DemolitionMan

Sort of a burgundy, or a very deep red. Not as bright as the typical Cameron "red".

How is this for bad a$$??? Let me know when you drop a zero off that GD Japan price. Nice putter!

I cannot remember the exact details of the specs but the regular retail model of the R7 will have a closed face, some lofts more than others, the TP version will have square to open faces depending on the loft. So face angle alone stops anyone from just adding weights to go from retail to TP. That being said, I suppose it is possible someone else can make their own weight plugs to sell as an aftermarket option. I do not know if their are patent issues (probably not), but I do know the market for selling such an add on is pretty small and not worth a sizeable investment. Ask Joe how man Freaktura weights he sold. It's more of a case of him providing a service to his customers rather than making good profits. Personally, I would rather open a lemonade stand than sell TM weight plugs.

This is surprising. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=3677124668 Older MR-23 Driver for $400!!!!

Once? Wow, good for you. If you do not sell them here, I will gladly buy them back from you at $65 and just give them away to someone with a little more seriousness about their game - maybe to someone who will at least try them twice. :roll: And people wonder why I am in no hurry to work on another deal......

Great idea. What I don't get about TS is that all they have to do is take the great driver setup they apparently have in the non conforming models and make a slightly thicker face. HiCor does not mean more forgiving, it's achieved elsewhere. It did not used to be that bad, the ProSpec X Drive 315 was forgiving enough. BTW, 510TPs are forgiving but still require sufficient swing speed and accuracy to get best results. In the wrong hands, any deep face driver is big trouble.

After hitting the X-Drive 390 for a little while today now I see that Tourstage makes two kinds of drivers - impossible to hit Pro Specs and non-conforming rockets. What happenned to those guys? Two years ago TS was just as good as TM in the Driver department, now they are has beens. 510 TPs and DF tour issues are way, way better than any Tourstage driver out there. It's really disappointing because I want to play Tourstage up and down the bag, but I am going to have to get in the way back machine to find a decent performing driver. No wonder TS struggles in the US Market with the Z series drivers, they flat out suck compared to what Cally, TM, and Titleist are doing. Get with it guys!

Thanks Johnny. So is it bigger than the J310? :)

US Shops can only dream of Japan like margins for clubs. Here is another example of how tough the golf business is. Cost for the Cleveland Launcher is around $240. Suggested retail is around $475 which would suggest a healthy margin. But Launchers were never sold at that price upon release. Typical price now is $299 after briefly starting at $349. So at $50 net per club before expenses of a shop, how many Launchers can a shop sell to survive in the long run? Not enough.

The retail version in Jpn has a retail price of 80,000yen $780.00. my cost on the R7 Max is 50,900yen $490.00. The retail price of the TP in JPN will be 98,000yen with a cost of 56,000yen. What mag is this info from Zip? I doubt the U.S retail will be higher than the Japanese retail. 1300.00 isnt that bad for the first one sold, Im just happy someone was wrong about it going for $3000.00. Not to upset anyone or cause business issues, but I am getting word that cost is lower. Like around $300 for the standard retail R7. Not sure on the TP. I will find out at the end of the week when I look at actual invoices. No, I do not work at a golf shop, but I once saw one on TV. :lol:

I couldn't agree more. That's great but I already get sh*t from a certain member in my foursome who thinks my TM tour is illegal because it is so long. I cannot imagine ever hearing the end of it if I had a 9.5 Maru. I bet it is a great club. A few well placed grams inside the head makes a world of difference.

Well there is one guy with Maru in the bag, next??? :lol:

Between those two, pick the X Drive. The MR-23 driver is a disaster. It is by far the most unforgiving driver on the market. Everyone on the golf forums who wanted to hype the driver has pretty much changed their mind. I doubt there are more than 3 of them in play on a regular basis among the members. I tried 10 different shafts and none of them could get a decent medium ball flight on a regular basis. The only higher ballflight came from teeing the ball way up and then hope you hit the sweet spot the size of a thumbtack because if you missed to the toe it was way high right shot and if you miss a little towards the heel you will damage tree trunks. Major, major disappointment from Tourstage to have one of the best looking drivers and at the same time worse performing.

Makes sense. Most TM retail heads are closed face. When they are measured with the closed face they get one loft, then the face is squared up the loft goes up. The only thing I would be suspect of is something like the R540 shown at 9.5 but a 0.2 open face making it 9.3 at square. I do not believe the manufacturers are that consistent. I would be more willing to beleive that the R540 is intended to be square, but may come off the assembly line anywhere from +0.2 to -0.2 face angle. Speaking of manufacturing tolerances, is this why Nakashima is making a selling point of labeling their driver lofts more precisely? They ask for a batch of 10* heads, then measure, and you get heads actually labeled 9.8 - 10.4. I like this thread, one of the more intelligent ones I have seen in weeks on any message board.

There are two issues that need to be addressed. One, are you measuring the face while it is square or while it sits open? The so called industry standard for measuring driver loft and stamping the head is to measure the club while it is in address position whether that be with an intended closed or opened face. But of course, we all know that OEM measurements are not always accurate - many a driver has been misstamped or manufactured without too many variables. So it really cannot be trusted to routinely say oh a driver is stamped X, it's open Y, so here is the loft at impact. And then there is all this business of the actual swing put on the ball which is why this discussion is way too scientific...especially when dealing with PGA Pros. They do not get it and most tour van people do not get it. They just know from experience that if a tour player is trying to get a lower ball flight or favor a certain pattern, then open the face a little. If that works a little, but not enough, then open it more. With a ton of driver heads at their disposal and with pros not paying a dime, trial and error is the rule, not a scientific calculation. The results on the tee are far more important than the why. Cheers Joe!

Demoman, help me see if I've got this right..so by rotating the clubhead just prior to striking the ball that open face and becomes square to closed which effectively delofts the club making the ball fly lower? so if someone who had a swing where they rotated thru like that started with a square to closed face would they not deloft that club also and hit a low screamer left? this would be because at impact the face would be more closed if I have this correct? then the reason open faces fly lower is not because it's open but because it has been swung in a manner which effectively closes up the face at impact? and why most guys can't hit open faces anywhere but high right is because they don't rotate enough thru impact... I am confused because it seems to me that if you can hit an open face lower because you deloft it during the swing then doesn't it follow that if you start with a closed face and swing the same way you hit a shot even lower and with more hook than a duck? assistance please You got it right for the most part. That's why all the BSG membership being the tour pros that they are cannot hit closed face drivers. They must have square face tour issue for fear of hooking the hell out of the ball!!! :o :o :lol: :lol: Just kidding. Sometimes I crack myself up. Anyways, you got the theory right. A driver starting at closed face has the loft stated on the club, that's how the factory would measure and stamp. Let's call that 10*. If you lined up with the face closed and over rotated to close even more at impact, you will get 9*, maybe 8*, who knows. Being that weekenders rarely over rotate, they most likely will come into the ball with the face squared up and actually get 11* or 12*. But let's not confuse face loft with talent (or lack of). If you have a big time over the top move and cast the club, who cares how much you rotate, you are not going to hit a hook. If you have a good inside path swing with a closed face and over rotate, then yes a hook is likely. Just keep in mind, some swing flaws out there can more than compensate for loft changes in the club and produce some really awful looking shots.

Here is VJ just after impact. Major rotation! He needs to start with an open face or he is in big trouble!

OMG!!! I need to find a new club builder. What on earth are you talking about? You are going to confuse people. While your logic holds true based on your garage science, you are discounting the point of the way the club is setup at impact. I will attempt to explain what another caller tried to tell you in VJ's example. VJ has major forearm rotation and hand action through the ball. If I showed you a picture of him just after impact, his hand looks like it is going to fly off the club and is wrist is so torqued you think it's broken. So let's go with the idea that VJ will square the face at impact, no problem, maybe even shut it a bit. I don't know what loft his driver is, but at 9.5* and 2* open, he will actually get an effective loft of 7.5* if impacting with a square face. Why? Because you use loft as you rotate an open faced club into a square position. Keep in mind, loft is measured with the club in the intended start/setup position. So the 9.5 represents the head sitting on the ground with an open face to target. If you rotated the club to square up the face with the target line at address, you just lost loft. Try it, it's easy to see at 2*, not as easy at 1*. The converse is true too for hackers who play closed Callaways or Cobras. If the loft is measured at 9* with a 2* closed face. At address, the driver points left. If you rotated it open 2* to square up to the target, you would notice the loft increasing. This change in loft at impact is more of a driver/fairway wood issue. If you rotated the face slightly open or closed to square up a driver, the face still points at the target. So you are changing effective loft. But try this with a wedge. When you open up a wedge to increase loft for a higher pitch shot or a flop. Where does the face point? Open wedge face points to the right, not to the target, so you adjust your stance to get a ballflight on target. You do not have to do that with driver. So back to the original issue. An open face on the driver in and of itself does not allow for a lower ball flight. But a tour pro swing at impact squares up the face at impact and decreases the loft producing lower ballflight. An amateur hits the high right shot because they cannot rotate fast enough to square up the face at least one more degree than where it started.

Chris Sweet, you answered my question that I posted somewhere else on import. I might be interested in one of these Titleist CBS41 bags. I will PM you if I decide to get one. Funny I emailed this guy for a BIN price and he wanted $350., what a joke! thanks Hyun Jin Was his name Jimmy Walker? DYNO-MITE!

I couldn't agree more! :wink:

Coincidence? Saturday, I was playing Pacific Dunes with three buddies. We were all playing Tourstage irons, but that's not important. We had been hounded all day by this foursome not because they were playing so fast, but in the windy conditions one of my buddies was really slow, his 25 hcp could not keep up. So, here we were on the 14th and I knock one to about 10 feet, the other three guys are right, left, and unbelievably long. So a hunting they go for their balls. I got tired of waiting, so I rolled in my 10 footer for birdie, then walked over to help search for lost balls. Well, these guys took so long and here comes the other foursome behind us. I tell my buddies, let's just go to the next tee and quit holding these guys up, you can all write down par. So, in the rush to get to the next tee and tee off, I forgot to pick my ball up out of the cup. As my friends are teeing off on 15, out of nowhere a ball lands at the back of the tee box. I had no idea where it came from but it reminded me that I had left my ball in the cup at #14. Oh well..... So Ari, did you find my ball?

So in the future we see Gauge Putters and G-Zone putters in the U.S. market both with a caliper on the putter???? Market confusion is always the best way to capture market share...not. I was never much enamored with Gauge as a name for a putter, but it was growing on me. But G-Zone??? What the hell does that mean?

Actually, the two of them were practicing at Isleworth last fall and Tiger gave it to her. She was trying to copy some of his shots with her own wedge and could not do it, TW letr her try it, then said "keep it." It has been in her bag ever since. A few weeks after getting it she made that long bunker shot at the Skins game to win big money. It was in the news quite a few times last year.

Whomever is handling the refinishing services, please PM me with a price. Thx.

Whoa Joe! Translation please? Haven't heard that word before. Mixing in a little Indonesian?