A pair of 71s on the weekend at the Memorial Tournament kept Aaron Baddeley from seriously contending for the title, but the Australian seemed to have his driver figured out.
"I drove the ball beautiful today," he said after an opening round in which he averaged 306.5 yards and 86 percent driving accuracy. "I mean, my misses of fairways didn't even total six inches. I was like right off the edge of the fairway."
Badds, who is contracted to play MacGregor irons, switched this year to a MacGregor MacTech Tour driver. He played a TaylorMade r7 425 driver as recently as his FBR Open win in February. At that event, he led the field with an average of 26 putts per round -- but his driving accuracy, at 60.7 percent, was a mediocre T53.
"I've been at both ends of the spectrum now, I've been like where you can't find the planet, and now it's like I feel like driving is nearly one of my strengths," Baddeley said. "It's definitely so much easier in the fairway. Your shoes are cleaner, you hit the ball closer to the hole."
The MacGregor MacTec Tour driver that's on the shelves is designed for golfers with swing speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. It has got a really lightweight titanium crown insert -- 0.4 mm instead of a more standard 1.0 mm -- that lets MacGregor's engineers distribute more weight in the sole of the club. That weight shift helps lower the center of gravity by more than 12 percent, imparting less spin to the ball and keeping an optimal launch angle for the "grip it and rip it" crowd.
As with many drivers on the market these days, the MacGregor MacTec Tour uses tungsten weights in the heel and toe to minimize twisting at the moment of inertia. Two more, slightly heavier weights in the sole are positioned to promote a slight draw bias for better control.
There are no face welds on the MacTec Tour. Instead, the company uses plasma-welding 360 degrees around the edge to attach the face to the club body. The face has the maximum legal rebounding effect for added distance and minimizes loss of distance when the club is mis-hit. The feel is better on off-center hits, too.
While Baddeley managed no better than a tie for ninth at Memorial, he's optimistic about the way he's hitting the ball.
"It was encouraging to hit it that straight and drive it that well," he said. "I felt like I had good command of my irons, too. I hit a lot of nice iron shots, very straight, where I wanted to hit them. I feel like everything I'm doing is just -- I feel like my game is constantly improving."
