Whenever I start thinking about things, I hear Crash Davis somewhere in the back of my cerebral cortex.
Don’t think, Meat. It can only hurt the ball club.
That nagging measure of conscience, however, won’t stop me from the following declaration.
We, meaning you, the golfer, and we, the golf media, are thinking about Tour Edge Exotics all wrong.
As in incorrectly. Bass-ackwards also works. We’re so far off base, friends, that if my grandmother were on the mound, she could pick us off with ease, and she’s been pitching for the (heavenly) Angels since 1989.
We’re talking wrong.
I’m guessing most of the brains behind the eyeballs reading this article think of Tour Edge Exotics as a “value proposition.” Nice clubs, decent performance at a modest price. That’s understandable.
It’s also wrong.
This year’s MyGolfSpy driver testing suggests … no, it insists … that you stop thinking of Tour Edge Exotics as a value proposition and start thinking of it as a golf performance decision.
Not an alternative. Not a price-based option. An active decision based on performance.
Not sure if that’s what you were expecting but that’s the message we’re bringing today so buckle up, buttercup, this is gonna be a wild ride.
Why we’re wrong about Tour Edge Exotics
Seriously, when you think of Tour Edge Exotics, specifically the new Exotics Max driver, as a performance decision rather than a value option, your view of the golf equipment world gets much clearer.
Virtually every year, Tour Edge has an iron, fairway wood or driver that is a medal-stand performer in our testing. It happens often enough that it’s really not valid to say Tour Edge punches above its weight class. That the Exotics Max driver finished top-four overall in this year’s driver testing and in a virtual dead heat for first in the mid swing speed category should tell you something.
“We knew we had a good driver,” Duffy Callahan, Tour Edge Director of Tour Operations and National Fitting Accounts, tells MyGolfSpy. “But you don’t really know until you get out there and test against the competition.”
Believe it or not, OEMs don’t do head-to-head testing against their competitors’ new models to the same level as MyGolfSpy does. They may, either internally or through a third-party tester, compare their new driver against their competitors’ drivers from the previous year. In many cases, tests such as MyGolfSpy’s are the first glimpse OEMs get as to how their new gear stacks up.
As a remote staff writer, I’m not privy to how our Most Wanted testing progresses. I learn who wins pretty much the same way you do. That’s why, once the mid swing speed results came out, I needed to pack up my 65-year-old, 94-mph swing and give the Tour Edge Exotics Max a try.
Can it compete with my gamers from 2025, the Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond and my beloved Cleveland HiBore XL?
Turns out I was quite surprised. But that’s only because my thinking was all wrong.
Getting fitted for the Exotics Max
I find myself in Chicago often for business so I was able to arrange a fitting session at the Tour Edge facility in Batavia. Gear performance aside, the house that Tour Edge founder David Glod has built is impressive. The company can turn around any custom order, whether it’s for a set of irons or a single metalwood, within 48 hours.
My fitting session with Callahan started with the new Exotics LS model. LS, of course, stands for Low Spin.
“The biggest thing with fitting is to start by ruling things out,” says Callahan. “We want to eliminate what we can early, whether it’s for a Tour player or an amateur. It’s better to find the things we can say ‘no’ to right out of the gate.”
It took a handful of swings for me to decide on my own that the LS wasn’t going to work. No matter what we tried, I just didn’t have the swing speed to get the thing up in air for an appreciable amount of time.
“The LS definitely works for golfers who have massive ball speed and need to take a lot of spin out,” explains Callahan. “Golfers sometimes gravitate toward the LS because they think it’ll go farther. But when they hit the Max, the forgiveness and the bigger face works out so much better.”
Everyone has a 10K driver. Is the Tour Edge different?
I wouldn’t say Tour Edge is doing 10K any differently than anyone else. But they have been able to craft a 10K driver that doesn’t look like an oil can on a stick.
Before we go any further, let’s get a handle on this 10K MOI thing. You could say it’s a made-up number and you wouldn’t be wrong. The USGA limits heel-toe MOI to 5,900 g · cm². 10K MOI combines that number with crown-sole MOI. If the two combined exceed the 10K threshold, well, you have a 10K MOI driver.
There’s nothing magical about 10K other than it signifies that the driver is pretty stable and forgiving. 10K drivers tend to go straighter on heel or toe strikes and offer more consistent ball speeds over a wider area of the face. That bore itself out in MyGolfSpy testing as the Exotics Max finished tops in both accuracy and forgiveness for mid swing speeds.
On the other hand, 10K drivers do tend to be on the spinny side and all that forgiveness comes with a ball-speed penalty. The Exotics Max finished middle of the pack for spin with nearly 400 more rpm than the lowest-spinning driver for mid swing speeds, the Callaway Quantum Triple Diamond. It did, however, finish slightly better than the middle of the pack in both carry and total distance. Take that with a grain of salt, however, as in both cases it finished only five yards – 15 feet – behind the leaders in both of those categories.
“With drivers, everyone has the same goal: Hit it far and hit it straight,” Callahan explains. “We knew the Max would have a little more spin but getting up to 10K gave us more forgiveness. That’s when we saw our distance increase.”
Fitting into the Tour Edge Exotics Max driver
With the LS dismissed, the Max became the choice. While 10K worth of MOI carries a ball-speed penalty, forgiveness tends to make up for it.
“Any time you have a larger face, you have more space to flex,” says Callahan. “The 10K gives us a bigger footprint and a bigger face which leads to better ball speed over a wider area.”
Yes, center-strike ball speed is regulated, maxed out, blah, blah, blah. None of us, however, hits the center every time. We mere mortals appreciate the extra wiggle room.
For shafts, Tour Edge has an adequate no-upcharge offering. We started with the stock Fujikura Ventus Blue (non-VeloCore version) shaft. It worked okay, but at Callahan’s suggestion, we also tried the Ventus Red,
The Red is lighter which gave me more swing speed and ball speed. It also gave me seven more yards of carry and nearly 10 more yards of total distance. Trackman indoors can get wonky but the comparison was apples-to-apples and we were able to make a good decision.
(And you can also see from the spin numbers why the LS was never an option)
Other no-upcharge shaft options include the Project X Denali, Cypher and HZRDUS Black, along with the Mitsubishi Tensei AV. It’s not the most robust offering, but you should be able to find one that’ll work.
“If your goal is more distance, then the lightest and softest shaft you can hit straight is the best for you,” says Callahan. “The happy medium is finding a shaft that’s soft enough to go far but firm enough so you can control it.
“If the shaft is too soft, it’s going to be hard to hit the fairway.”
Would a more “premium” shaft have given me better numbers? Maybe, but I was plenty pleased with the results and saw no point in confusing the issue. A week or so later on Golftec’s GC Quad, I received this nice piece of validation:
The Tour Edge Exotics Max on course: You gotta like it before you can love it
One thing Callahan told me during the fitting has stuck with me over the past month. It’s taken me that long to fully understand what he meant.
You have to like your driver before you can love it.
“There are guys who don’t like looking at a large head and a deep face,” he said. “You have to like it first.”
I will say Tour Edge did a nice job of making the Exotics Max look like a normal driver despite carrying 10K of MOI. The head, obviously, is 460cc, but it doesn’t look oversized or bulky. The design team kept the geometry in check.
On the course, we’re still getting to know one another. The early-season weather here in New England has been iffy and I’ve yet to play in temperatures over 60 degrees with winds lower than 15 mph. However, despite the small sample size, I can say the early returns are encouraging. Through three rounds with the Exotics Max, I’m hitting 57 percent of my fairways, up slightly from last year. My left and right misses are evenly split at around 21 percent each.
Last year’s stats (split between the HiBore XL and the Elyte Triple Diamond) showed a fairway hit rate of 53 percent. I missed more often right than I did left. Given the wind and temperature, I can’t really compare average distances. I did, however, bust a (wind-aided) bomb of 279 yards.
Hey, I’m 65. Wind or no wind, spring or no spring, I’m gonna flex a little.
Final thoughts
We said up top that once you stop thinking of Tour Edge as a value proposition and start thinking of it as a golf performance decision, your equipment world view instantly changes. Here’s why.
At $499.99, the Tour Edge Exotics Max is a great value. The problem, however, comes when we categorize something as a “great value.” The mind automatically, and invariably, decides that it’s “pretty good” … for the price. Since the Exotics Max is $150 to $200 less than drivers from the Big Four, we subconsciously conclude it can’t possibly be as good.
Even though, in reality, it is.
None of us is immune to this. And we justify it by saying silly things like, “I’ll wait till the season’s over and buy the Callaway at a discount” or “Yeah, but the resale value isn’t as good.” The first statement is a clear admission to being brandwashed (I mean, if there’s no real difference, why wait?). The second is akin to starting a divorce fund on your wedding day.
However, when you consider Tour Edge as a golf performance decision, price becomes irrelevant while decisions become simpler. Does it outperform what you’re using now? Yes or no? If it’s no, it’s no.
However, if it’s yes, then there’s another question: Is it equal to or better than any of the other drivers you’re testing?
If the answer’s no, it’s no.
However, if the answer is yes, you’ve reached a logical, golf performance-based decision. Tour Edge (or any other brand we label as a value proposition) may wind up working for you, or it may not. But at least you’ll have arrived at that conclusion honestly.
