[PHOTO: David Cannon]

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes and that the Pinehurst No.2 greens are going to ruin your weekend,” Benjamin Franklin probably once said. Now, Franklin died about 100 or so years before the revered course was established, but the man was a genius for a reason. He also wasn’t wrong.

It looks like we’re in for a good deal of drama this week, especially with the chaotic Pinehurst greens built for maximum disarray. At this point, you might be better off putting with a blindfold on and just praying that things work out. This video from TaylorMade Golf exemplifies how tough putting might get at the US Open.

https://twitter.com/TaylorMadeGolf/status/1800526138571423816

That ball’s still rolling as you read this, right past Pinehurst No.4 and No.9.

The pros agree that the upcoming US Open greens are out to get the golfers this go-around. “I mean, they are extremely fast, Clark admitted. “If they get any firmer and faster, the greens, I mean, they’d be borderline. They already are borderline.”

Golf Digest architecture editor Derek Duncan went into detail about what the best golfers in the world can expect from the fifth green’s dastardly setup. Spoiler alert: it’s bad.

“What makes the fifth hole so lethal is the green and its pernicious slope,” Duncan says. “The perimeter of the putting surface dips into shallow gutters of shortgrass behind and to the right, but the first third of the green is a false front. The left edge curls away down an incline.

“Shots that don’t make it all the way to the middle section of the green… will either roll back off the front or to the left.”

So, this all seems pretty bad for the players but pretty compelling for us viewers at home. Pros furious over greens and botched shots is exactly what the US Open is all about. Sorry to all golfers out there trying to make a living this weekend, but it looks like we’re in for some tremendous content.

MORE GOLF DIGEST US OPEN COVERAGE

The post US Open 2024: Judging by this video, Pinehurst No.2’s fifth green is going to be absolutely brutal this week appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Kith for TaylorMade]

You’re late. As always. Gotta run out the door and make your tee-time. Keys, tick. Clubs, tick. Glove, tick. Door locked, tick. Customised golf cart that makes your friends blush? Tick.

This could be you with one little $US1,500 purchase – well, there’s a $US35,000 ($A52,333) final payment, but who’s counting? – if you want to embarrass everyone else at whatever course you’re playing this weekend. The following is a must-have at this point and already a hit online.

#NEW: KITH & TaylorMade for Garia Via 2+2 golf cart has launched. Deposits being taken at $1500 USD for the $35000 USD made to order product. pic.twitter.com/KmSuQUGLuw

— NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) June 3, 2024

Kith x TaylorMade 2024

This year's collection kicks off with a luxury golf car collab, a custom version of the Garia Via 2+2

Dropping Monday, 6/3 pic.twitter.com/YZqz64EltT

— Modern Notoriety (@ModernNotoriety) June 2, 2024

Who is getting a new $35,000 golf cart tomorrow!? @KITH @TaylorMadeGolf pic.twitter.com/l9kMc6XyFR

— GFNF (@GFNF__) June 2, 2024

Kith, TaylorMade, Garia and Jimmy Fallon are working together on this sleek and beautiful golf cart for the ages that can come with… ahem: a bluetooth stereo system with Subwoofer, an automatically engaged electromagnetic parking brake, custom Kith branding on the seats and dashboard, a refrigerator integrated into dashboard, a golf ball and tee holder mounted on the dashboard, eco and sport drive modes, artificial leather seats, LED head and tail lights, a maximum speed of 40kph, a USB charge point in the dashboard and (of course) four wheels.

That’s a hell of a lot of options and pluses, and we didn’t even say in all caps that YOU CAN HAVE YOUR OWN GOLF CART. It’s all built-to-order with a 16-week lead time. You could be driving around in your own cart this spring!

You might not own the most beautiful swing, but you’ll own the most beautiful ride. That’s better than any handicap or score. Once your foursome leaves the course, they’ll only have their memories. You’ll have state-of-the-art cup holders with rubber-grip inserts.

The post Get this tricked-out, made-to-order $52k TaylorMade golf cart appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Andrew Redington]

The idea behind the PGA Tour’s signature events was to have the best players on the circuit play against each other more often. At the Wells Fargo Championship, the script set up nicely as Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele were poised for a final-day showdown. McIlroy, however, showed that “extra gear” people talk about and he cruised past Schauffele to win the tournament for the fourth time.

After three-putting the par-5 seventh then watching Schauffele roll in an eagle putt to take a two-shot lead, McIlroy responded with a birdie-birdie-eagle burst on holes eight, nine and 10 to take the lead. Two more birdies on 13 and 14 stretched the lead to five as Schauffele bogeyed the 12th and 13th. A hole-out from the bunker at the par-5 15th gave McIlroy another eagle for good measure and an eight-hole stretch where he went eight-under-par.

Rory McIlroy demolishes Xander Schauffele, and everyone else, to head to Valhalla on fire

As always, the driver was a weapon for the four-time major champion. McIlroy ranked first in strokes gained/off the tee, picking up more than six shots on the field with his TaylorMade Qi10 driver. McIlroy’s driver has 9 degrees of loft and a Fujikura Ventus Black 6x shaft. He was first in driving distance, averaging 337 yards (308 metres).

“The driving is more just me committing to most of the time hitting that little cut that I’ve been hitting off the tee, and then having the freedom to just, every time I hit a good tee shot, the more confidence I get and then the more I want to just keep hitting it,” McIlroy said.

McIlroy’s putter also was working and when that’s the case, few can match him (non-Scottie Scheffler division). McIlroy ranked eighth in strokes gained/putting for the week with his TaylorMade Spider X X3 mallet putter. That included an absolute show on the final day when he rolled in 133 feet of putts in the first 14 holes.

Interestingly, this was the first week McIlroy used a TaylorMade TP5x ball with no number on it. Previously he used golf balls with the number 22, a nod to his marriage to Erica Stoll on April 22, 2017, but also because the number 22 meant “powerful” and “high risk, high reward”.

Instead, the ball simply has RORS on it instead. And as McIlroy showed at Quail Hollow, he’s plenty “powerful” without the number 22.

What Rory McIlroy had in the bag at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship:

Ball: TaylorMade TP5x

Driver: TaylorMade Qi10 (Fujikura Ventus Black 6x), 9 degrees

3-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 15 degrees

5-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 18 degrees

Irons (4): TaylorMade prototype; (5-9): TaylorMade Rors prototype; (PW): TaylorMade MG4

Wedges: TaylorMade MG3 (50, 54 degrees); Titleist Vokey Wedgeworks (59 degrees)

Putter: TaylorMade Spider X X3

The post The clubs Rory McIlroy used to win the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: TaylorMade’s new BRNR Mini Driver Copper, the latest driver that isn’t a driver (and fairway wood that isn’t a fairway wood), debuts with looks, logos and colours that evoke the company’s 1990s aesthetics (Burner Bubble, anyone?). But it also adds the company’s most current tech upgrades, including a special titanium alloy face, a lightweight, centre-of-gravity-lowering carbon composite crown, a wider sole slot for better face deflection at impact and a re-imagined, K-shaped sole design to make this low-lofted head easier to play off the turf.

LOFT OPTIONS & PRICE: 11.5 and 13.5 degrees with a four-degree, +/- 2 degrees, adjustable hosel. Australian pricing is TBC.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Smarter driver. While the head evokes images of the company’s distinctive copper-coloured Burner drivers of the 1990s, this current BRNR Mini Driver Copper at 304 cubic centimetres is bigger than most of the clubs of that generation. The TiBubble 2 was the largest copper-coloured head at 278cc in the company’s line back in 1997. The latest model, the sixth in the company’s history of these downsized driver heads that began with the SLDR Mini a decade ago, can be a smarter driver for some players because of its more manageable head size compared to modern 460cc heads along with a 43 ¾-inch shaft, or almost two inches shorter than current drivers. While the BRNR Mini Driver Copper is less stable than current TaylorMade drivers like the Qi10 Max and its 10,000 overall MOI (BRNR Mini might be barely more than half that number), it features a carbon composite crown that helps lower the centre of gravity. That helps shots launch higher with less spin, two keys to distance. The slot in the sole creates more face flexing, as well.

2. Hotter fairway wood. The “mini-driver” head has gathered a bit of a cult following among better players in the past decade, including the bags of several top tour players like Tommy Fleetwood in recent years, as the oversized, strong-lofted 3-wood that can function both off the tee and from the fairway. What makes this model work off the turf is a K-shaped sole that is distinctly reminiscent of the multi-level sole that was part of TaylorMade metal woods in the 1990s. That design combined to lower the centre of gravity as well as provide smoother turf interaction, keys when hitting this club off the ground given its about 50 percent bigger than the largest fairway woods and more than 60 percent larger than TaylorMade’s current Qi10 fairway woods.

Another advantage of the design is a special fast-flexing ZATEC titanium alloy face to improve ball speed. That same face has been used on the past few classes of TaylorMade titanium fairway woods, including Qi10 Tour. It also employs the asymmetrical bulge and roll known as TwistFace to keep off-centre hits closer to the target line in their finishing trajectories.

Two changeable weights in the front and rear portion of the sole allow a player to tune trajectory and spin. For example, positioning the heavier weight (13 grams) forward will lower flight and spin.

3. Flashback shaft. While the heads won’t feature the iconic Bubble shaft of 1990s-era TaylorMade drivers, the shaft features a throwback aesthetic of its own. The iconic ProForce 65 from UST Mamiya, a favourite at all levels of the game in that era, is part of the stock package on the BRNR Mini Copper. It’s designed to encourage that low to mid-flight trajectory that better players prefer on this auxiliary driver. It’s offered in X, S, and R flexes.

The post TaylorMade BRNR Mini-Driver Copper: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Orlando Ramirez]

Three wins in a row has made Nelly Korda the hottest player in golf, but there remains a glaring question about her game: with one of the sweetest swings in the sport, the kind that leave her male counterparts on the PGA Tour awestruck, why is Korda using a driver that seems to be made for choppers?

Simple: because it’s the right driver for her game. And, secondarily, why wouldn’t every player want to play a more forgiving driver?

Korda, who already has three wins this year including the last two LPGA events, has used TaylorMade’s new Qi10 Max driver from the start of the season when she won the LPGA Drive On Championship in January. With its extremely deep front-to-back length and weighting and heel-biased shaping, the Qi10 Max is TaylorMade’s first driver to break the barrier of 10,000 total MOI and one of only two major company drivers known on the market to do so (Ping G430 Max 10K is the other). The total MOI is a number that combines the traditional heel-toe resistance to twisting measurement with the less known crown-sole resistance to twisting measurement. For perspective, according to TaylorMade a 10,000 total MOI is about 40 percent higher than TaylorMade drivers were a decade ago.

TaylorMade Qi10 drivers: What you need to know

While ultra-high stability on mishits, or forgiveness (which is what MOI really means), seems like something a never-miss tour player would need the least of, that’s probably an over-simplification. Korda’s reasons – “I look down and know I can hit any shot I want with it,” she says – may have little to do with how forgiving it is on mis-hits. For much of her career, though, she’s played drivers with a little bit of a draw bias like TaylorMade’s Stealth 2 HD recently or Titleist’s TSR1 in the past. It’s all about matching her up with her desired shape (more clubhead volume towards the heel side) and her desired right-to-left ball flight, said Ryan Ressa, TaylorMade’s senior tour manager.

“People perceive that it’s kind of an anti-slice club, but it’s, really not,” he said. “It’s really been the case that a club with a rear, heel CG (centre of gravity) club, it’s just always squared up a lot easier for her.

“It’s how she sees the footprint of the head and how it suits her eye and her delivery through the ball.”

TaylorMade Qi10 Max driver. Nelly Korda uses the 10.5-degree model, adjusted down to 10 degrees.

Ressa noted that Korda wants to see the ball on a tee shot fall from right to left, maybe a five-yard draw.

“That’s just the shot she sees, so it’s hard, even if you find something that goes dead straight, it just doesn’t fit her eye,” he said. “She’s made that comment that this is the easiest one for me to square up.”

Aside from her custom shaft (Mitsubishi Diamana GT 60) and custom length (45-and-3/16 inches), Korda’s Qi10 Max is only slightly tweaked from the stock version. The rear perimeter weight is about six grams lighter than standard, which technically makes the driver’s overall MOI slightly less than 10,000, and the TPS sole weight is a little heavier to get the total weight of the head back to standard and give Korda a little more draw.

“It just produced that natural draw she’s looking for, on command,” Ressa said. “So it matched up with the rest of the clubs in her bag really well, so she could make the same swing with every club, and that’s something she’s always wanted to do.”

Of course, the idea of a more forgiving driver can’t be overlooked, even though Ressa estimates that Korda’s typical miss area is about five millimetres off-centre. Ressa senses Korda has been ahead of the curve on better players going with a more forgiving head. He noted a number of players, including Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, are playing the standard Qi10 instead of the traditional low-spin “tour” style driver like the Qi10 LS. The reason better players have drifted away from more forgiving drivers in the past is that they tended to be stuck with slightly higher CGs. Those would spin and add too much dynamic loft at impact, leading to less than maximum distance. But now the new forgiving drivers, because of more widespread use of lightweight carbon composite in the body (and in the case of TaylorMade in the face itself) come without those compromises.

“Everybody’s been chasing distance for so long, but I think you get to a point where your distance is in a great spot and then you can start, you know, looking at some of these other areas,” Ressa said. “We’ve added the most MOI we’ve ever had in our drivers while not losing any speed or distance. They’re still able to hit all their launch conditions while adding a little bit more forgiveness on a mis-hit.”

There’s a lesson in there for average golfers. A driver fitting can produce a lot of numbers on your screen, but one worth paying special attention to is how often you’re consistently delivering the clubhead square at impact. Obviously, that will show up in longer distance and tighter dispersion, but it should also speak to how easy it is for you to make the same swing, the way Korda’s been doing since the start of the year.

The post Why the best player in the world is using one of the most forgiving drivers ever made appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Anadulo]

It’s the time of year when some players make tweaks to their bag with Augusta National and the Masters on their mind. At the Valero Texas Open, Rory McIlroy didn’t say if the equipment tweak he made was specifically for that reason, but it’s not a stretch to think that if it’s in the bag this week, it’ll be in play next week in Georgia.

McIlroy swapped his 4-iron, going from TaylorMade’s P760 model to a prototype with a muscle cavity after a visit to TaylorMade’s test centre in Carlsbad, California.

“After I went to Vegas I went out to the Kingdom [TaylorMade’s test centre] for two days,” McIlroy said. “I needed to get into a fresh set of irons. My irons were, like, two years old maybe, so they were getting a little worn. I went out, spent a couple of days with the TaylorMade guys [and] they just produced these couple of proto [irons]. They performed really well. It’s just as fast as the 760 I was using. Launch is a little higher, actually, which was surprising, and it’s just sometimes I felt like when I hit my 5-iron in the blade and then the 4-iron in the 760 it was such a different feel. To go from a 5-iron now to that 4-iron, it feels a little closer to what I feel in the 5-iron. So just a little bit more responsive, but didn’t lose any performance from it, which is great. It will be in the bag this week.”

It would not be the first time McIlroy made a change to his 4-iron with the Masters coming up. During practice rounds a few weeks before the 2011 Masters, McIlroy noted he was struggling to clear the front-right bunker on the par-3 fourth hole from the back tee with his 4-iron. McIlroy didn’t carry a 3-iron at the time, opting for a four-wedge setup that he wanted to continue to use during the Masters. So, what to do? McIlroy had the loft of his 4-iron strengthened a mere 1 degree to produce the extra distance needed.

So, is this club swap with that shot in mind? It’s unclear, but odds are it will be in the bag for the Masters.

The post Masters 2024: What a subtle iron switch might say about Rory McIlroy’s mindset appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Mike Ehrmann]

Scottie Scheffler is a lot of things. World No.1, fantastic striker of the ball and all-around good guy. He’s also a realist. When asked after the third round what he needed to do to defend his title at the Players, he had a succinct answer: “Shoot very low.”

Much like he did last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational when he made six birdies in the final round, Scheffler delivered six more plus a hole-out eagle on the par-4 fourth hole to blitz TPC Sawgrass’ Players Stadium course in 64. That allowed him to pass Xander Schauffele, who was five shots in front of Scheffler when the day began, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman, who made a nice final-day charge of his own.

Although Scheffler putted well enough to post positive strokes gained/putting numbers, the entire body of work was more quintessential Scheffler as he ranked first in strokes gained/off the tee, picking up more than six shots on the field. He also was seventh in strokes gained/approach the green. Such impressive work allowed Scheffler to play the final 31 holes without a bogey.

Scheffler’s driver is an 8-degree TaylorMade Qi10 with a Fujikua Ventus Black 7X. Scheffler not only used the club to pick up a bunch of strokes on the field, but hit a ton of fairways, too. On a course that rewards precision, Scheffler hit 45 of 56 fairways (80.36 percent) to tie the best for the week.

When you make 22 birdies, however, you must discuss the putter. Scheffler changed to a TaylorMade Spider Tour putter at Bay Hill after doing extensive testing at home, The putter is half an inch longer than his previous one and has an L-Neck hosel and TaylorMade’s True Path alignment aid on top with a full line sightline on top. The putter has 3 degrees of loft with a lie angle of 72 degrees. The insert is an 80/20 TaylorMade Pure Roll insert and the grip is a Golf Pride pistol.

Which was just one of his clubs that allowed Scheffler to shoot very low.

What Scottie Scheffler had in the bag at the 2024 Players Championship:

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

Driver: TaylorMade Qi10 (Fujikua Ventus Black 7X), 8 degrees

3-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 15 degrees

Irons (3-4): Srixon ZU85; (5-PW): TaylorMade P7TW

Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM8 (50, 56 degrees); Titleist Vokey WedgeWorks prototype (60 degrees

Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour X

The post Players 2024: The clubs Scottie Scheffler used to win at TPC Sawgrass appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

[PHOTO: Brennan Asplen]

It is well known that Scottie Scheffler’s tee-to-green game is so good that in weeks when the putter is working, he is nearly unbeatable. This year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational was one of those weeks, with Scheffler winning by five strokes over Wyndham Clark.

Scheffler blitzed Bay Hill on the final day with six birdies, ranking first in strokes gained/putting for the day, beating the field average by more than four strokes. That also allowed him to finish fifth in that stat for the week.

Scheffler’s change to a TaylorMade Spider Tour putter at the start of the week was the topic of much discussion. After doing extensive testing at home, Scheffler put the mallet putter in play. It is half an inch longer than his previous putter and has an L-neck hosel and TaylorMade’s True Path alignment aid on top with a full line sightline on top. The putter has 3 degrees of loft with a lie angle of 72 degrees. The insert is an 80/20 TaylorMade Pure Roll insert and the grip is a Golf Pride pistol.

Scheffler’s putter wasn’t the only thing working, however. He ranked first in strokes gained/off the tee for the week, second in greens in regulation and third in strokes gained/around the green.

Scheffler’s driver is TaylorMade’s new Qi10 model, a club with a combined moment of inertia of more than 10,000 which provides plenty of stability on off-centre strikes while a channel in the sole provides plenty of pop.

As for his irons, Scheffler uses TaylorMade P7TW irons, a muscleback blade model based off Tiger Woods’ irons. “I grew up playing Nike clubs like Tiger, so these had a special appeal to me,” Scheffler told Golf Digest in 2022. “I figured if he was using the irons they had to be pretty good.”

If Scheffler keeps this up, he might just start chasing Woods’ imposing record at Bay Hill, too.

What Scottie Scheffler had in the bag at the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational:

Ball: Titleist Pro V1

Driver: TaylorMade Qi10 (Fujikua Ventus Black 7X), 8 degrees

3-wood: TaylorMade Qi10, 15 degrees

Irons (3-4): Srixon ZU85; (5-PW): TaylorMade P7TW

Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM8 (50, 56 degrees); Titleist Vokey WedgeWorks prototype (60 degrees)

Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour X

The post The clubs Scottie Scheffler used to win the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: TaylorMade rolls out the new SpeedSoft golf ball, a two-piece design that features the company’s first foray into sub-50, low-compression technology. Almost as intriguing as its soft inside is its aggressive outside. While available in both white and yellow options, the company’s proven commitment to visual and aesthetic enhancements to golf ball looks will now add SpeedSoft Ink to the lineup. It features an array of splash pattern colour options on top of the two-piece, low-compression SpeedSoft technology.

PRICE & AVAILABILITY: SpeedSoft and SpeedSoft Yellow golf balls are available at retail across Australia from today for $34.99 per dozen. SpeedSoft Ink is also available from today, for $39.99 per dozen.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Soft touch. The data on lower compression golf balls and average golfer preferences is clear: softer wins. A recent survey of avid golfers by Golf Datatech showed that two-thirds were interested in playing a low-compression or soft-compression golf ball, and the player group most likely to benefit from more from value-priced, low-compression golf balls is also the most interested in playing them. The Golf Datatech surveys shows about 80 percent of those with handicaps of 15 or higher expressed interest in playing softer compression golf balls. Enter SpeedSoft, the first TaylorMade ball with a compression under 50. For perspective, while there are other balls on the market with compressions lower than 50, SpeedSoft’s compression rating is about 25 percent lower than TaylorMade’s softer tour-level urethane ball, the TP5, and also would be lower than the company’s most recent ionomer entry, the three-piece Soft Response.

2. Power play. Making a golf ball with a lower compression seems no more complicated than deciding to manufacture a softer mattress over a firmer mattress. For certain players, most golfers in fact, prefer a softer feeling golf ball. But the hazard of reducing compression is losing the resiliency in the core. A Nerf ball is soft but you’re not going to hit it very far. The challenge in a golf ball is to take the softer compression, which satisfies the feel preference of most average golfers, and engineer it to rebound like a firmer core. SpeedSoft uses what the company is calling “PWRCORE” to make that happen.

“PWRCORE is an extra-large, super-low compression core that allows us to create incredible feel and also maximise the velocity,” said Mike Fox, TaylorMade’s senior global category director for golf balls.

3. Inked up. TaylorMade has been pushing the boundaries of visual technology and aesthetic customisation in its golf balls since the introduction of the Pix alignment feature in its TP5 balls five years ago. There have been a steady stream of new Pix versions and next-level novel customisation programs like MySymbol ever since, and while TaylorMade also has produced yellow versions of its popular models in the past, SpeedSoft will offer a dramatic departure. The SpeedSoft Ink uses a modern-art style splatter of colour (red, blue, green, pink) to jump off the white base. Fox believes in the mission of non-traditional looks, particularly to appeal to the growing number of newer and younger golfers.

“We’re spending millions of dollars because we feel that it’s worth it as a way to allow golfers to do something they haven’t had abilities to do before,” Fox said, noting the extreme investment TaylorMade has made in the colour, optics and customisation manufacturing technologies. “We like that it’s a difficult challenge. But this is finding new ways to change the marketplace, and it’s not always going to be the easiest path because if it was the easiest path, the leader probably already would have done it. You have to kind of find something that has some market interest, be able to find that space and then grow that space. And that’s really what what this is.”

The post TaylorMade SpeedSoft, SpeedSoft Ink golf balls: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The new TaylorMade TP Black line of putters is the latest instalment of traditional blade and mallet shapes all featuring the company’s roll-enhancing grooved face insert, along with seven distinct hosel/shaft bend orientations and all at a relatively affordable price.

PRICE: $359. Blades (Juno 1, Juno 2, Soto 1, Del Monte 7, Balboa 8); Mallets (Ardmore 7, Palisades 3). Available in 34 and 35 inches.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Face down. The lineage of TaylorMade’s TP putters has been rooted in two branches that move in different yet complimentary directions: shapes that adhere to the modern classics mix with a techy grooved face insert designed to enhance initial roll. The face insert on the TP Black putters is the same seen on the company’s popular Spider X mallets, a Surlyn polymer insert known as “True Roll” where 11 grooves are angled downward at 45 degrees to help putts start with less backspin and skidding and more quickly get into a forward roll. Designed with tour player input, the goal with the insert is softer feel married with that consistently resilient ball speed.

2. Finishing touches. The heads are all made from 303 stainless steel with custom milling to ensure all angles, cavities and curves are precise from model to model. The black anodised finish, matched with the black insert, enhances durability and creates high contrast to assist with aim and alignment.

3. Different looks for different strokes. The seven models may present a unified front, but each is designed to fit different types of putting strokes. Each has a different degree of toe hang, saving the one mallet that is face-balanced.

Those models targeting players with more arc and face rotation in their strokes include the heel-toe weighted cavity blades, yet each incorporates a distinct hosel connection. Most similar are the Juno 1 and Soto 1, which both feature a plumber’s neck hosel with 38 and 39 degrees of toe hang respectively. The Juno 1 features a full-shaft offset, while the Soto 1 sets up with a three-quarter shaft offset.

Also featuring a plumber’s neck hosel is the Juno 2, which incorporates a longer neck to reduce the toe hang (27 degrees) for strokes with slightly less natural face rotation.

There’s also the Del Monte 7, a wider blade featuring a single bend shaft connection for a near face-balanced feel with only eight degrees of toe hang.

Conversely, the model designed for strokes that have the heaviest face rotation is the heel-shafted, wider flanged Balboa 8. It is built with 65 degrees of toe hang.

On the mallet side, there’s the familiar Ardmore 7, a curved winged shape where the back cavity is framed by a circular cut. Like the Del Monte 7, it uses a single-bend shaft orientation for a fully face-balanced presentation, ideal for strokes designed to limit face rotation.

There’s also the parallel-pronged Palisades 3 mallet. Its short slant neck provides the kind of toe hang (25 degrees) that allows this popular mallet shape to work well with strokes transitioning from the typical arc of a blade putter to the mallet category.

The post TaylorMade TP Black putters: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.