Posted on Fri, May. 09, 2008

Perfect scores for two drivers from Callaway and TaylorMade

LANGSTON WERTZ JR.

lwertz@charlotteobserver.com

Recently got to test three of the hot new drivers of the season: Callaways FTi LCG, Callaway's Hyper X and the TaylorMade Tour Burner.

First up, the Hyper X.

One golf magazine recently ranked this as the longest in its club tests. We let five testers try out the Hyper X and each one reported that his longest shots all came with the club. But most struggled with hitting it left -- or trying to not hit it left and pushing it.

The distance wasn't consistent.

The club's face is big and closed, which should appeal to high handicappers who fight the slice, but strangely, two of the high handicappers I let hit it at Ballantyne Resort didn't like as much as the other two.

Ultimately after a long battery of tests and six rounds, I'd rate this one 3 stars out of 5.

That wasn't the case with the Tour Burner or the LCG. Understand, these are clubs aimed at two different golfers.

The LCG comes standard with a Matrix XCon shaft, probably too stout for the average golfer, and features weighting inside the head to keep the ballflight down. And the technology works well together.

I hit low trajectory shots that just went so straight. There was just no curve. Distance was good, too.

But this wasn't the club for me. Felt like a little too much work.

The Tour Burner was, for me, the best driver I've tested in the past two years, surprassing my previous No. 1, the new Nike 5900 Sumo 2.

Blaine Raffey of Edwin Watts Concord, who I think is the most knowledgeable golf retail person in the city, rated the Burner a "10 out of 10." So I was pumped when I got to pull the pretty white headcover off the thing.

It is slightly triangular and has two crowns. It has a 60-gram shaft by Fujikura, a lightweight grip, a nearly 46-inch shaft and a sleek black head. This is designed to help hit the ball far. Sometimes golfers might struggle with a longer shaft. No one I let hit this had trouble finding the center of the clubface.

This club feels more easy to swing than any driver I've tried. I hit straight ball after straight ball that went as far as I'd ever hit anything.

It was not the absolute longest driver I've tried of the three -- the Hyper X was -- but the TaylorMade, for me, was the most consistent.

I have heard other golfers say "it almost felt like cheating" and couldn't understand. Then I tried to hit a fade with this club at a par 5 at Emerald Lake Golf Course. I can't hit fades if someone paid me too.

So I pulled my left foot back and swung along my shoulder line, doing all those things you're supposed to, and -- guess what -- the fade faded. I tried to hit another fade on the next hole, just not as severe. Ball faded. And I loved the ball flight. The club is designed to hit it high with little spin. It works.

If you hit the ball high naturally, like my friend Bill, a local lawyer, you may need a shaft change. Bill went out and bought the Tour Burner after I called him and told him about my experience with the club. He bought 9.5 (I tried 10.5) and he hit it great on the launch monitor at Raffee's store, but way too high on the golf course.

He didn't want to swap shafts, so I gave Bill -- a 6-foot-8 player who is a solid 8 handicap -- the LCG and he fell in love. Like me, he hit it lower than normal (but he hits it waaay higher than I would) and it was just straight. He traded in his two-day old Tour Burner.

Two other testers I let hit the Tour Burner, who don't have Bill's high flight issues, bought the Tour Burner, too.

Finally, I let Lew, our resident former PGA player, test the drivers. He didn't like the Hyper X Callaway but felt it might good for high handicappers. He rated it 3 out of 5.

He hit the TaylorMade forever high and forever far but didn't feel he had the control he'd like (TaylorMade has a "TP" version of the driver for players like Lew; we were testing the regular version).

Like Bill, Lew fell in love with the LCG, saying it felt "just short of perfect." His shots with the club were just on a straight line. The ball didn't move much at all, and it just kept going.

Overall, both the Burner and LCG earn perfect 5 out of 5 scores for us. First time that's ever happened.