In this video, Martin Hopley reveals the data behind his year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
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00:00 I'm here to talk you through my year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
00:04 Now on the Golfamontey website there is a review of this driver already but I'm
00:07 going to take you through the process I've been through this year in terms of
00:10 getting fitted for it and then how it helped me benefit my game. Initially I
00:14 had a driver that was maybe a couple of generations old it's about three or
00:17 four year old model and whilst it was performing well I knew potentially I
00:21 could be doing a little bit better with all the advances that are going on in
00:24 the world of golf equipment these days. So I went along to an independent fitter
00:28 in Scotland called Scott Gourley Golf Technology and what they did is they
00:32 were able to analyze my game and they have a wide choice of heads from every
00:35 single brand so they actually the Callaway driver almost chose me rather
00:39 than the other way around. Now the results of that fitting were that they
00:43 promised me that I could gain another 11 yards carry and also be about 20% more
00:49 accurate which actually would hopefully suit my game. So what I did was I've used
00:53 this driver in competitions I've used it in friendly games as well and I was
00:57 using the Arcos shot tracking system in order to measure the performance of both
01:02 of these clubs because I was able to compare the two of them together. You can
01:05 actually track this data by creating their counts, putting sensors in the end
01:10 of the golf clubs which I'm sure some of you may already be familiar with if you
01:13 look at our review of the Arcos Caddy and then you either record the
01:17 information by having the phone in your pocket using the link device on your
01:21 belt buckle or as I've been doing using the Apple watch. So when I was fitted
01:26 into the Callaway Rogue ST Max this was deemed to be the most forgiving head for
01:30 me and initially we started with a 10.5 degree loft driver and what the
01:36 fitting enables the fitter to do is to adjust this to suit your game. So for me
01:40 they adjusted down the loft to 9.5 degrees by changing the
01:45 hosel to -1 and then what that would do is slightly open the face so in
01:49 order to return the face to where it was originally they also use the draw
01:52 setting as well and for me that worked really well. I like seeing the face a
01:56 little bit straighter and also the extra face angle was hopefully going to give
02:02 me a little bit more ball speed and hopefully a bit more distance. Before we
02:05 take it out on the course let's go into a little bit more detail about the
02:08 driver and what I liked about it. The Rogue Ranger driver really is a
02:11 forgiving model. There's no adjustability really in this apart from the
02:15 hosel that I mentioned earlier. It's just got a quite a low deep center of gravity
02:19 and this gold speed cartridge as they're calling it weighs about 26 grams and
02:25 really what that does is draw the weight low and back you can see here that it's
02:28 kind of off the bottom of the sole and that really creates a deep center of
02:31 gravity. There are a few different heads in this there's an LS as a standard but
02:35 this is the max so this is the deepest head and normally I probably wouldn't
02:38 have gone for this but it doesn't feel too pulled back if you know what
02:43 I mean. It's still quite a rounded head they've got a quite a nice decal around
02:46 it and I think overall Callaway done a very good job of creating a driver which
02:50 looks quite classy. It's certainly a little bit better than some of the Mavic
02:55 model which it replaced. Let's give it a go and see how it feels.
03:01 I don't know if you can hear that but I think the sound for this is certainly
03:08 something that really appealed to me. It's a nice deep sort of solid sound.
03:11 You've got some carbon in the sole here which combines with the titanium and the
03:14 rest of the head and I think that is certainly an improvement on the previous
03:18 models that they've had. I think one of the things that came to me through my
03:24 fitting was that this should be a lot more accurate driver and that's just
03:28 again not partly because of the shaft but also partly because of the head. It
03:33 was going to be a lot more forgiving on off-center hits and certainly I found
03:36 that to be the case in most of the year. I had a bit of a problem when I didn't
03:39 quite connect my previous driver. When it went right it really went right
03:43 whereas I've noticed with this when it I've hit it slightly right it's probably
03:46 stayed a little bit more in play.
03:50 So now that I've talked about having it in play let's go back and have a look at the
03:58 Arccos stats for how this driver performed for me as I played right
04:01 through the year. How did my new driver compare over the course of a whole
04:05 season? As I mentioned I was going to use Arccos to track not only the distance
04:09 but also the accuracy of the two drivers both my current one and the new Callaway.
04:14 What I was able to see from this is in terms of accuracy the drivers were
04:17 broadly the same. I was hitting about 40% of my fairways and I was probably
04:22 missing slightly less fairways to the right than I was missing to the left
04:26 and maybe a few percent more missing to the left which probably accounts for the
04:29 fact that this driver has a slightly draw bias in there they call it a semi
04:33 draw bias but that is fine with me I do probably hit it straight or have a
04:37 little bit of a fade so it did straighten it up. I think anecdotally I did feel that
04:41 the big right miss was reduced with the new driver just because I think it's a
04:46 little bit more forgiving and again the fact because of that draw bias. However
04:49 the really big gain came for me in terms of distance. In my fitting they said I
04:53 would gain about 11 yards carry. In practice the previous model went 256
04:59 yards but under with the Callaway it was going up to 269 yards. Now that is total
05:05 distance so that's why it's a couple yards more than what the fitting said
05:08 but it's really pleasing to see that what I'd experienced in the fitting bay
05:12 what I told would happen actually pretty much did happen when I was out on the
05:16 course so that was great to see. But what our arcers can really do is really take
05:20 it to the next level and show you how much difference that actually means to
05:24 your scores. So they use something called strokes gained and that allows you to
05:28 benchmark your performance against other players of a similar handicap. So I'm a
05:32 three handicap and I was benchmarking myself against others and over the
05:36 course of the season I had over a hundred shots with both clubs. Now with
05:42 the previous model it was costing me -0.14 shots per time that I hit the
05:49 club whereas with the Callaway it was gaining me 0.07. Now these don't
05:55 sound like very big numbers however I was also to work out how many times I
05:59 hit the drivers. So the previous model I was hitting about eight times around but
06:03 with the Callaway I was hitting it actually ten times around and I think
06:06 that came more because of the confidence I had with the club that I could use it
06:10 more often. So when you put those two numbers together if I'm using it ten
06:15 times around I'm gaining 0.7 shots around with the Callaway whereas with
06:21 the previous model if I use it eight times I'm losing 1.12 shots so when you
06:26 take the difference between those two you can see that's 1.8 shots per round
06:30 that I'd be gaining by having been fitted for a new driver which hopefully
06:34 would suit my game a little bit better than it does today. Now that is quite a
06:38 significant amount and I think really the gain you can see there came from
06:42 probably the misses not being quite as big as they were before but also because
06:47 I was actually that bit further down the fairway so I could hit a shorter second
06:51 shot into the particular green.
06:55 That's the end of another enjoyable round at the London Club here. I've
07:02 enjoyed using the Callaway driver here and actually throughout the whole of the
07:05 season and it's been great to have gone through the whole process where you've
07:09 gone through a fitting, you've actually been promised some results and then
07:13 been able to track the performance on the course throughout the whole year and
07:16 see those results come to fruition. In terms of the club I think the Roguest
07:21 T-Max has been a very forgiving club, it certainly worked for me. It's been able
07:25 to combine forgiveness with performance and probably I can see it suiting quite
07:29 a lot of players. If you feel you can improve your game then I recommend going
07:34 for a fitting and getting the club that really suits your swing and hopefully it
07:38 will lower your scores too.
07:41 you
07:43 you
07:45 (upbeat music)
07:47 (upbeat music)