- today
In this video, driver expert Joe Ferguson tests three TaylorMade drivers spanning two decades to see how much performance has moved on in that time but also if there is value to be had by shopping in the second hand market.
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00:00Right, I have got three tailor-made drivers with me with a decade of innovation between each one.
00:05I've got the R7 Quad from 2005, I've got the R15 from 2015, and I've got the QI35 from this year,
00:132025. So there's going to be masses of performance difference, right? Who knows? Stick around to the
00:19end to find out. We are really excited to be working with Golf Clubs for Cash again this year,
00:24one of the leading retailers of pre-loved equipment. We've got some really interesting
00:28stuff planned for this year, so I've popped the link down in the description below. Go and check
00:32out their website and see if you can find some bargains to suit your game. So let's give you some
00:36background of the tech of each of these drivers, starting with the R7 Quad. Now this one was used
00:41by players like Justin Rose, Ernie Els, Resif Goosen. This was the first kind of fully adjustable
00:47weighted driver that was available on the market. We had these split weights, had two heavy weights
00:52of 10 grams and two lighter weights of 2 grams, which you could put in all sorts of different
00:57configurations to provide more draw, more fade, higher spin, or lower spin. It really was
01:02groundbreaking stuff. It was 410cc, so kind of a compact head, which the better players preferred.
01:08You could get it in lofts between 7.5 and 10.5 degrees. So the R15, this was from 2015,
01:15as the name would suggest. Players like Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Jason Day all played this
01:21driver. Now this came in a 460 version and a 430 version, which is the one I've got here.
01:26The 430 was more compact and a lower spinning head, sort of aimed at the better players.
01:32Now there was some interesting tech involved in this drive and I've got the spec sheet up in front
01:36of me here. So this was a new front track system. This followed on from SLDR really. So the front
01:41track was positioned 12 millimeters closer to the face than SLDR and it housed two 12.5 grams sliding
01:48weights that altered the MOI and the shot shape. This track also acted as a speed pocket to help with
01:54that face flexing to assist shots, particularly struck down low on the face. We are well into
01:59the white era here. This is post R1, R11 and the RBZ, but it may actually have been the last of the
02:06true white drivers that TaylorMade make. We got into the M1 and the M2, which kind of had those split
02:11crowns with black and white. I played this drive and I'm really interested to see how this performs
02:16today. And representing 2025 in this race, I've got the TaylorMade QI35 LS. These are both more the
02:23lower spinning models. We've got the TP in the R7 quad and as I said, the 430 in the R15. So this
02:28is probably the fairer representation. At the moment, this is being used on tour by Tommy Fleetwood,
02:33Colin Morikawa. The LS has been quite popular in terms of that tour take up. The story here was more
02:39about CG projection than anything else. Moving that CG into location low and back in the face,
02:45so there's more of an area of opportunity, as TaylorMade are calling it, above the CG projection
02:49on the face to hit those high launch and low spin shots. It's going to be really interesting to see
02:54how that plays out when we test it. On to the looks. And it's really interesting to put these
02:58drivers down in front of me. I'm looking at a bit of history here, 10 years, 10 years, 10 years.
03:03And the contrast in the visual is really quite striking. Starting with the R7 quad, it's a really
03:08clean looking drive. We just had a nice, plain, neat, black gloss crown with just the simple
03:13T-bug logo, as TaylorMade call it, for alignment on the top. It's got a 410cc head, which is quite
03:20small, but it's made to look even smaller to me from a footprint point of view, because it's quite
03:24a deep face. They've invested a lot of their real estate in the height and the depth of the face.
03:29So the actual size of the footprint is really quite squat. From underneath, it's really quite simple
03:35as well. I like it other than the wake ports, which is the first time they delved into this
03:39technology. Just quite a kind of a clean sole with just the R7 quad and TaylorMade written there
03:44and the loft. Nothing too fancy, nothing too flash. Probably a little bit too much color for me, but
03:49I'm being really fussy there. I think it's a really nice, neat looking driver. When we move into 2015,
03:56things have really changed. We've gone into white. This was a big marketing thing from TaylorMade back
04:00in the day. You knew on tour when you were seeing someone with a Rocket Balls and R15 that they were
04:05playing a TaylorMade driver. This was really smart. Now, as I said, I've got the 430 version with me
04:10here, so it's, again, a little bit more compact and neat behind the ball, but I really like it.
04:15There's a couple of things that I do like, and there's one that I don't. So starting with the
04:19positives, from a face to crown point of view, there's a lovely contrast. The face is this nice
04:24deep black color, and the crown is as opposite as it gets. It's a bright white color, so you can
04:29see plenty of loft, and it's really helpful for alignment. I think a lot of people really enjoyed
04:35that look, but down behind the ball, as I said, from the first one, there's a simple TaylorMade
04:39logo. We've still got that in R15, but we've got this sort of weird accent line coming off the back,
04:45which doesn't do anything for me in terms of an aid and where I'm going to take it away
04:49or alignment. I just find it a little bit distracting, and on the bottom, well, it's bonkers.
04:54There's loads going on. There's colors. There's different topography. There's lumps. There's sliding
04:59rails, and there was one big problem, I thought, with this particular model. It's particularly
05:04when you put these weights into draw mode, they'd actually cover the adjustable hosel,
05:09so you couldn't change the loft without undoing these weights, moving them back over to neutral
05:13or fade, and getting access to that loft sleeve. That was an interesting design flaw, but I have
05:18to say, it brings back a lot of memory, so I really like that. Then moving on to 2025, we've
05:24got, I don't think I've said enough good things about this QI35 range as a whole. If you've seen
05:30any of my reviews, if you've seen my best driver's video or even the Tape May Launch video,
05:35I think this is comfortably the best-looking driver of 2025, so maybe it's not a fair fight
05:39here. The main stuff that's changed is more material-based and finished. The premium nature
05:44of this light gray exposed carbon crown just gives it such a futuristic look compared to these others.
05:52In terms of the actual real estate behind the ball, it's not too dissimilar in size. We often talk
05:57about how drivers are massive nowadays. When you look at the footprint down next to one another,
06:01it's not as striking as you think it might be. Just before we do hit some shots, I just wanted
06:05to highlight something I noticed as I was dragging these drivers out, and it's to do with the length.
06:11To the best of my knowledge, these drivers were all at their standard length for their time that
06:16they were produced, but you can see it as almost a graph through time, starting down there with the R7
06:21quad, getting quarter to half an inch longer in the R15, and a further quarter to half an inch longer
06:28in the QI35LS. What drives that tends to be the improvement, as manufacturers say, in forgiveness
06:35and playability and MOI, allowing people to use a longer driver because it's not as important to hit
06:41the middle, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as we hit some balls.
06:44So I wanted to talk to you about the sound and the feel of these three drivers, and those are
06:51very important qualities when determining whether you actually like a driver, and the acoustics
06:56of tailor-made stuff has changed quite a lot over the years, so I'm really interested to see
07:01how this is going to go. So I'm going to hit a couple away and get some initial impressions,
07:05starting with the R7 quad, and I've actually already, before I've even hit this shot, I've been
07:10dinging this a little bit on the face. I don't know if you can pick that up, but it's slightly
07:16tinnier and more high-pitched than things I've become more accustomed to from tailor-made in
07:21the last few years. So let's hit a couple away and see how they sound and feel at impact.
07:30Well, I don't know what I was expecting there. I knew it was going to be a little bit more high-pitched.
07:34It's all titanium construction, but I think from 20 years ago, I was expecting to have my ears
07:39blown off, and it didn't do that. It was, as I said, audibly a little bit more high-pitched,
07:43but it wasn't offensive at all, and I actually loved the feel of it. That was really lively,
07:47and the performance, which I'll get to in a bit, has really surprised me. So it's actually
07:52comparable to some of the models still available today. The Srixon ZX iRange, for example, that's
07:56an all-titanian construction and doesn't sound or feel dissimilar to that. That's really pleasant,
08:02and when you consider that's 20 years old, that's really impressive. Let's try the R15.
08:06It's at R15 now. There's another 10 years of development, and things have changed a little
08:13bit. I remember the SLDR before this being quite thuddy, so it'll be interesting to see,
08:18because it is still an all-titanium construction. So let's see what we get from an audio and a feel
08:23here. It's a little bit out of the toe. It was, which has given me a nice little drawback.
08:31That was notably a little bit more muted. Toe balls tend to be a little bit more, so
08:36I'll hit a couple more and figure out whether that's kind of the norm, but I didn't mind that
08:41at all. That was a nice, well, did a really good job of my performance with the gear effect and the
08:45impact sensation, while toe-y was pretty solid. Let's hit a couple more.
08:49Well, that is interesting.
08:57Some nice ball flights. That was more centered, and that's a really interesting difference. It's
09:02certainly deeper, thuddier, duller than the R7 quad, and like I said, that's sort of a journey
09:09that TaylorMade have been on, heading into what is now going to be the carbon wood era,
09:13which we're going to take a look at here, but that was not unpleasant at all. And again,
09:19some quite good numbers, which we'll delve into in a bit.
09:24Entering the carbon wood era now from TaylorMade in this QI35LS, the previous two drivers were both
09:31full titanium constructions. So we've got carbon running throughout this, including that carbon
09:36face. So I'm expecting to see, well, hear and feel really some very different stuff from this driver.
09:42So let's hit a couple away and see what we get in terms of that audio.
09:51So it was nicely hit, left the face open a little bit on that, but again,
09:55I don't know if you can pick it up that well on the camera here, but the audio is just getting sort of
10:00duller and duller throughout the years. It's getting a little bit quieter, a little bit deeper, and the
10:04ting, if that is a thing, is being reduced on every single shot. Let me just hit a couple more again
10:10to confirm that and to get some data and then we'll discuss those numbers. Sorry to interrupt,
10:15but if you are enjoying this content, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel.
10:20We've got loads more content coming this year, not just from golf clubs to cash, but some really
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10:28Well, that was some really interesting data that I've been seeing from those three drivers there.
10:39And interestingly, there is kind of a linear relationship between the age and a lot of these
10:45parameters. So starting with the R7 quad, which I loved the look and love the lively feel of. I was
10:51getting an average ball speed there of 163.7 miles per hour. We'll stay on ball speed for a minute.
10:57We'll go into the R15, which hopped up around four miles per hour to 167.5. And then the QI35LS on
11:06average was providing with nearly 172 miles per hour. And that was with a fairly severe miss hit in
11:12there, which we'll talk about in just a moment. As we go on to carry again, that relationship between
11:18the age of the product here and the carry distance kind of correlates. Again, my average carry with
11:24that R7 quad, a pretty healthy 276 yards, which I wasn't disappointed with at all. Then I went up
11:30into the R15. I saw my spin drop a couple of a couple of hundred revolutions per minute, and my
11:36carry popped up to an average of 290, which is not far off what I'm used to seeing on the golf course
11:42today. And that's a driver from a decade ago. So that's quite impressive. But then we jump up into
11:46the QI35LS. And truth be told, I absolutely smoked those last two shots. Those were right out the
11:53screws, hit them nicely on the up, some fairly low spinners there, the last two in particular under
11:592000 revs, which is what I've seen quite a lot from this LS, which is a really potent low spin driver.
12:04And my average carry went up to over 300 yards, 309 yards there, including two over 320 yards. So
12:12that is an interesting relationship. I think I was expecting to see a tighter correlation between
12:18the data and sort of a closer fight here, but the QI35LS really does stand out. But if I open my
12:25computer here and I look at the prices of what I'm seeing, the R7 quad comes in at 59.99 from golf
12:31clubs for cash. So less than 60 pounds to produce some really usable quality data is very impressive. And the
12:40R15 doesn't go up too much. We're up at 134.99 for that R15. And again, like I said, spin numbers for
12:47me there around the two and a half thousand revs mark, ball speed approaching 170 and a 290-yard carry.
12:54That's good stuff. It's not a million miles away, like I said, from what I see or what I look for in
13:00my gamers today. So that is a really interesting product to me. The QI35LS, it's expensive. It's
13:08new. It's £529. It's at the top end of today's market. And with the data I've seen there, it's
13:14really justified its place at the top of that tree. So this is a really difficult one to summarize.
13:19I've seen some really interesting data there. And when you factor in some of the prices that
13:24I've discussed, I don't know what to think. My head's a little bit scrambled. I've seen a few
13:29things of late online, some content suggesting that there's no improvement in equipment. New
13:33equipment's a waste of money. And I do not subscribe to that. And my job as a club tester,
13:38I do this full time for a living. I've seen some really tangible improvements in loads of parameters,
13:43be it ball speed, be it forgiveness, be it spin control. I do still see the merits of the engineering
13:49that these big companies are producing on a regular basis. However, what needs to be said here
13:55is if you're looking for value for money and you are price conscious, which we all are nowadays,
13:59let's face it, there is some genuine value to be had from some of the numbers that I've seen from
14:05what I've done there. And I've done a quick calculation in my head, of course, because I'm
14:08that bright. And I've tried to work out the yards per pound. So starting with the QI35 LS,
14:14we saw it was the longest, we saw it performed great, but it had a premium price tag. I was getting
14:19just over half a yard per pound, 0.58 yards per pound. As we go back 10 years to the R15 that jumped
14:29up to a whopping 2.14 yards per pound. But finally, the star of the show here for me in terms of that
14:37value, the R7 Quad offers me 4.6 yards for every pound I spent on that product. I think this experiment
14:45shows that it really is value in the secondhand market. Golf clubs for cash are doing some great
14:49stuff. As I said, head to the description below to go and check out those guys and see you next time.
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