From Golf Magazine ClubTest 2012 (May, 2012)

Category: Game-Improvement Fairway Woods
Price: $199

WE TESTED: 3 (15°), 4 (16.5°), 5 (18°), 7 (21°) with Ping TFC 169F graphite shaft KEY TECHNOLOGIES: The stainless steel head is larger from front to back than the G15 and has a larger (by 3.5 percent) variable-thickness face. The by-product is higher-trajectory shots, more forgiveness and an improved ability to maintain consistently high ball speeds across the hitting area.

OUR TESTERS SAY: The highest-rated fairway woods. Chart-topper combines distance and forgiveness in a single package.

Look at the different wedges in a pros bag and you'll notice that the soles are usually different. The bottom of a gap wedge (50°-54°) will look a lot like the sole of a 9-iron or pitching wedge because it's going to be used from the fairway or rough, not in a greenside bunker. Conversely, a 56°sand wedge will have more bounce to it so it can work through the sand easily, but that bounce can make the club more challenging to use when you try hitting it with a full swing from the fairway.
With its new ATV wedges, TaylorMade is attempting to make a club that comes with a sole that can work effectively from the fairway, the rough, the sand, and be solid when you want to pitch and chip around the green. (ATV stands for 'All-Terrain Versatility.')
Each ATV wedge is made from 304 stainless steel and has a sole that is slightly different based on the club's loft, but the first thing you'll notice about each ATV is how wide the sole actually is. From a bunker, the wide sole should help the club skim through the sand without digging. However, when you hit a chip or pitch shot using the same wedge, the concave area behind the leading edge lifts that material out of the way and makes the club play like a thinner-soled wedge, which is more ideal from tighter lies.
"You won't find a bounce number etched anywhere into the ATV clubhead," says Brian Bazzel, TaylorMade Golf's product creation manager for irons, putters and wedges. "The sole takes on different bounces depending on how you position the club for the type of shot you're hitting."
TaylorMade claims that the grooves in the ATV wedges generate almost as much spin as its now-nonconforming Z groove. Like some other companies, TaylorMade has incorporated a surface texture in the areas between the grooves to increase friction and help you generate more spin.
When it hits pro shop shelves on April 15, the ATV wedge will be available in 50°, 52°, 54°, 56°, 58°, 60°, 64° lofts for $119.

To give you optimal performance, golf pants, like ski pants, should bend easily at the knee. So why is it that golf pants traditionally are cut with a straight seam running from your hip to your ankle, like regular streetwear, with no articulation at the knee like lots of ski pants? Because on a hot, sweaty day, bunching at the mid leg and behind your knee isn't very comfortable.
 
Having lifted the polo shirt to a new level of performance, manufacturers now are experimenting with golf trousers that are loaded with technical features, including knee seams. Both Oakley and Nike have introduced golf pants with pleated or articulated knees to enhance your range of motion and ability to execute the swing.
 
Oakley, a company that knows a bit about skiwear, accomplishes flexibility through a series of seams, some of which are curved, that intersect around the knee. These pinstriped golf trousers appear suit-like but perform like stretch pants.
 
Nike’s new Sport Collection has a tighter fit than its other golf performance lines, but its trousers achieve flexibility through the knee with a couple of diagonal seams that run at angles to the main side seams. Close up, the Nike Sport pants even look a lot like ski pants—in the knee area, that is.

Mark King, the president and CEO of TaylorMade-adidas Golf, held a conference call on Monday to discuss his company's agreement to purchase Adams Golf. Here are some highlights, as well as the answer to the question many golfers immediately had upon learning the news.
1. Is Adams going to be absorbed by TaylorMade and disappear?
In a word: No. In fact, during a conference call on Monday, King said, "We believe that the best chance to continue the growth of Adams is to leave it there [in Plano, Texas] and operate it as an affiliate to our business." King went on to say that over the last 10 years TaylorMade has fully integrated other acquired companies but, "quite frankly we have struggled with those acquisitions to allow them to remain with an identity and the ability to compete in the marketplace."
As soon as the final regulatory and shareholder approvals for the deal are complete, a new president and CEO of Adams  will be named. Chip Brewer, the company's former top executive, was named president and CEO of Callaway Golf on Feb. 27. However, King said that the new head of Adams won't necessarily be a TaylorMade executive.
"There is a potential candidate [within Adams Golf] that we're going to look at," King said. "We've got several candidates  within the TaylorMade organization that have expressed interest, but I think that the most important thing is that we find the right person. Someone who is going to live in Plano, and somebody who is going to emotionally get attached to that business."
2. Why does TaylorMade want to buy Adams?
The golf industry is not growing, so these days it's all about market share. TaylorMade already sells more woods and irons than any other brand. The catagories within the market where King thinks his company  can grow are in the game-improvement, senior and women's categories—three core areas where Adams focuses much of its attention.
Just over a minute into the conference call, King said, "We see ourselves as being for serious golfers, and when we talk about the voice of our company, it's directly at the zero- to 4-handicap players." He noted that Adams positions itself as being for mid- and higher-handicap players.
"I think a combination of our brand, TaylorMade, at the top of the pyramid, and the Adams brand in the middle- to high-handicap slot really allows us to compete in all segments for the golfer."
Another thing that made Adams appealing was its intellectual property. "I think it was very enticing for us," King said.  "For a smaller company, they had really great ideas around technology."
If current products are any indication, some of those ideas could mesh well with TaylorMade innovations. Adams has featured woods and hybrids with channels carved into the sole and crown areas, like the Speedline F11, for a few seasons. TaylorMade has just released the new RocketBallz fairway woods and rescue clubs that also have a channel in the sole.
3. What does Adams Golf gain from the new relationship?
The deal gives Adams a chance to grow much bigger, and much faster, than it could have on its own.
According to King, about 90 percent of Adams' business is done inside North America, while TaylorMade does more than 60 percent of its business outside North America.
"Leveraging our infrastructure outside the United States in the near-term will give the Adams brand a really great opportunity to grow," King said.
Smaller companies that lack big budgets for marketing, research and development, and global supply chains are at a big competitive disadvantage.
"Companies like ours and our two or three big competitors have a lot of scale, a lot of size and a lot of marketing ability," Kind said. "So it's challenging, but it can certainly be done, but I think it's going to have to be done more on the niche basis than on a broad product line."
 

It used to be that half the fun of dropping $375 on a putter, which is the suggested retail price for each of the new Scotty Cameron Studio Design putters, was knowing that other golfers are going to notice it. But with their black matte finish, Scotty Cameron’s updated Studio Design putters resist reflecting light, creating glare, and the attention of your playing partners.
 
Like the previous family of Studio Design putters, the latest models are milled from 303 stainless steel, except for the large-mallet Big Sur putters, which are milled from aluminum. The non-adjustable weights on the sole in the heel and toe areas are still there, as are the three red dots positioned on the back of the clubs.
 
Those dots, which are purely cosmetic, will let people know from a distance that you're using a putter designed by the same man who makes clubs for Rory McIlroy, Adam Scott, Geoff Ogilvy, Nick Watney and a host of other PGA Tour stars.
 
The faces of the Studio Design putters, like those of the recently updated California series, are now more deeply milled, creating circular ridges that Cameron says soften feel and produce a lower-pitched sound at impact.
 
The five blade-style putters twill look familiar to almost every golfer. The Newport and Newport 2 are traditional heel-toe weighted blades, as is the Newport 1.5, which has the same head design but a curved neck and hosel area. The shaft of the Newport 2.6 goes straight into the central area of the putter's topline, while the back flange of the Notchbach extends slightly in the heel and toe areas.
 
The Kombi and Kombi Mid putters have been discontinued, replaced by the slightly asymmetrical GoLo and GoLo Mid mid-size mallets. The GoLo has a single shaft bend, but a straight-shaft version, the GoLo S, is also available.
 
All of these mid-size mallets are designed to enhance an arc-style putting stroke and come in standard lengths (33-35"). However, there are also 43" versions, as well as 40-52" GoLo Mid, GoLo S and Newport Two Mid putters available through custom ordering for players.
 
The Big Sur and Big Sur S mallets feature a stainless steel weight bar in the sole that Titleist says improves balance and feel.  The standard Big Sur is 49” with a lie angle of 79°, but through custom ordering you can get one between 46-52”.
 
Look for the new Scotty Cameron Studio Design putters to start arriving in pro shops in early April, with the mid- and extended-length models coming in May.
 

The pace of technological change in golf, as everywhere, can be breathtaking or, in this case, eye-opening. This week’s Transitions Championship at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Fla., puts the spotlight on high-technology sunglasses.
The sponsor of the event, Transitions Optical, is a major manufacturer of photochromic lenses for companies like Callaway, whose Tour Authentic eyewear boasts Neox Transitions Adaptive Sunwear lenses. They automatically adapt in changing light conditions and block 100 percent of UV rays.
Regular sunglasses may screen out some of the sun’s harmful rays, but they often distort colors and decrease your depth perception. Neox lenses adjust to all light conditions and sharpen depth perception for more accurate distance vision.
The technology also allows golfers to clearly see the course terrain and the contours of a green while putting. Now if only they can come up with something to actually read the putt.
Ashworth becoming performance driven
Now that it is part of Adidas, Ashworth lives within a corporate culture driven by athletic performance. “Modern style for the authentic golfer” is how Susan Bush, the senior executive at Ashworth, describes it. While showing various garments from the Ashworth line–polyester jersey golf shirts with a cottony feel; button-down polos with stretch fabrics; engineered chest prints; and, of course, argyle sweaters–she explained that Ashworth is essentially converting itself from a cotton-based, natural-fiber collection to a technical performance line, with classic styling.
 
“We’re not living in the past,” Ms. Bush said. “It’s been a big change for Ashworth to get out of cotton and move into synthetics. But these are not your standard technical fabrics.”
 
Ashworth's founder, John Ashworth, has left the company and started his own business under the name Linksoul. It is more of a natural-fiber collection, with plenty of cotton and merino wools with a heritage feel. Some of the fabrics are blended and have moisture-wicking properties, but he is striving for an almost mystical golf purity.
 
In golf today, there is this ongoing tension, or push-pull, between heritage and technology. Several companies are trying hard to combine both.
 
I wore a silky cotton Linksoul shirt under a suit jacket during my meeting with Ms. Bush–a considerable fashion faux pas, under the circumstances. Some days you opt for comfort and performance, others you want to look more classic and refined. Just like real life.
 

The pace of technological change in golf, as everywhere, can be breathtaking or, in this case, eye-opening. This week’s Transitions Championship at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Fla., puts the spotlight on high-technology sunglasses.
The sponsor of the event, Transitions Optical, is a major manufacturer of photochromic lenses for companies like Callaway, whose Tour Authentic eyewear boasts Neox Transitions Adaptive Sunwear lenses. They automatically adapt in changing light conditions and block 100 percent of UV rays.
Regular sunglasses may screen out some of the sun’s harmful rays, but they often distort colors and decrease your depth perception. Neox lenses adjust to all light conditions and sharpen depth perception for more accurate distance vision.
The technology also allows golfers to clearly see the course terrain and the contours of a green while putting. Now if only they can come up with something to actually read the putt.
Ashworth becoming performance driven
Now that it is part of Adidas, Ashworth lives within a corporate culture driven by athletic performance. “Modern style for the authentic golfer” is how Susan Bush, the senior executive at Ashworth, describes it. While showing various garments from the Ashworth line–polyester jersey golf shirts with a cottony feel; button-down polos with stretch fabrics; engineered chest prints; and, of course, argyle sweaters–she explained that Ashworth is essentially converting itself from a cotton-based, natural-fiber collection to a technical performance line, with classic styling.
 
“We’re not living in the past,” Ms. Bush said. “It’s been a big change for Ashworth to get out of cotton and move into synthetics. But these are not your standard technical fabrics.”
 
Ashworth's founder, John Ashworth, has left the company and started his own business under the name Linksoul. It is more of a natural-fiber collection, with plenty of cotton and merino wools with a heritage feel. Some of the fabrics are blended and have moisture-wicking properties, but he is striving for an almost mystical golf purity.
 
In golf today, there is this ongoing tension, or push-pull, between heritage and technology. Several companies are trying hard to combine both.
 
I wore a silky cotton Linksoul shirt under a suit jacket during my meeting with Ms. Bush–a considerable fashion faux pas, under the circumstances. Some days you opt for comfort and performance, others you want to look more classic and refined. Just like real life.
 

When golf’s high season kicks in, manufacturers like to introduce souvenir editions to coincide with the major championships. For this year’s Masters, FootJoy is making available a very cool series of golf shoes with stingray-printed leathers, including a green asymmetrical FJ Icon that would do Ian Poulter proud. The company is issuing just 200 pairs, ranging in price from $140 for women’s LoPro Sports to $305 for men’s FJ Icon Sports. A limited quantity of green patent-leather prints will also be available on the saddle shoes. Purchasers can build and customize these Augusta FootJoys beginning April 2 at myjoys.com or at authorized FootJoy dealers.
 
Sergio’s got a brand new bag
Last week Sergio Garcia's caddie began toting a new golf bag inspired by Garcia's favorite soccer team, Real Madrid. Nicknamed “Los Blancos” (The All Whites) and often referred to as “Los Galácticos” (The Juggernauts), Real Madrid is one of the most successful and recognizable teams worldwide. The Adidas staff bag has royal blue stitching with Garcia’s favorite number, gold piping, and signature logo. Like the guy who plays out of it, the bag really pops.

Known for its shout-out golf clothes, Loudmouth Golf is dressing the top U.S. men’s beach volleyball team for this summer’s Olympics in London. Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers will wear suitably eye-popping board shorts made by the company.
 
It will not be the first Olympic foray for the firm. At the 2010 winter games in Vancouver, the Norwegian curling team wore Loudmouth’s harlequin “Dixie-A” pants while sliding stones down the ice. Later, Norway’s King Harald V requested a pair.
 
Loudmouth is associated more with golf and John Daly than other spheres of life, but the company’s tongue-in-cheek prints, blow-up graphics, swirling psychedelics, florals, and cartoons have a following on and off the course. Among the celebrities spotted wearing the clothes are Bill Murray, Selena Gomez, Tim Lincecum, Justin Timberlake, Will Ferrell, Lil Wayne, and Arnold Palmer.
The latest Loudmouth look book shows many ultra-prep, country looks and lots of styles to wear off course. If you have the courage.

These five innovators range from a Danish designer to a former designer day trader. They appear different at first glance, but they share one thing in common: Their pioneering minds are making golf better — and more fun — for all of us. In this first of a special four-part series on how technology is advancing the sport, we give you golf's game changers, in their own words.
THE PUTTING PROGRAMMER
Mark Sweeney, 44
Rewiring our minds into green-reading computer programs
"So I'm watching a tournament on TV back in 2003 when a guy drains a big putt. One of the announcers says, 'Green reading is a God-given skill — you either have it or you don't.' That bothered me. What a hopeless attitude, that if you aren't born with the ability, you'll never improve. Around that time, the Mars rover had landed. I thought if we can send a vehicle to take readings from the surface of a distant planet, we can learn how a ball rolls on a tilted surface right here on Earth. Using detailed digital maps of greens and then simply applying the laws of physics, my company AimPoint Technologies came up with formulas that predict precisely how a putt will behave, whether it's a downhill five-footer or a 150-foot putt with seven breaks.
Research shows that variables like grain, moisture and spike marks have only a minor effect on roll. It comes down to three things: slope, angle and distance. It's just physics. People see AimPoint technology on Golf Channel, with the line showing how a putt breaks before the player hits it. That won an Emmy. The original idea wasn't conceived for TV but for weekend players. That's our new direction. Today, we teach weekend players to putt better by sort of reprogramming the way they read the green. The changes are shocking. I've had students start rolling everything to tap-in distance! We're basically teaching golfers to read putts like a computer. And the computer is never wrong."
Learn more at aimpointgolf.com
 

Cheng: Robyn Twomey; Tuxen: Schecter Lee
YuChaing Cheng (left) of World Golf Tour and Fredrik Tuxen of TrackMan launch monitors
THE GAMER
YuChiang Cheng, 36
Making virtual golf as authentic as the real thing
"I'm the CEO and co-founder of the free online game World Golf Tour. In 2006, I was in my apartment playing World of Warcraft when my business partner sent me a photo of this incredible course he was playing on the Italian Riviera. I saw it and thought, 'Why can't I play that course online?' Golf is so visceral and experiential, so to distill that into fantasy is difficult. For one, it has to be as visually stunning as real golf. But instead of drawing a complex world, like in a video game, we developed technology [including the remote-controlled heli-cam you see above] that takes a 3D model of the course and covers it with a photograph, creating a detailed and realistic virtual course. People told us we were crazy — that golfers weren't gamers. But that's not true. We've built relationships with the USGA and the R&A, and we have more than four million registered users. A good course will do 100,000 rounds a year. We just recorded our 100 millionth round.
When you play our game, you don't actually swing a club, but we recreate your course management decisions and shotmaking. So if you play, say, Pebble Beach, our virtual course is within centimeters of accuracy of the real course. The mental side of the game is also very similar. Every year, we run a virtual U.S. Open. The experience is so real, people get nervous and their scores balloon. We'll see it again this May, when people can play [2012 U.S. Open site] The Olympic Club, and under Open conditions. How do we know the course is true to life? Because when USGA Executive Director Mike Davis plays WGT, he tells us exactly how the setup should be."
Learn more at wgt.com
THE INVENTOR
Fredrik Tuxen, 45
Using his TrackMan launch-monitor technology to reveal the secret to straight shots
"When I was head of an R&D company in Denmark, I designed a two-ton Doppler Radar system that could track a Trident missile leaving the earth's atmosphere. I used similar technology to invent TrackMan, which monitors ball flight and club movement. Believe it or not, tracking a ball is harder than tracking a missile; because a ball moves much more slowly, other objects can get in the way. Before TrackMan, major manufacturers had their own ways of tracking ball flight, with camera-based systems.
When the golf world and instructors discovered and embraced TrackMan, what shocked me was the gap between what was scientifically known about ball flight and what was being taught on driving ranges. Many instructors were focused only on ball flight, but to understand why the ball is flying a certain way, you also need information about the clubhead — the position of the face at impact, the path, the attack angle. Our overarching goal is to get TrackMan in the hands of average players. We're doing that with TrackMan Range. You go to a hitting bay, log in on the touch screen, and learn about your clubhead delivery and your ball fight on every shot. Without that information, you don't know why your ball does what it does."
Learn more at trackman.dk
 

Zeck headshot, screens: Andy McMillan/Redux; Gadgets: Getty Images; Vermillion: Mashid Mohadjerin/Redux
Adam Zeck (left) of Grow the Game Golf and Jordan Vermillion of Bushnell
 
THE CONNECTOR
Adam Zeck, 41
Bringing live leaderboards, and trash-texting, to the golf masses
"I used to work in finance on the trading floor in Chicago. Big firms had technology that just hammered us, letting them trade so quickly that a little guy like me had no chance. The idea is similar with Grow the Game, which I co-founded. It's about speed. You want to know where you stand in relation to the rest of the world and you want to know now. What separates golf from other sports is that you usually have no idea where you stand against the competition. How are the other foursomes in your outing doing? Did your buddy behind you make birdie or dunk it in the drink? You have no clue. Our motto is 'Know how, know now.' Our technology tells you your status in real time, using a live-event leaderboard that works with all kinds of smart phones.
We're looking to add features, so you can still play Skins games or Nassaus with your buddies if they're not in your group. There's also a social media component. Your friend makes double-bogey? Trash-talk him on the spot! Or challenge him to a back-nine wager. Playing with your regular foursome, that's fun. But knowing where you stand in relation to everyone on the course, that's a whole new dimension. It's gonna change everything."
Learn more at gtggolf.com
THE 'VISION'-ARY
Jordan Vermillion, 42
Pushing to build a better laser range-finder
"I'm the Director of Sports Optics for Bushnell, and in our industry, coming up with ideas is easy. The challenge is bringing those ideas into the real world. Take what happened a few years back when we answered our most persistent consumer complaint. We kept hearing, 'It's so hard to get a reading on that tiny flagstick. I end up hitting a big tree.' That was understandable. When you use a range finder, you're sending out mini pulses traveling at light speed. Let's say you're 140 yards out. If you send out 100 pulses, 85 of them might bounce off a large reflective object in the distance — a tree, a sign — while only 15 will read the flag, so you read the wrong target.
Our response was PinSeeker technology, which involved writing very precise algorithms that prioritized the needed information, shutting out the background objects and displaying the closer, correct object. Around the same time, we introduced slope technology, which calculates and adjusts yardages depending on the incline or decline of the hole. We did this by transferring the technology of inclinometers, used in forestry, to a handheld golf device. At first, our engineers might say, 'It's not possible.' But our job is to push and ask, 'But what if we tried this?' That's how you progress. Our PinSeeker technology gives yardages to within one yard of accuracy, and we're launching a new product, the Tour Z6, which is accurate to within a half yard. That's the goal. As technology gets better, we push and push to get more precise."
Learn more at bushnell.com