The Year’s Gear in Review

Of the 50+ gear items we featured in 2017, five stood above the others…

By Tony Dear

We’ve featured more than 50 pieces of golf gear on this page this year. All were newsworthy to some degree—otherwise, we  wouldn’t have featured them. Inevitably though, some equipment was just a little bit more special than the rest.

Here are five products we genuinely believe made the game more fun for everyone, and enabled you to play better golf (click on the dateline hyperlinks for more).

Callaway Epic Driver (January 17) and Epic Star (September 20)
Equipment geeks got to ring in the new year with Callaway’s launch of the Great Big Bertha Epic and Epic Sub-Zero (lower-spinning) drivers.

Ninety-four per cent of Callaway staffers had the new club, featuring “Jailbreak Technology,” in their bag for the Sony Open in January, and the company posted impressive sales figures all year. By the end of the third quarter, net sales had risen from $707 million (in the equivalent timeframe in 2016) to $857 million—a 21% increase. The company did introduce plenty of top-quality gear besides the Epic, but the success of 2017 can be very largely attributed to the driver with the two titanium bars connecting the crown, face and sole.

Then, in September, Callaway introduced a lightweight (286-gram) version of the driver called the Epic Star.

 

Adidas TOUR360 Boost 2.0  (October 25)
The ninth version of adidas’s superb TOUR360 hit stores in the middle of October, and featured what the manufacturer called “subtle but significant” changes from the eighth.

A new collar design with leather lining, a new heel shape, and a toe-down look complimented the familiar 360-degree wrap, Torsion Tunnel, and the Boost mid-sole first introduced in 2015.

Dustin Johnson had asked adidas not to change a thing about the original TOUR360 Boost, saying it couldn’t be improved. The company went ahead with the changes, however, and Johnson won the Northern Trust in August when wearing the shoe for the first time. It didn’t necessarily prove the Boost 2.0 was better than its predecessor, but it was a pretty convincing stamp of approval.

 

Mizuno MP-18 (August 14)
The legend continued in early August when Mizuno introduced its latest forged iron, the MP-18, which actually came in four versions and featured the company’s Grain Flow Forging HD which focused grains lower in the clubhead—specifically the point of impact.

The new forging process was developed in conjunction with Mizuno’s forging partner, Chuo in Hiroshima, and improved the sound and feel of impact—something most Mizuno users would have regarded as impossible up to that point.

The line consisted of the flagship muscleback blade (MP-18), a forged cavity-back (MP-18 SC), a multi-material model (MP-18 MMC) featuring an 8g titanium weight in the back of the clubhead, and tungsten in the toe of the 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-irons, to improve forgiveness and stability, and a low-mid iron version of the MMC (MMC Fli-Hi, available in 2-6 iron)—a classic-looking Mizuno iron that performed much like a hybrid.

 

Srixon Z-Star  (January 31)
In the middle of January, a large box containing ten dozen Srixon balls—four dozen Z-Star, three dozen Z-Star XV, and three dozen Q-Star Tour—arrived at CAG World Headquarters. After launching so early in the year, the Srixon trio risked getting usurped in the pecking order, but they have remained prominent in the ball pocket all year long.

The star of the show was the new Z-Star, but its box-mates got plenty of outings too, largely because the differences between them all weren’t terribly substantial. The disparities focused mainly on compression—Z-STAR XV had a compression rating of 105, Z-STAR 88, and Q-STAR TOUR 75—though their price was also fairly noteworthy. The top-of-the-line Z-Star had a retail price of $39.99, making it significantly less expensive than some of its Tour-quality competitors.

 

Decade (May 22)
Scott Fawcett’s journey from pro golfer to pro poker player to electricity broker to golf training aid inventor got our attention in May.

Actually, calling Decade, the course management system Fawcett devised and continues to develop, a “training aid” is a little misleading. It’s not something you hold or wear, attach to your club; and it doesn’t alter your swing in any way.

Decade, built after analyzing millions of stats from the PGA Tour’s ShotTracker software, helps you understand which shot gives you the best chance of success. The premise is simple, the research thorough, the product credible (thanks to who invented it, and the numerous Tour pros and other elite golfers who use it) …and the results very satisfying. Here is something that will improve your scores with relatively little input from you.

With so much innovation going on, we can’t wait to see what 2018 will bring on the equipment front.