Taylormade M2 Driver 2016 Review
Lacy Tortelli
The big story for these drivers is forgiveness. TaylorMade has created its first driver with 10k MOI points. To read all the finer details of why this matters, you can see our full overview here: TaylorMade Qi10 Drivers First Look
The shorter version is TaylorMade has leveraged a multi-material design, relocated mass, and improved shapes to achieve maximum forgiveness within each model while claiming to still retain all the speed (and therefore distance) characteristics.
Other big changes to the driver include the face and crown. Where previous versions for years had a clear distinction between where the titanium support met the carbon crown, the Qi10 features a clean glossy black crown with a new blue carbon face. The blue replaces the red of the Stealth models and is their third generation of carbon driver face.
Career wise I am a finance guy by trade and am a CPA and have my MBA. From 2010 until late last year I was in the casino business and as mentioned above I either lived away from home or travelled so much that I was never home very much. I spent close to a decade with the Genting Group so if you have ever been to a Resorts World property in the US I was part of the design team as well as the opening team for just about every property. Now that I have decided to grow up and stop playing casino I work from home four days a week and am the CFO for a software company that develops slot machine content as well as iGaming infrastructure. It is a good gig and I am starting to get adjusted to being home all the time and working a more traditional job. Overall it was a positive move and allows me to have a little more free time on my hands
My game these days can be summed up as I can make a 7 from places I should make 4 and 4 from places I should make a 7. I have always had distance on my side and can still move it pretty well for someone my age. Iron play has always been good and really good from 100 yards and in. Putting was my nemesis for a lot of years, but I have finally tamed the beast to get to where I am average at worst and have days that I can make everything I look at.
So the last question is what do I want to get out of this test? Well, quite simply I am chasing distance for the first time in my life. Chasing may not be the right term but more appropriately preserving distance. I am playing CB irons for the first time since college because well I am just not long enough with blades anymore. I have also moved full time to graphite in my irons as being a pitcher for over 30 years is starting to catch up with me physically. In full disclosure the last TM driver that was in my bag was the R1 and that was just a short stint. I would have to go way back to the R7 to say that I had a TM driver in my bag for and extended period of time. The M series and I just never got along for various reasons and it just became a brand that I was not interested in. Will the Qi10 change all that???? Stick around and we can find out together.
I plan to test this driver primarily on the range to start since well I live in NY and we are in later winter. I will try and provide as many numbers as I can from launch monitor data or as much as I am comfortable with. I tend to not try and get caught up in the numbers but prefer to go by the eye test. As for competition I have two drivers for comparison; my gamer which is TSR 3 with a HZRDUS RDX Smoke Blue 60 TX and a Rogue ST Max LS with an AD DI 7x turned down two degrees. Looking forward to the process and maybe I will discover a driver I would have normally overlooked in the new releases.
Now onto the looks category. In a word this driver is just stunning! I like that they have moved away from the red and black and into the black and blue color way; it is really a nice look. The head cover is done really well and one little touch that was nice is the TM logo that is on the bottom of the head cover is a soft plastic that actually flexes a little bit. Nice touch that shows someone spent some time designing the head cover. One immediate reaction I had to this driver is that it looks like it has no loft on it. Not sure if this is the Twist Face effect or not, but it has a very tall flat appearing face. I do really like that new Infinity Carbon Crown that they are using for this driver. One of my put offs with TM in the past was the two tone top that I just could never get used to looking at. The line that contrasts the face to the crown was also a really nice addition, helps a lot with the alignment of the club head which is a nice subtle touch.
As I said in my initial impressions this club is just a beautiful looking driver and has a classic shape. In the past I was not a fan of the color scheme as well as how the carbon crown was blended into the face. In the Qi10 they just got it right. From a shelf appeal standpoint I would grab this and give it a swing just on looks alone. The feel and the sound match the looks and it all is just spot on. The feel to me is powerful with a nice crisp crack at impact. Also a huge fan of the blue face over the red that was in the Stealth and an A+ to TaylorMade as after close to 1,000 balls hit the face looks like new with little to no signs of wear.
This aspect has been a mixed bag for me and the static numbers in a word were poor. If I had not been able to hit this driver outdoors it would not have made it past swing number five on Trackman. It seemed about every fourth or fifth ball would result in a low spin dipper that went nowhere but down and hard left. I should note that I have not hit one ball outdoors that I was able to replicate this shot and saw good results on balls not hit into a net or a screen. I am rating this lower mainly due to the fact that if I had an indoor fitting with this driver I would have just said not for me and moved on. I know that everyone wants data and numbers but it just was not working for me during this test and after two indoor sessions on Trackman I just decided to see what I could get on the course as that is where it really matters.
From a ball flight standpoint this driver launches low for me at around 10.2* on average and spins just over 2,000 RPMs on quality strikes. Due to my issues with getting dipping flights indoors it lead to a lot of heel strikes just to avoid the shot I never wanted to see. Again I just needed to get out of playing data scientist and just get out and play and use the eye test and Arccos to gather the numbers that were meaningful to me.
The initial on course experience for me was at best up and down to put it in the best light. The good was really, really good and the mediocre was worse than what I would expect. I did give a mystery shaft a try for part of the test and it has some promise but may be too radical of a change for me right now. I was able to do a mini fitting with this club and the fitter put me in a UST Quantum Purple which is a very light shaft for me but the idea was to give a little more launch and keep the stability that I like. Results were mixed so I stayed with the HZRDUS Smoke RDX Blue for the majority of the test. In a nutshell the driver became a numbers hero and with some work I could learn to trust it on the course.
#14 was straight into a 40 mph wind and will just illustrate how hard the day was. I had to wait for the gusts to die down on the green since I was physically incapable of taking the putter back into the wind.
At the end of the day I had zero balls OB or in any trouble and was just able to keep it in play. I ended up with a 75 on the day and had the low gross round of the day by 8 shots when I left after lunch to head home.
This round got me thinking about something that I always had top of mind when I was playing a lot on Long Island and that was how does my equipment handle the wind. I started this test saying I want to preserve distance as I am getting older but now realize that playability is more important. In the six rounds that I have played with the Qi10 LS in the bag I have not had one penalty stroke off the tee which may be a record for me.
I really needed the last round of this test to reset my expectations. The Qi10 LS is just as long as anything I have hit the last several years but the stability in flight is not something that I was used to. My early testing would bare this out as I had many times that I played to avoid the big miss and erred on being safe. Had I just trusted it a bit more then this would have been a much more positive review period. That being said the outlook is positive and I am no longer counting down the days until the review period was ending.
The only real knock that I have right now on the Qi10 LS it is a bit hard to turnover with the flat stock setting and just the design as a whole. I did move the sliding weight all the way to the heel and that was some help but this is a driver that is meant to be straight to a fade for most. I am toying with pulling the adapter and keeping to standard loft and put it in the upright setting, but that is for a later time.
The in between is something that may seem minor but is a bit of an issue for me and that is the TaylorMade loft sleeve. I just seems like a not great design and it was a pain in the back side getting the head back on the shaft when I had it off the several times that I needed to pull the head. Could be that I am just used to Callaway or Titleist which to me are the best adapters out of all the major OEMs.
Thanks again to TaylorMade and MyGolfSpy for allowing me to participate in this test and give my thoughts on one of the hottest drivers of 2024. My testing was a bit mixed but in the end there was a lot more good than bad and I found a driver that could be a staple in the bag for a few seasons (I am reformed and not buying every new club on the market). The mixed was more of trying to stick to initial goals of the test and not considering if this was the best for where my game is right now. The other positive that came from this testing period was my eyes were opened to a brand that for the most part I had written off for the last decade or so. The entire top end of my bag right now is TaylorMade with only the Sim2 hybrid not making the cut. When I sat down after my round yesterday and thought honestly about how the Qi10 LS performed I could not think that anything else would be better for me right now. If this driver performed the way it has in real rough weather I am looking forward to see how it performs under normal conditions. I will be popping back into the thread to give and update and a mid year review once we get to a more forgiving time of the year.
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