Adjustable drivers

Just throwing an opinion out there after reading the latest Todays Golfer and seeing that pretty much every manufacturer out there now has an option of an adjustable driver.

I'm a mid-handicap golfer with a fairly decent driving accuracy of 50%, but quite often just rolls a yard or 2 off when I miss. That in mind, I dont feel I have anywhere near the swing consistency to warrant setting up a club for a fade/draw or loft adjustments.

Surely if you are swinging solid you'll be putting the ball in the general area that you want anyway..... and if you have the swing consistency to make use of the adjustment time after time, would you not have the skills to shape the ball yourself?

Discuss

I have quite an old driver - R7 Superquad and it has 4 moveable weights which is more than enough for me!!

Each manufacturer just seems to be trying to outdo the next with more and more settings and gizmo's.

Taking into account the fact you are not allowed to make any changes during comp play I just do not see the attraction of 50 different settings plus!!??

i find it amazing how many options you can have on a driver, i often look at reviews and sometimes theyll say "not very easy to shape the ball" and i think to myself what other shot would you require other than long and straight. i know people say draws and fades are useful but surely not as useful as a long and straight fairway shot? beyond me. only useful thing i can think of is loft adjustment to be useful. as when you get better you can stick it down a degree.

I've got an R9 Supertri, I've had it set neutral ever since I got it, swing properly and it goes straight, swing badly and it doesn't. Even if you set it up to counteract your natural fade etc, you still have to swing properly and so that is far more important than any adjustments.

Adjustable drivers for the amateur golfer = marketing ploy! Let's be honest we are just happy to see the ball flying off the tee in the general direction we are hoping it to go without worrying about what adjustments we need to make. I am obviously not at the standard to draw or fade a ball from the tee, but pro's have been doing this with their set up for years without the need to adjust the actual club.

I agree with your sentiments Colin. The manufacturers are trying to get a step ahead of the competition and this is just the latest instalment of that race. If you have silly money to throw around by all means join the race, but don't expect guarranteed improvement. Most amateurs do not have the skills to alter a driver to suit and most likely would adjust incorrectly. Also we don't hit the accuraccy to make the changes significant. Yes, we want to see it take off in the direction we intend and stay there for the most part. I have a TM Burner driver and have got used to its nuances. The last thing I would want to do now is change any part of it.

Have just been to a local golf barn and had a look at a couple of adjustable drivers, and the truth is that they aren't really that adjustable. The one area that could be useful, the loft, doesn't actually change - it physically can't as the head is still essentially a single pressing. So it just manipulates the angle of the head with respect to the shaft, in much the same way as moving the ball backwards or forwards in your stance. The rest just moves weights around in the head to change the C of G which promotes differing ball flights. However, as moving the C of G effectively moves the sweet spot on the face this is just a rather ineffective marketing exercise. Anyway to tease money out of mug punters really.

Pretty ugly as well, most of them.

It is all about sales, the manufactures need to keep making sales, and you are not going to buy a driver, putter or set of irons that does the same as the set you already have, so the manufactures tell you that their new set does more and hits it further, so you buy a new set, then they need to sell more clubs again. so again they have to come up with gimmicks to make you buy a new set, so they say this is the best irons, woods, or what ever, we have ever made, and this new driver goes 10 yards further that the last model! every year the next generation of driver goes 10 yards further, I am surprised that the average club golfer can't drive the ball over 500m yards by now. The simple fact is, it is about sales and the hype they continue to spout is to increase sales, and the new clubs you buy today will do very little to improve you handicap than a club from 10 or 15 years ago.

I have to agree with a lot of the points above having struggled with driving for a few years now i acquired a callaway diablo which for me i can hit straight and get more distance on a consistant basis, however, my point is prior to acquiring this i took a razr fit driver for a test and played around with all the settings and to be honest i found myself becoming so obsessed with the settings that my swing, strike, direction and distance were all over the place

This has made me smile. I am relatively new to golf and I have always been wary of gadgets and gizmos that will offer to increase performance,better distance,more accuracy etc, when the real truth is that we need to use the tools we have in a more technically correct way with more consistency etc ( ie practice ). It reminds me of soappowder adverts that last week it washed white, this week with a new improved formula it will wash even whiter.

Well put John, and according to the TV adverts, not only does it wash whiter than ever, it also cleans the stains you don't see, so I am presuming before the latest powders, if you didn't know your cloths were dirty then the old powders wouldn't clean them! It is all marketing bollocks, to temp us all to part with our hard earned cash.

I have a ping g15 neutral 12 degree r flex driver which I hit very well (mostly) and I've had it for about 2 years now. During that time a friend of mine has bought and sold around 5 adjustable drivers, each one he bought for the hype then sold at a considerable loss because he didn't get on with it. I had a few goes with each of them but never hit as well as my ping. I'm just looking on ebay for another ping g15 with the same specs to keep for the future.

I agree with most of the previous posts that if you make a good swing it doesn't really matter what driver you are using! It's all marketing bumphhh! Just a few years ago square drivers were a must,now it's adjustables! The good thing is that I have just been able to get a brand new Ping G 20 driver, 3 Wood and hybrid for less than a G25 driver alone and after hitting both the G20 was the way to go.