Titleist club introductions are the most interesting to me. Titleist is so bound by the tastes and sensibilities of their core market that all their clubs are designed for the elite golfer in mind. That market segment has aesthetic tastes so defined that each generation of drivers looks very much like the last.
The engineering solutions are obvious. Titleist renews its clubs biannually. A much more measured pace than the rest. It is the implementation of those technologies that endear Titleist to its market. The key to its success is subtlety. It needs to work with specific shapes so huge changes are out of the question. Integration and ingenuity are key.
I thought that improving on the 915 might be difficult but Titleist has once again proved me wrong. The 917 is an evolution of the hugely successful 915 line, one this author called the best Titleist metalwoods of all time.
The new 917 line of metalwoods was designed around the acronym F. A. S. T., which stands for Faster ball speeds, Adjustability, Sound that enhances feel and Trajectory control to better fit the golfer.
To get faster ball speeds, Titleist thinned out the edges of the club face and the outer edges of the Active Recoil Channel (ARC). The result is increased ball speed on both center and off-center hits. This means less lost distance on mishits.
Titleist may be a latecomer to having a fully adjustable driver. The Sure-Fit Hosel has been around for a few years now but having adjustable weights to influence trajectory is a new trick for them. They put a lot of thought into it.
Each driver comes with two weights. One neutral and the other with the weight based to one side. Flipping the one-sided weight around alters trajectory from right to left. The orientation of the weight in the clubhead was well-thought out, as well. It’s set at a 30-degree angle to the clubface with the toe side of the weight set closer to the face. This moves the center of gravity of the head closer to the clubface when in the “fade” position. This reduces the amount of spin the head will deliver for better performance in the wind. Very clever. An accessory set of weights are optional and will allow you to change the swing weight of the club, as well as affect its trajectory.
The unseen piece of technology at work with Titleist’s 917 line is the amount of work that went into making them sound good. Sound exerts much influence on the feel a club yields at impact. To that end, Titleist acoustically engineered the 917 line to be slightly quieter and denser feeling than the 915. They pulled it off, too. The 917 D3 I was fitted for felt markedly better than my 915.
According to Titleist fitting manager for Asia Phil Dimmock, the changes seem to have moved the 917 D2 closer to its slightly smaller sibling the D3 in terms of performance. A fitting demonstration with Dimmock and Titleist staff professional Migo Ochoa highlighted the effectivity of the new technology.
The adjustable parameters of the new 917 metalwoods make it extremely easy to properly fit golfers of all skill levels a key to getting the ultimate performance from any club. Working with two complete sets of head styles, Titleist now can build you a driver that you’ll swear came off the Tour van. They’re worth the price of entry but the assistance of a good fitter is the key to getting the most out of these clubs.
The new Titleist 917 D2 and D3 drivers and the F2 and F3 fairways are now at an Empire Golf proshop near you.