NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Since debuting in June at the Memorial, Titleist’s GT line of drivers and fairway metals made an immediate splash across global tours.
Thirteen players put new GT driver models in play at the Memorial, and 19 players gamed them a week later in the U.S. Open, including Adam Scott (GT2) and Patrick Cantlay (GT2). All of them touted better spin rates and more yardage.
The rapid adoption kept increasing each week, with more than 100 players having used a GT driver on the PGA Tour by the Scottish Open, including: Max Homa (GT3), Tom Kim (GT3), Cameron Young (GT2), Justin Thomas (GT2), Byeong-Hun An (GT4), J.T. Poston (GT3), Will Zalatoris (GT2) and Nick Taylor (GT3). Billy Horschel and Justin Rose shared runner-up at the Open Championship as both gamed GT3 drivers.
That enthusiasm for putting GT2, GT3 and GT4 drivers in play extended to the DP World Tour (28 immediate moves to GT in its first week), LPGA Tour (12), Korn Ferry Tour (25) and on and on across the worldwide professional tours.
The list of players making the move to GT on the LPGA includes Jin Hee Im (GT3), Albane Valenzuela (GT3), Emily K. Pedersen (GT3), Frida Kinhult (GT3) and world No. 4 Jin Young Ko, who switched to GT2 from a competitive model.
Tour pros who made the switch have had a lot of positive things to say about it.
“It feels more solid to me. I know where the ball is better,” Horschel said. “Even the ones I missed, the dispersion is still tight. We haven’t lost anything. It’s faster, spin rate is more consistent.”
“Immediately I’m picking up a mile and a half of ball speed,” Zalatoris said. “That equates to about another 6-ish, 7 yards of carry. The feel is amazing. That’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve really picked up. And the first time I hit it, it was just this euphoric, really solid, really fast off the face. I always love kind of the dampened sound.”
Max Homa was told by J.J. Van Wezenbeeck, Titleist’s senior director of player promotions, that the GT3 was built for everything he liked in a driver, and his experience with it delivered.
“I’ve got the GT3, and I was beyond stoked,” Homa said. “The big benefit to me is that this driver likes to go higher with a little less spin. I struggle when I try to get height. I need to feel like I’m swinging and hitting a lower drive. [With GT] you can kind of play for a low one and it’s going to launch up in the air with very little spin.”
Cameron Young sounded off about the sound and shape of it, which perfectly suits his ears and eyes.
“There’s something rewarding about the sound it makes when you hit one in the middle,” Young said. “It just feels like it’s coming off really fast, which is a really rewarding kind of feeling.
“And the fact that it looks so much like what we’re used to and a shape that I think everybody likes, it’s nice to know that underneath [the technology] you’ve got some help, but at the same time it’s the same thing you’re used to. And the things that you like have stayed consistent.”
Scott Michaux