In this video, Martin Hopley reveals the data behind his year with the Callaway Rogue ST Max driver.
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00:00I'm here to talk you through my year with the Callaway Rogue ST-MAX driver.
00:04Now on the Golf Monthly website there is a review of this driver already but I'm
00:07going to take you through the process I've been through this year in terms of
00:10getting fitted for it and then how it helped me benefit my game. Initially I
00:14had a driver that was maybe a couple of generations old it's about three or
00:17four year old model and whilst it was performing well I knew potentially I
00:21could be doing a little bit better with all the advances that are going on
00:24in the world of golf equipment these days. So I went along to an independent
00:28fitter in Scotland called Scott Gourley Golf Technology and what they did is
00:32they were able to analyze my game and they have a wide choice of heads from
00:35every single brand so they actually the Callaway driver almost chose me rather
00:39than the other way around. Now the results of that fitting were that they
00:43promised me that I could gain another 11 yards carry and also be about 20% more
00:49accurate which actually would hopefully suit my game. So what I did was I've used
00:53this driver in competitions I've used it in friendly games as well and I was
00:57using the Arcos shot tracking system in order to measure the performance of both
01:02of these clubs because I was able to compare the two of them together. You can
01:05actually track this data by creating their counts, putting sensors in the end
01:10of the golf clubs which I'm sure some of you may already be familiar with if you
01:13look at our review of the Arcos Caddy and then you either record the
01:17information by having the phone in your pocket using the link device on your
01:21belt buckle or as I've been doing using the Apple watch. So when I was fitted
01:26into the Callaway Rogue ST Max this was deemed to be the most forgiving head for
01:30me and initially we started with a ten and a half degree loft driver and what
01:35the fitting enables the fitter to do is to adjust this to suit your game. So for
01:40me they adjusted down the loft to nine and a half degrees by changing the
01:45hosel to minus one and then what that would do is slightly open the face so in
01:49order to return the face to where it was originally they also use the draw
01:52setting as well and for me that worked really well. I like seeing the face a
01:56little bit straighter and also the extra face angle was hopefully going to give
02:02me a little bit more ball speed and hopefully a bit more distance. Before we
02:05take it out on the course let's go into a little bit more detail about the
02:08driver and what I liked about it. The Rogue range of drivers really is a
02:11forgiving model. There's no adjustability really in this apart from the
02:15hosel that I mentioned earlier. It's just got a quite a low deep center of gravity
02:19and this gold speed cartridge as they're calling it weighs about 26 grams and
02:25really what that does is draw the weight low and back you can see here that it's
02:28kind of off the bottom of the sole and that really creates a deep center of
02:31gravity. There are a few different heads in this there's an LS as a standard but
02:35this is the max so this is the deepest head and normally I probably wouldn't
02:38have gone for this but it doesn't feel too pulled back if you know what
02:43I mean. It's still quite a rounded head they've got a quite a nice decal around
02:46it and I think overall Callaway done a very good job of creating a driver which
02:50looks quite classy. It's certainly a little bit better than some of the Mavic
02:55model which it replaced. Let's give it a go and see how it feels. I don't know if
03:06you can hear that but I think the sound for this is certainly something that
03:08really appealed to me. It's a nice deep sort of solid sound you've got some
03:12carbon in the sole here which combines with the titanium and the rest of the
03:15head and I think that is certainly an improvement on the previous models that
03:19they've had. I think one of the things that came to me through my fitting
03:25was that this should be a lot more accurate driver and that's just again
03:29not only partly because of the shaft but also partly because of the head. It was
03:33going to be a lot more forgiving on off-center hits and certainly I found
03:36that to be the case in most of the year. I had a bit of a problem when I didn't
03:39quite connect my previous driver when I went right it really went right whereas
03:43I've noticed with this when it I've hit it slightly right it's probably stayed a
03:47little bit more in play. So now that I've talked about having it in play let's go
03:58back and have a look at the Arccos stats for how this driver performed for me as
04:01I played right through the year. How did my new driver compare over the course of
04:05a whole season? As I mentioned I was going to use Arccos to track not only
04:09the distance but also the accuracy of the two drivers both my current one and
04:13the new Caloray. What I was able to see from this is in terms of accuracy the
04:17drivers were broadly the same I was hitting about 40% of my fairways and I
04:22was probably missing slightly less fairways to the right than I was
04:25missing to the left and maybe a few percent more missing to the left which
04:29probably accounts for the fact that this driver has a slightly draw bias in there
04:32they call it a semi draw bias but that is fine with me I do probably hit it
04:37straight have a little bit of a fade so it did straighten it up. I think
04:40anecdotally I did feel that the big right miss was reduced with the new
04:44driver just because I think it's a little bit more forgiving and again the
04:47fact because of that draw bias. However the really big gain came for me in terms
04:51of distance in my fitting they said I would gain about 11 yards carry in
04:56practice the previous model went 256 yards but under with the Caloray it was
05:02going up to 269 yards. Now that is total distance so that's why it's a couple
05:07yards more than what the fitting said but it's really pleasing to see that
05:10what I'd experienced in the fitting bay what I were told would happen actually
05:14pretty much did happen when I was out on the course so that was great to see but
05:18what archers can really do is really take it stats to the next level and show
05:22you how much difference that actually means to your scores so they use
05:25something called strokes gained and that allows you to benchmark your performance
05:29against other players of a similar handicap. So I'm a three handicap and I
05:33was benchmarking myself against others and over the course of the season I had
05:38over a hundred shots with both clubs now with the previous model it was costing
05:44me what minus 0.14 shots per time that I hit the club whereas with the Caloray it
05:52was gaining me 0.07. Now these don't sound like very big numbers however I
05:57was also to work out how many times I hit the drivers so the previous model I
06:01was hitting about eight times around but with the Caloray I was hitting it
06:04actually ten times around and I think that came more because of the confidence
06:08I had with the club that I could use it more often so when you put those two
06:13numbers together if I'm using it ten times around I'm gaining 0.7 shots
06:18around with the Caloray whereas with the previous model if I use it eight times I'm
06:23losing 1.12 shots so when you take the difference between those two you can see
06:28that's 1.8 shots per round that I'd be gaining by having been fitted for a new
06:33driver which hopefully would suit my game a little bit better than it does
06:36today. Now that is quite a significant amount and I think really the gain you
06:41can see there came from probably the misses not being quite as big as they
06:44were before but also because I was actually that bit further down the
06:49fairway so I could hit a shorter second shot into the particular green.
06:56Well that's the end of another enjoyable round at the London Club here. Certainly I've
07:02enjoyed using the Caloray driver here and actually throughout the whole of the
07:05season and it's been great to have gone through the whole process where you've
07:09gone through a fitting, you've actually been promised some results and then
07:13been able to track the performance on the course throughout the whole year and
07:16see those results come to fruition. In terms of the club I think the Rogue ST
07:21Max has been a very forgiving club, it certainly worked for me. It's been able to
07:25combine forgiveness with performance and probably I can see it suiting quite a
07:29lot of players. If you feel you can improve your game then I recommend going
07:34for a fitting and getting the club that really suits your swing and hopefully it
07:38will lower your scores too.