Golf Monthly UK – August 2019

Don’t play the

speed lottery

WITH TAYLORMADE’S NEW SPEED INJECTED TWIST

FACE, YOU’RE GUARANTEED MAXIMUM SPEED

P

reviously when buying a

driver, variance in

manufacturing

tolerances meant it was

a bit of a lottery when it

came to how fast the ball would

come off the clubface.

Of course, none were beyond the

legal limits of COR, but some perhaps

were not as close as they could have

been. This is because of the various

processes that each head goes

through, including grinding, polishing,

painting and so on.

The fastest driver clubheads or

‘spicy’ heads were reserved for tour

players, while the general public often

had to make do with clubheads that

weren’t quite as fast. But in 2019,

TaylorMade has put a stop to this

‘speed lottery’ thanks to a unique

innovation called Speed Injecting.

Right at the end of the lengthy

manufacturing process when the head

is basically fi nished, TaylorMade ‘CT

tests’ the face. CT stands for

Characteristic Time, and is a measure

of the spring-like

eff ect of the face. The

testing process involves a

pendulum that measures the

number of microseconds a

metal ball is in contact with the face

when it is swung against it.

A higher CT indicates the club has a

higher spring-like potential and can

impart more energy to the ball, making

ball speed higher. The CT limit is

currently 239μs (units) plus 18μs for

manufacturing tolerance, so most

manufacturers aim for 257μs.

“Hopefully they will all be slightly

over the CT limit at this point,” Tomo

Bystedt, senior director of product

creation for TaylorMade, explains. “We

then enter the data into a computer to

determine how much resin needs to be

injected into the heel and toe ports.

The resin then cures (hardens) to

resist some of the flexibility in the face

and we measure the head again to

make sure it’s right on the limit.

“Different CT machines might

produce different readings so we need

to be careful, but it’s going to be a lot

closer than heads in the past.”

Not only are the faces fast, but

they’re also twisted. The Twist Face

technology continues from M3 and

M4, which means they are more open

and lofted in the high toe and more

closed and less lofted in the low heel.

This produces more consistent spin

and a tighter dispersion on the most

common mishits.

So wherever you strike the ball on

the M5 and M6 drivers, you’re

guaranteed maximum speed, distance

and accuracy from TaylorMade’s

Speed Injected Twist Face.

GUARANTEED SPEED