Here's What Happened After Using This Callaway Driver All Year

  • last year
In this video, Martin Hopley reveals the data behind his year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
Transcript
00:00 I'm here to talk you through my year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
00:04 Now on the Golf Monthly website there is a review of this driver already but I'm going to take
00:07 through the process I've been through this year in terms of getting fitted for it and then how it
00:11 helped me and benefit my game. Initially I've had a driver that was maybe a couple of generations
00:16 old it's about three or four year old model and whilst it was performing well I knew potentially
00:21 I could be doing a little bit better with all the advances that are going on in the world of golf
00:25 equipment these days. So I went along to an independent fitter in Scotland called Scott
00:29 Gooley Golf Technology and what they did is they were able to analyze my game and they have a wide
00:34 choice of heads from every single brand so they actually the Callaway driver almost chose me
00:38 rather than the other way around. Now the results of that fitting were that they promised me that I
00:44 could gain another 11 yards carry and also be about 20% more accurate which actually would
00:50 hopefully suit my game. So what I did was I've used this driver in competitions I've used it
00:55 in friendly games as well and I was using the Arcos shot tracking system in order to measure
01:00 the performance of both of these clubs because I was able to compare the two of them together.
01:04 You can actually track this data by creating accounts putting sensors in the end of the
01:09 golf clubs which I'm sure some of you may already be familiar with if you look at our review of the
01:14 Arcos Caddy and then you either record the information by having the phone in your pocket
01:19 using the link device on your belt buckle or as I've been doing using the Apple Watch.
01:24 So when I was fitted into the Callaway Rogue ST Max this was deemed to be the most forgiving head
01:30 for me and initially we started with a 10.5 degree loft driver and what the fitting enables the
01:36 fitter to do is to adjust this to suit your game. So for me they adjusted down the loft to
01:42 9.5 degrees by changing the hosel to -1 and then what that would do is slightly open the face so
01:48 in order to return the face to where it was originally they also used the draw setting as
01:52 well and for me that worked really well. I like seeing the face a little bit straighter and also
01:58 the extra face angle was hopefully going to give me a little bit more ball speed and hopefully a
02:03 bit more distance. Before we take it out on the course let's go into a little bit more detail
02:07 about the driver and what I liked about it. The Rogue range of drivers really is a forgiving model
02:13 there's no adjustability really in this apart from the hosel that I mentioned earlier it's just got
02:17 a quite a low deep center of gravity and this gold speed cartridge as they're calling it weighs about
02:24 26 grams and really what that does is draw the weight low and back you can see here that it's
02:28 kind of off the bottom of the sole and that really creates a deep center of gravity. There are a few
02:32 different heads in this there's an LS as a standard but this is the Max so this is the deepest head and
02:37 normally I probably wouldn't have gone for this but it doesn't feel too pulled back if you know
02:42 what I mean it's still quite a rounded head they've got quite a nice decal around it and I think
02:47 overall Caliwe's done a very good job of creating a driver which looks quite classy it's certainly a
02:52 little bit better than some of the Mavic model which it replaced. Let's give it a go and see how it feels
02:59 I don't know if you can hear that but I think the sound for this is certainly something that
03:08 really appealed to me it's a nice deep sort of solid sound you've got some carbon in the sole
03:12 here which combines with the titanium and the rest of the head and I think that is certainly
03:16 an improvement on the previous models that they've had. I think one of the things that
03:23 came to me with through my fitting was that this should be a lot more accurate driver
03:26 and that's just again not partly because of the shaft but also partly because of the head it was
03:32 going to be a lot more forgiving on off-center hits and certainly I found that to be the case
03:36 in most of the year I had a bit of a problem when I didn't quite connect my previous driver
03:41 when I went right it really went right whereas I've noticed with this when it I've hit it slightly
03:45 right it's probably stayed a little bit more in play. So now that I've talked about having it in
03:56 play let's go back and have a look at the Arccos stats for how this driver performed for me as I
04:01 played right through the year. So how did my new driver compare over the course of a whole season?
04:06 As I mentioned I was going to use Arccos to track not only the distance but also the accuracy
04:11 of the two drivers both my current one and the new Calorie. What I was able to see from this is
04:15 in terms of accuracy the drivers were broadly the same I was hitting about 40 percent of my fairways
04:20 and I was probably missing slightly less fairways to the right than I was missing to the left and
04:26 maybe a few percent more missing to the left which probably accounts for the fact that this driver
04:30 has a slightly draw bias in there they call it a semi-draw bias but that is fine with me I do
04:36 probably hit it straight have a little bit of a fade so it did straighten it up. I think
04:39 anecdotally I did feel that the big right miss was reduced with the new driver just because I think
04:45 it's a little bit more forgiving and again the fact because of that draw bias. However the really big
04:49 gain came for me in terms of distance in my fitting they said I would gain about 11 yards carry.
04:55 In practice the previous model went 256 yards but under with the Callaway it was going up to 269
05:04 yards. Now that is total distance so that's why it's a couple yards more than what the fitting
05:08 said but it's really pleasing to see that what I'd experienced in the fitting bay what I was told
05:12 would happen actually pretty much did happen when I was out on the course so that was great to see.
05:18 But what arkers can really do is really take it stats to the next level and show you how much
05:22 difference that actually means to your scores so they use something called stroke gained and that
05:27 allows you to benchmark your performance against other players of a similar handicap. So I'm a
05:32 three handicap and I was benchmarking myself against others and over the course of the season
05:37 I had over 100 shots with both clubs. Now with the previous model it was costing me
05:44 what minus 0.14 shots per time that I hit the club whereas with the Callaway it was gaining me
05:52 0.07. Now these don't sound like very big numbers however I was also to work out how many times I
05:58 hit the drivers. So the previous model I was hitting about eight times around but with the
06:03 Callaway I was hitting it actually 10 times around and I think that came more because of the confidence
06:08 I had with the club that I could use it more often. So when you put those two numbers together
06:14 if I'm using it 10 times around I'm gaining 0.7 shots around with the Callaway whereas with the
06:21 previous model if I use it eight times I'm losing 1.12 shots so when you take the difference between
06:27 those two you can see that's 1.8 shots per round that I'd be gaining by having been fitted for a
06:33 new driver which hopefully would suit my game a little bit better than it does today. Now that is
06:38 quite a significant amount and I think really the gain you can see there came from probably the
06:43 misses not being quite as big as they were before but also because I was actually that bit further
06:48 down the fairway so I could hit a shorter second shot into the particular green.
06:52 Well that's the end of another enjoyable round at the London Club here.
07:01 Certainly I've enjoyed using the Callaway driver here and actually throughout the whole of the
07:05 season and it's been great to have gone through the whole process where you've gone through a
07:09 fitting, you've actually been promised some results and then been able to track the performance on the
07:15 course throughout the whole year and see those results come to fruition. In terms of the club I
07:19 think the Rogue ST Max has been a very forgiving club it certainly worked for me. It's been able
07:24 to combine forgiveness with performance and probably I can see it suiting quite a lot of players.
07:31 If you feel you can improve your game then I recommend going for a fitting and getting
07:35 at the club that really suits your swing and hopefully it will lower your scores too.