In the first week TaylorMade's r7 SuperQuad driver was available to PGA Tour pros, it was in the bags of Kenny Perry and Kevin Stadler at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.
"That thing is the most solid driver I've hit," Perry said. "It was easy to hit, I launched it high and didn't have any problems with it."
Perry, who was 69th on the PGA Tour last year in driving distance with a 293.1-yard average, improved on that stat to finish third for the tournament in driving distance with a 298.5-yard average.
Stadler -- a man not known for changing his equipment on a whim -- also praised the new driver.
"It's been really good so far," he said. "I'm very reluctant to change and I just like the way this one looked and it felt pretty good so far."
Previously, Stadler played an r500 series driver from four or five years ago. He said that the new r7 drivers tended to have more spin than he liked, but that the SuperQuad gave him additional accuracy.
"I know it goes a lot straighter," he said. "I whale away on it and it doesn't go too far off line and that's a nice trade off."
Stadler tied for 29th in driving accuracy with a 65.2 percent average for the week, an improvement over his 62.6 percent average in 2006. He also was 20th in driving distance with a 291.4-yard average.
Joe Ogilvie, Shaun Micheel, Justin Rose, John Mallinger, Richard Johnson, Lee Janzen, Scott Verplank, Greg Owen and Will MacKenzie all tested the r7 SuperQuad and may choose to put it in play soon.
OPEN FACE: Padraig Harrington put a new set of Wilson irons he is testing into his bag for the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship last week.
He reported that the biggest difference with the irons was a higher ball flight due to improved weighting.
"I can see a big difference in the longer irons," Harrington said. "The key with my game and probably for majors and things like that, I want to hit my irons a little bit softer into the greens. These definitely fly higher and sort of hold the trajectory well; whereas before, the one thing I get a little bit too often is an aggressive flight, which is great when you're playing in windy weather and links golf courses, but it's not great when you're playing stadium-style golf courses where you're trying to fly a ball into a green and stop it quickly."
Harrington also said that getting the irons right took some time. He likes to put the grips on 20 degrees open so the clubface is open when he grips the club square.
"It takes a bit of time to get them correct," he said. "That's the great thing of being with Wilson, they will always come to me and ask me what I think and explain what they are trying to do to make their golf clubs better. I have quite a bit of input into it ... having looked at the very initial designs and talking through what I wanted to see in the designs, all the way up from the irons through the wedges through the driver."
BITS AND PIECES: Bob Hope Chrysler Classic winner Charley Hoffman was the third player in as many weeks to win with a Titleist Pro V1 prototype golf ball. Overall, 96 players in the 128-man field used Titleist balls. ... TaylorMade won the weekly driver count with 51 drivers in play; Titleist was second with 28. ... Titleist had 45 putters in play for the week, followed by Odyssey with 27. ... Scott Verplank put a TaylorMade r7 425 9.5-degree driver into his bag for the first time, and finished in a tie for eighth place.
