Now this Thomas Golf AT705 hybrid driver is an interesting golf club; you won’t have seen this in every pro shop.
Left Handed Hybrid Driver
When we look down at the golf club, we can start to notice a couple unique features. Firstly it appears to look like a hybrid club. It has the traditional sort of hybrid shape; but we notice it actually has a flat top, with the patented Thomas Golf alignment line technology. Thomas Golf has redesigned the hybrid golf club, when they flattened out the top. Most often when we look at a hybrid club, or even a driver, there are no straight, square edges to help us line up. Thomas Golf has acknowledged, that we could redesign the top of the club to support a level alignment line, very similar to how we do with the putter. This now points my way home. It points to target. So as I set up this hybrid driver, I have a nice big driver head, a relatively long shaft; not quite as long as a full driver length, which gives a feeling of a bit more control. It looks like a hybrid, so fills me with a bit of confidence, but actually has a much bigger and deeper face than a hybrid club. It has also got ten and a half degrees of loft so a lot less loft than a standard hybrid. We will play this on a nice smallish tee peg so the ball sits about half the ball above the top of the club. We’re going to get some really good performance out of this. It is going to give you the control of the hybrid, combined with the length of the driver … combine those two bits together, and we can have some really good control off tee shots.
You don’t have to take my word for it. What I’d like to do is get this golf club in the hands of a real world eighteen-handicap golfer. I know I’ve played golf a few times with Tom, and it’s fair to say the driver is not your best friend. Although I freely admit, that I’ll probably hit one or two drivers in a round, and they’re very inconsistent. So I generally off the tee go for a 4 wood, because I feel I can hit them more in the fairway. More often than not, you actually move away from the driver, because you’ve got less confidence. And it is that sort of lack of confidence when you’re setting up to the ball as well. The thing I don’t like about my driver, It’s too big and too long, so it feels very different from the rest of the clubs in my bag.
Well let’s set you up with the AT705 hybrid driver. What are your initial thoughts when you actually set up to the ball. That I’m a fan. It’s got that alignment line, which immediately gets you feeling like I’m lined up. And sometimes I find when when you take it up towards the front of the stance, I kind of lose the sense of where it should be pointing, but here, with the alignment, it feels much better. What I’ve done is set up three shots for you here. If you slide the first one in at the back of the ball, you’ll see the alignment line points the way home towards the target. Right there at the middle of the golf ball, the equator of the golf ball is level to the top of the club. So that should give you a nice idea of how you can sweep the ball up into the sky.
Let’s go ahead and hit three or four shots down there for us and see how these work. Yes nice, right, certainly got a really good crack off the club face. And we got a really nice sound off the face. Let’s go and hit another one down. Interesting it made contact a little bit lower on the club face, but still quite a good result, flying down there a good yardage. I’m happy with that.
And again probably a little bit down on the heel side of the face, which is often the inconsistencies that we’d see from club golfers. But actually, three shots down there first was a little bit right side of the fairway; the last two pretty much down the middle of the fairway, carrying at least two hundred yards, which is decent yardage. Over and above what you would be getting from your 4 wood. Quite a lower ball flight there so, actually running out there a decent distance. Ten and a half degrees of loft on the club face, so it’s going to give you that mixture of a little bit more penetration than the 4 wood, and actually a little bit of rolling down the fairway, but still nice and easy to get the ball up in the air. Just as with a normal hybrid club, what we have in the AT705 Driver is a lot of weight low, deep and underneath the ball.
