Adrian Rietveld is the man in charge on the TaylorMade PGA Tour truck and spends his time fitting equipment for the game’s biggest stars. So who better to ask about what he thinks are the best TaylorMade golf clubs ever made? We made him narrow it down to five…
5. TaylorMade Spider putter
“I think it was more than 10 years ago we launched this concept of a high MOI spider putter,” Adrian explains. “It’s an awesome piece of equipment and there are so many in play today – and its the same concept as the original.
“To watch that evolve and become the beast it is today in the equipment world, and to watch the other manufacturers try and copy it, is cool to see.”
4. TaylorMade RocketBallz fairway wood
“Fairway woods are the hardest clubs to switch players out of, but when we launched the original RocketBallz 3-wood I remember we could turn up blind with these golf clubs and they were just going in play.
“I think we had nearly 100 fairways in play every week on tour – and there’s only 130-150 players – so it was amazing.”
3. TaylorMade M5 and M6 fairway woods
“In 2019 when we incorporated twist face into the fairway woods, the 3-woods were head and shoulders above in terms of performance than its predecessor and it was really cool to see.
“You just did your fitting, got your specs right, listened to the player, and there was a very high probability of getting it in play. We got so many in play.”
2. TaylorMade SLDR driver
“I remember us launching the SLDR, which was a whole new concept. It was a very low forward CG piece of equipment. But I think the SLDR was a game changer in terms of us developing the M1 product. It was definitely cool to watch R&D take a chance, really thinking outside the box.
“It was the middle of June when we got given these prototype heads and they were like, ‘Go see what these do.’ That could have failed and the whole company would have gone, ‘Oh well, that didn’t work.’ But it was the ability and the confidence to really push the needle to try and see if we could advance and that was the game changer.”
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1. TaylorMade SIM driver
“I feel like our SIM driver can’t even be compared to anything else, because nothing has the ability to do what that club does.
“If I could pick a driver from the last five years, that is definitely the one I would go to battle with. It has really unique performance characteristics versus everything else in the industry.”
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