Driver Overload? Taylormade Set to Release New Drivers...Again

Well, another golf season, another group of Taylormade drivers ready to release: the R9 Supertri and Burner Superfast. These newest drivers are equipped with the latest technology to make them the longest and most customizable yet.

Wait...Haven't we heard this before?

I'm pretty sure Taylormade said the same thing about the Burner '08 drivers, and the R9, and the R7 Limited, and the Tour Burner...you get the idea. By my count, Taylormade has released a whopping twenty drivers (including the Supertri and Superfast) and their respective counterparts since 2007. Twenty. By comparison, Titleist has released five drivers in that same time period.

Now, I'm not knocking the quality of Taylormade drivers at all (I play a '07 Burner TP myself), but I do think all these new models are marketing ploys that aren't that much different than the previous ones. I've been in search of a new driver lately, not so much that the Burner is causing any problems (it's been great, though it does launch a tad high), but to see whether all these new technologies would really help my game. But when I looked at the new R9's and the R7 Limited, I could hardly discern any difference between them and my "old" Burner.

I was fitted on a launch monitor, and the R9 460 actually launched higher than my Burner, with about the same distance. And only with a custom shaft (which would have cost me an extra $100) on the R9 TP could I find any difference at all with my current driver. That difference was marginal at best; I don't think its worth shelling out $500 for a 3 yard increase in driving distance, do you? With the R7 Limited, which I took out on the course, I found that it was actually shorter than my '07 Burner TP.

Now I know I did not try all of what Taylormade has had to offer, but my point is this: If a 3 year old driver can match or even exceed the performance of the latest technology, why even bother with spending the extra money? I don't know, maybe Taylormade found something really good with the '07 Burner TP, since their new drivers have failed to impress me.

Now the plus side with the plethora of drivers that Taylormade has released for us consumers is that the previous models reduce ridiculously fast. For example, I bought my driver in the fall of 2008, barely a year after it came out for $200, half of its original price. You browse around eBay, and you'll find Taylormade drivers that touted $500 price tags 6 months before going for obscenely low prices.

Again, there is nothing wrong with the Taylormade drivers themselves; in my opinion, they are the best drivers out on the market (only the G10 and 909 could even come close to the Taylormade drivers I've tried in terms of distance and forgiveness). But they seriously need to reconsider the frequency of their releases, as they lose the anticipation factor other companys have when new products are released. Everyone was abuzz when the new Titleist 909 line came out, but Taylormade's R9?

"Again? They're releasing another driver? Ha, pretty soon we'll be at R15 before you can blink."