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Nelly Korda, Brooke Henderson, Charley Hull and Team TaylorMade are dialed in ahead of the LPGA Drive On Championship at Superstition Mountain Golf & Country Club. We have their latest WITBs, stock yardages, swing videos and more in this week's Tour Report.
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The process of fitting Nelly into the right driver has been a unique experience for our Tour team. She has a particular starting line and shot shape she wants to see taking off every tee box. Starting 1-2 yards right of her sight line and then drawing 3-5 yards back into the fairway.
“We started testing with the Stealth 2 Plus and core models, and they were actually flying too straight. Where most golfers would love that, Nelly needs to see that tight draw off the tee to play her best golf. Like many of the world’s best players, she’s very precise. It can’t start left and go left. It can’t start straight and go left. It has to start right of her line and then gently fall back left. That’s what made this build and process a blast to take on - we knew the outcome we needed right from start.” Ryan Ressa, TaylorMade, Senior Tour Rep
Given the clinical feedback from Nelly, our team went to work finding a driver to fit her needs. Commonly, a little hot melt here and adjusted weight there and boom - Tour built driver. Not in this case. The Stealth 2 HD, which is already heavily heel weighted, provided the optimal starting point.
Our team in Carlsbad went back to work to change the center of gravity on our HD model to make it even more draw-biased. They had to find the magic formula for getting the ball to start more right while maintaining the right-to-left spin.
Through the process, we learned that Nelly has a strong distaste for fades. If a tee shot fades or goes straight, it’s almost certainly a miss in her eyes. The HD head we netted out with all but guaranteed a draw. Our team made further tweaks such as changing shafts to get the club delivered differently at impact and changing the lie angle to get Nelly hitting it more on the toe side of center face.
“We were chasing a unicorn and in the end we got there. Compared to her previous gamer, it produces a flatter flight, carries farther and overall goes farther. Once we got the launch conditions better, it was a matter of fine tuning to create a driver that fits her eye and gets closer to the shot shape she envisions.” Ressa
The results speak for themselves. Here are key driving stats from her first two tournaments with Stealth 2 HD:
The experience of working with Nelly will influence our HD driver designs into the future, but the immediate takeaway is this technology can benefit golfers at every level. If someone at the pinnacle of the game has no qualms with playing an HD driver, perhaps it’s time for you to drop your misconceptions and biased feelings toward draw-biased drivers.