News
Finally, A Slice Killer 09/25/2006
FOR THOSE OF US WITH GOLF'S NO.1 MALADY, IT'S A BRIGHT DAY INDEED
We'll give it to you straight: It's all but impossible to hit a banana ball with Day Golf's DRIVE-TRU® big stick.
Lord knows we tried. During an hour-long practice tee session at Wolf Run Golf Club in Reno, Nev., blasting balls into a slight headwind, we injected every slicer's bugaboo we know into our swings to put inventor Mike Day's strange-looking but hacker-friendly club through its paces. Way-open stance. Ball-outside-the-left foot stance. Brutally open clubface. Jacked-up tee height. Exaggerated out-to-in downswing. You name the Golf 101 swing rule, we broke it. And the biggest bend this stick would give up was a slight push-fade that, on a standard 40-yard-wide fairway, would still find short grass or, at worst, the first cut of rough.
It took three and a half years for Day to perfect his product, which is just now finding a market throughout the West. A retired engineer who used to design high-voltage ceramic capacitors for the aerospace industry, Day took his favorite club - the long-defunct Power Pod, which debuted in the 1980s - and made it even better. As in bigger, lighter and decidedly devoid of slice-causing tendencies.
"Six different things need to happen for this club to work," says Day, who assembles his drivers in Minden, Nev., from 6-4 titanium heads and graphite shafts specially milled in China. It took me a long time to make it work, and I almost gave up at one point, but I told myself, ‘I'll try one more thing,' and that did it."
With a 390-cc head that, at address, looks more like a halved, semi-oblong grapefruit than a traditional driver, the DRIVE-TRU® takes some visual adjustment, but that can be a good thing. "It's a real eye-catcher," Day says. "If I'm demo-ing it somewhere, it'll stop people in their tracks. They'll hit it and if they're a slicer, they love it. If they're not, I'm honest and tell them it might be the right club for them."
Good thing for Day, about 90 percent of mid- and high-handicappers are used to watching their tee shots "exit, stage right," and this weapon (offered with Tru-Temper EI70-2 graphite shafts in regular, stiff and ladies/senior flex) is right up their alley. Severe slicers will find themselves launching a manageable fade, while straighter hitters can coax a tidy, high-flying, low-spin draw off of the club's extra-big, circular sweet spot. It might cause teaching pros a few lessons, but what the heck - our PGA friends can make up the hours helping folks with their putting, short game and iron play.
Senior golfers are particularly enamored of the DRIVE-TRU®'s properties. Day has found great success in Palm Springs, home to thousands of golf-crazy retirees. Many of them report a four to eight-stroke improvement on their scorecards. Now Day is out to convert the rest of the West.
"If you want to cure your slice, you've got to try this club," he says.
We did, and we're believers.
$295.00 - www.DayGolf.com | (775) 782-3939
VW - Fairways & Greens, Reno NV.