behind the golf ball i think these two drivers are some of the best drivers i have seen. So then.
The time was to get it in some testing gc quad pro v1 torx. And i also threw in the sim 2 as well from last year to see if there's much difference between the titanium face and a carbon face so the numbers from the stealth and the stealth plus were interesting i was finding stealth the one that i was probably enjoying hitting the most just because of that a little bit more forgiveness i was carrying that driver. And i normally carry drivers around 280 i was carrying that stealth driver exactly 280 on average i found that my long ones weren't ridiculously long that's okay because i found my short ones weren't also that bad either spin numbers from that i was getting just over 2 000. And around 156 miles per hour ball speed not my fastest ball speed ever but i found the relationship between launch and spin to be good therefore. is getting some decent distance then.
Stealth plus i found this driver to be a fraction longer on the good hits. And i can only put that down to the lower spin because that weight tracks a little bit further forward i would find on average i was carrying that 284 yards i hit some comfortably into the mid 290s which is pretty good. For me but the downside i found that when i didn't strike it as good i found the drop off to be much lower into kind of low 270s even into the high 260s spin rate with the stealth plus was 1800. And again similar ball speed 156 miles per hour and you know what just a quick one in case any of you got any concerns after all the testing i'd done i didn't see any noticeable damage to the carbon face and i fully believe that taylormade have done some extensive testing to make sure this face can withstand ridiculous amounts of golf shots. So from those findings could i categorically say that carbon faces were faster not really. Yet so i decided to pull out the old taylormade sim 2 driver from last year put the same shaft in the head had it almost exactly the same spec in the sim 2 i was finding that i was carrying the golf ball 280 yards exactly i find that the spin rate was a little bit higher at 2. And the ball speed to be about the same if not a tiny tiny bit faster so even though these two drivers and stealth drivers were very good performance no question i can't categorically say they were better than last year's on the titanium face almost exactly the same performance across the board. But you could see that the stealth plus did go four yards further. But four yards is a really interesting one because obviously i'm human a lot of that is going to be down to me how i strike it where i've hit it on the face etc. So could i sit here and categorically say that the stealth driver is longer. And faster than last year's model no i couldn't say it is that's going to be down to you guys trying it you guys getting fitting. And finding out for yourself but there's one thing i definitely could say that these cabin faces are no worse than the titanium drivers at all i found that the performance was still very very good now with all that being said if you want to go out this year. And buy a brand new driver because hey you're a massive tiger woods fan and be your big tailgate fan well you wouldn't go far wrong with these drivers they look fantastic they seem to perform brilliantly they are however. super expensive don't expect to be seeing 20 30 yards of distance gains. But i don't think you'll be disappointed if you were to put one of these in the back guys thanks. For watching stay tuned lots more to come we'll see you next.
Time.
