Why no indepeendant testing of drivers?

[ATLGolfer]

I always take any website reviews with a grain of salt also as I have never seen anybody give a club a bad review yet we know there have been many horrible clubs released !

I've certainly posted some negative comments about my experiences with particular clubs.

You'll never see me post things like "this club sucks," because I'm not 12. But, I'll give negative feedback on a particular club when I see it. Perfect example: In the R1 testing review (where I was given an R1 for testing), I quite often had negative comments about the sound of the club at impact.

The reality is that I have hit very few "bad" clubs. Manufacturers tend to make good quality stuff. I prefer some clubs over others, but there are very few "bad" ones.

 

[TNTCigarguy]

This has been a great thread to read. In my searching I would say THP does a great job as it puts the reviews in real golfers hands. We all dont have 115mph club head speed. I think it helps a ton because I want to read stats from a guy with a similar launch angle and club head speed.

 

[zooropa]

Robotic testing is an awesome idea with my swing that is robotic.

Give me a break, every swing is unique and therefore robotic testing does nothing but prove what driver works with that swing.

Yes, it's a much better idea to go off someone who has an ineffecient swing that you have never seen hit the ball.

 

[JB]

Yes, it's a much better idea to go off someone who has an ineffecient swing that you have never seen hit the ball.

Clearly you have not read a lot of the reviews here or the forum reviews, because ours are not done like this. It has been said throughout this thread about the type of reviews that our wonderful staff put out. Its about arming golfers with knowledge, not telling a golfer that he should play XYZ club.

I think you would like a lot of what is put out, including the one I linked to earlier that has the exact information you have been searching for based on suggestions in this thread.

 

[fupresti]

Yes, it's a much better idea to go off someone who has an ineffecient swing that you have never seen hit the ball.

You mean a swing that has flaws, like mine? What good is robotic testing if it doesn't transfer to actual swings.

 

[Rambler]

I would love to be able to see a full-fledged robotic testing setup/execution. But, the chances of it happening are slim-to-none. Further, I know that robotic testing would not (nor could not) replace a solid, in-depth review of a product from the perspective of a human (or multiple) tester - club performance has natural bias built-in due to subjective factors like sound, color, etc. Having both types of information would be ideal.

The bottom-line for why it won't happen is $$$. Someone would need to fund not only the equipment, but also the significant person-hours for designing, executing, and reporting on a fair, representative, and completely independent experiment/testing. Additionally, what would be the "control" conditions? With the the different head sizes, lengths, and weights, you would have to determine a relatively detailed control model. Does that mean an equivalent shaft in each head, and the head/shaft combination is set-up for the same physical characteristics of length, total weight, swing weight, etc.? Then, after finding a way to establish a control, you would have to go into all of the permutations for the adjustable clubs to figure out it's "optimal" setting with the controls in place (Would my rudimentary control setup be fully acceptable? Probably not.)

This doesn't take into consideration the impact of being able to find a more "optimal" head/shaft combination for every club you wanted to test... Would be really cool to see (sorry, that's the engineer in me), but it does boggle the mind. I would love to see this, but there would be no "value" (i.e. $$$) for the manufacturers, so you're not going to have them on board, and without that, I think the idea is nearly dead-in-the-water.

 

[zooropa]

You mean a swing that has flaws, like mine? What good is robotic testing if it doesn't transfer to actual swings.

And does the tester have the flaws you have?

As has been pointed out, numbers generated much more reliable than a human tester. Exact same impact point, same swing every time (ie speed)

I don't see why most people are seeing it as an attack on the testers.

 

[Scrap Iron]

And does the tester have the flaws you have?

As has been pointed out, numbers generated much more reliable than a human tester. Exact same impact point, same swing every time (ie speed)

I don't see why most people are seeing it as an attack on the testers.

I guess my first question is do you try before you buy or just go on what others say is the best and longest?

To get the longest driver based off of a robot would be ridiculous. Take just the TaylorMade R1. It has 168 settings and 19 shaft options that all come in 4 shaft flexes then you would need to go by swing speed say 75-120mph going up in increments of 5mph then Angle of attack say -5 to +5.

Without factoring in the large variety of swing paths and tempo and only hitting one ball that's making my head hurt over the amount of options the robot just for 1 driver and don't forget they have a TP and Super TP version by the time I look through all the data Titleist would be on a new release cycle.

Watching videos of Mark Crossfield don't do much for me I currently have a +4 AoA and a quick transition I know his swing is nothing like mine. Like I said in an earlier post about the My Golf Spy testing I think they should be proud of it. It's a cool idea but they have a breakdown of over 100 mph swing speed and under it doesn't really help me are these guys high spin players low spin players do they have the same launch angle as I do.

If you want to watch club reviews they have plenty on YouTube if you want good honest truths and facts about a club THP does a fantastic job.