I went into the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside with my favorite driver. I didn’t want or need anything from the session, which put pressure directly on Titleist Master Fitter and dear friend Lucas Bro to get more meat on the bone when I was already completely dyed. My goal was not just to chase the speed of the green ball; it was about finding the pure comfort of the course, the stability and the window that allows me to stand on the tee box and just send with complete freedom.
What I entered was also well written. I play a TaylorMade Qi4D (9@8.5) bias, it has one miss and gives amazing launch numbers (162 mph, 12 launch, 2400RPM spin). I’ve used it in competitions, I’ve driven it better than in previous years and most importantly, I TRUST it.
At this point in the game, that word “trust” is HUGE.
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Fitting
Lucas first broke down the key engineering behind the new GTS line. He showed me the thermoformed body, which is a split-mass technology that places all the weight on the large edges of the head. It gives you six independent center of gravity positions for each position to play with, allowing you to control rotation up to 1,000 RPM.
We started with a GTS4 head with a forward weight to look for a low-spin option. I immediately paddled to look at the address, and the flight of the ball was a sharp, heavy bullet. But when Lucas turned me on the GTS2 with the weight all the way to show me the difference, it actually slowed me down. My clubhead speed slowed because I could feel the head trying to escape itself, forcing me to fight my natural release pattern. It’s a great example of why getting the right stuff.
Titleist GTS4 Custom Driver
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From there, we moved on to the GTS3, and the numbers started to surprise. I’ve seen ball speeds jump up to 163 and 164 mph, which at 49 and in early morning weather in Oceanside, Calif., isn’t too bad. Although I saw a lot of ball speed with the GTS3, my contact with the middle of the face (ie hitting it without the improved face part) wasn’t as good as I would have liked, and that aspect these days is enough to turn me off. Honestly from a numbers perspective, the GTS3 was a better tick than the GTS4, and what set my hair back was the forgiveness of the off-center hits. I’ve caught a few toe-bangers who tend to lose three to five miles per hour and fall into the abyss – but the GTS’s surface technology holds its own. I actually got ball speed on the top toe mishit, going 162.5 mph because of the way they arranged the face topology.
There was something about GTS4
Over time, my feelings and most importantly my eye, kept going back to the GTS4, and it ended up being the best setup for me. There is something to be said about optics and how they can affect how you react to the club. The GTS4 sits extremely square to my eye and I feel comfortable drawing it, while the GTS3, although faster overall, has a slightly open look to it in the center, which means to me I have to work harder to turn it and keep it from going out to the right. Righteous error is the bane of my existence.
To lock in the final build, we played around with the SureFit hosel, eventually taking the 8-degree head and kicking it up to the D3 setting to get 8.75 degrees of loft and a straight lie angle. We also threw heavy weight into the head because I have a lot of moving parts in my swing and I need to feel the club through every change. Getting it down to a D4 swing weight only helped ensure consistency in my approach which ended up winning the day against my opponent.
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In the end, this qualification wasn’t about a spectacular burst of distance; it was a subtle victory. The GTS gave me a remarkably consistent peak height and a solid standard deviation, but more importantly, it reduced the visual tax of my swing. This setup requires very little manual manipulation on my part to find the fairway.
On the golf course, that means a bad swing turns into a playable miss instead of a scorecard-killing double bogey. I will take it. 10/10 Titleist, no other notes.
