Titleist unveil their new adjustable driver
There has rarely been a better advert for a new club set to hit the market than Rory McIlroy’s performance at Kiawah Island.
The Northern Irishman is one of a growing number of players who have recently added the new Titleist 913 driver to their bag, for the record he led the PGA Championship field with an average drive of 311.5 yards using the new D3.
The 913 uses the same SureFit Tour (SFT) adjustable hosel as the 910 but, Titleist say, has more speed, more distance and more performance.
Starting with the speed it does this via a new insert and therefore a faster face.
The challenge was to make as much of the face at the legal limit so that has actually been thickened up to slow it down – if you make the rest of it at the maximum limit then the centre is too fast.
Now the 913 has a thicker centre piece and then thins it back down away from the centre.
The result is that it delivers maximum ball speed over a bigger area than Titleist have designed before ie your mishits will go further.
More distance and performance is achieved through better launch conditions and this is all down to something called the neutral axis and this is the key variable when designing a driver.
Roughly speaking if you take a point in the centre of the face and draw a line, as loft changes, perpendicular to the back of the clubhead, this is the neutral axis.
Ideally you would love the centre of gravity (CG) of the clubhead to be on this axis as that represents maximum energy transfer.
That is the perpetual pursuit and why the 913 will perform better than its predecessor.
With the new D2 the centre of gravity has moved closer to the neutral axis which means it is lower spinning than 910 D2.
In short the D2 is more stable, has a little draw bias and retains its 460cc full pear shape. The D3 bit more workable, is not quite as forgiving as D2 and is slightly smaller.
So whereas before Titleist had two different drivers, now with SFT, they have designed drivers with the same inherent launch conditions but which allow the player to choose on shape, workability and forgiveness.
In short the D2 is more stable, has a little draw bias and retains its 460cc full pear shape. The D3 bit more workable, is not quite as forgiving as D2 and is slightly smaller at 445cc.
The beauty of both the D2 and D3 is that they are more forgiving than you would ever imagine.
You might think of Titleist as a better players’ driver but it is actually among one of more forgiving while also having the SFT adjustability to optimise your launch.
More speed, more distance, more performance. Simple.
