00:00I'm here to talk you through my year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
00:04Now on the Golf Monthly website there is a review of this driver already,
00:07but I'm going to take you through the process I've been through this year
00:09in terms of getting fitted for it and then how it helped me benefit my game.
00:13Initially I've had a driver that was maybe a couple of generations old,
00:17it's about three or four year old model, and whilst it was performing well I knew
00:20potentially I could be doing a little bit better with all the advances that are going on in the
00:24world of golf equipment these days. So I went along to an independent fitter in Scotland called
00:29Scott Gourley Golf Technology and what they did is they were able to analyze my game and they have
00:34a wide choice of heads from every single brand so they actually the Callaway driver almost chose me
00:39rather than the other way around. Now the results of that fitting were that they promised me that I
00:44could gain another 11 yards carry and also be about 20% more accurate which actually would hopefully
00:50suit my game. So what I did was I've used this driver in competitions, I've used it in friendly
00:56games as well and I was using the Arcos shot tracking system in order to measure the performance
01:01of both of these clubs because we're able to compare the two of them together. You can actually
01:06track this data by creating their accounts, putting sensors in the end of the golf clubs which I'm sure
01:11some of you may already be familiar with if you look at our review of the Arcos Caddy and then
01:16you
01:16either record the information by having the phone in your pocket using the link device on your belt buckle or
01:21as I've been doing using the Apple Watch. So when I was fitted into the Callaway Rogue ST Max this
01:28was
01:29deemed to be the most forgiving head for me and initially we started with a 10.5 degree loft driver
01:34and what the fitting enables the fitter to do is to adjust this to suit your game. So for me
01:41they
01:41adjusted down the loft to 9.5 degrees by changing the hosel to minus one and then what that would
01:47do is
01:48slightly open the face so in order to return the face to where it was originally they also
01:52used the draw setting as well and for me that worked really well. I liked seeing the face a
01:56little bit straighter and also the extra face angle was hopefully going to give me a little bit more
02:02ball speed and hopefully a bit more distance. Before we take it out on the course let's go into a
02:07little
02:07bit more detail about the driver and what I liked about it. The Rogue range of drivers really is a
02:11forgiving model there's no adjustability really in this apart from the hosel that I mentioned earlier
02:16it's just got a quite a low deep center of gravity and this gold speed cartridge as they're calling
02:23it weighs about 26 grams and really what that does is draw the weight low and back you can see
02:27here
02:27that it's kind of off the bottom of the sole and that really creates a deep center of gravity.
02:32There are a few different heads in this there's an LS as a standard but this is the max so
02:36this is
02:36the deepest head and normally I probably wouldn't have gone for this but it doesn't feel too pulled
02:42back if you know what I mean it's still quite a rounded head they've got quite a nice decal around
02:46it
02:46and I think overall Callaway done a very good job of creating a driver which looks quite classy
02:52certainly a little bit better than some of the Mavic model which it replaced.
02:57Let's give it a go and see how it feels.
03:05I don't know if you can hear that but I think the sound for this is certainly something that really
03:08appealed to me it's a nice deep sort of solid sound you've got some carbon in the sole here
03:13which combines with the titanium and the rest of the head and I think that is certainly an improvement
03:17on the previous models that they've had. I think one of the things that came to me through my fitting
03:25was that this should be a lot more accurate driver and that's just again not partly because of the
03:31shaft but also partly because of the head it was going to be a lot more forgiving on off center
03:34hits
03:34and certainly I found that to be the case in most of the year I had a bit of a
03:38problem when I didn't
03:39quite connect my previous driver when it went right it really went right whereas I've noticed with this when
03:44it I've hit it slightly right it's probably stayed a little bit more in play.
03:55So now that I've talked about having it in play let's go back and have a look at the Arcos
03:59stats
03:59for how this driver performed for me as I played right through the year.
04:03How did my new driver compare over the course of a whole season? As I mentioned I was going to
04:08use
04:08Arcos to track normally the distance but also the accuracy of the two drivers both my current one
04:13and the new Callaway. What I was able to see from this is in terms of accuracy the drivers were
04:17broadly the same I was hitting about 40% of my fairways and I was probably missing slightly less
04:24fairways to the right than I was missing to the left and maybe a few percent more missing to the
04:28left
04:29which probably accounts for the fact that this driver has a slightly draw bias in there they call
04:33it a semi draw bias but that is fine with me I do probably sort of hit it straight have
04:37a little bit of
04:37fade so it did straighten up I think anecdotally I did feel that the the big right miss was reduced
04:44with the new driver just because I think it's a little bit more forgiving and again the fact
04:47because of that draw bias however the really big gain came for me in terms of distance in my fitting
04:52they said I would gain about 11 yards carry in practice the previous model went 256 yards but under
05:01with the Callaway it was going up to 269 yards now that is total distance so that's why it's a
05:07couple
05:07odds more than what the fitting said but it's really pleasing to see that what I'd experienced
05:11in the fitting bay what I was told would happen actually pretty much did happen when I was out on
05:16the course so that was great to see but what archers can really do is really take it starts to
05:21the next
05:21level and show you how much difference that actually means to your scores so they use something
05:26called strokes gained and that allows you to benchmark your performance against other players
05:30of a similar handicap so I'm a three handicap and I was benchmarking myself against others
05:34and over the course of the season I had over a hundred shots with both clubs now with the
05:42previous model it was costing me what minus 0.14 shots per time that I hit the club whereas with
05:51the Callaway it was gaining me 0.07 now these don't sound like very big numbers however I was also
05:57to
05:57work out how many times I hit the drivers so the previous model I was hitting about eight times around
06:03but with the Callaway I was hitting it actually 10 times around and I think that came more because of
06:08the confidence I had with the club that I could use it more often so when you're about to put
06:13those
06:13two numbers together if I'm using it 10 times around I'm gaining 0.7 shots around with the Callaway
06:20whereas with the previous model if these are eight times I'm losing 1.12 shots so when you take the
06:26difference between those two you can see that's 1.8 shots per round that I'd be gaining by having
06:32been fitted for a new driver which hopefully would suit my game a little bit better than it does today
06:37now that is quite a significant amount and I think really the gain you can see there came from
06:42probably the misses not being quite as big as they were before but also because I was actually that
06:48a bit further down the fairway so I could hit a shorter second shot into the particular green
06:57well that's the end of another enjoyable round at the London club here certainly I've enjoyed using
07:02the Callaway driver here and actually throughout the whole of the season and it's been great to
07:07have gone through the whole process where you've gone through a fitting you've actually been promised
07:12some results and then been able to track the performance on the course throughout the whole year
07:16and see those results come to fruition in terms of the club I think the Rogue ST Max has been
07:22a very
07:22forgiving club it certainly worked for me it's been able to combine forgiveness with performance
07:27and probably I can see it's suiting quite a lot of players if you feel you can improve your game
07:33then
07:33I recommend going for a fitting and getting the club that really suits your swing and hopefully it will
07:38lower your scores too
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