The Brutal Truth Is… DO NOT BUY COSTCO GOLF CLUBS?

The Brutal Truth Is… DO NOT BUY COSTCO GOLF CLUBS?

Whenever I test a budget driver such as the Costco Kirkland Signature Plus, I get the same comments time after time after time. James, the secondhand market can be phenomenal. Why don’t you compare it to something on there? So, that’s exactly what we’re going to do, guys. We’ve got said Costco Kirkland driver here, and I scoured the secondhand market for something which I thought would be fantastic value for you guys to look at. And I thought, what drivers have done really well? What’s a little bit different? what’s not a ping, a tailor made, a titalist, a callaway. And I found this. It’s a Cobra Radspeed. And I thought this was one of the really nice examples that Cobra did bring out. They kind of ditched the whole ideology about it not long after. But you can see it’s a really nice matte carbon head. We’ve got that lovely CNC mil face. We’ve got an adjustable loft sleeve. And we’ve got movable weights here. So I’ve got a 12 g weight and a 2 g weight. I can set that to be high or low MOI depending what you do want. Now, when it comes to the Costco, I should probably talk money, shouldn’t I? £199. You can go to Costco and get this now. This bad boy around £170. So, you can save yourself 20 quid. You could go buy a dozen balls and you could go and play some really nice golf. Today, we’re going to test it out here on the golf course. And of course, we’ll have a look at some numbers as well. We’ll put the golf wave down and see just how these drivers do differ. We’ve started doing that a bit more, Bob, haven’t we? Like testing numbers out on the course. And I think we’re getting we’re getting better results or not better results. We’re getting real world. Real world. Exactly that, Bob. Exactly that. So, um, first things first though, this is 10 12° set down at 9. I didn’t mention it does have the adjustable sleeve on. So, we’ll quickly change this over. And this is long before uh Cobra introduced that um what is it? Adapt 33-way adjustment. I feel like they went too far with it to be brutally honest. Um, maybe that’s the the spawning of the new era of adjustable drivers. So, you can see there, we can go up or we can go down. We can put it in draw as well. I’m not going to put it in draw. I’m just going to put it in. In fact, I’m going to put it in No. Yeah, minus one there. So, playing 9 and a half, which is what we’re playing the Costco at. And I think as soon as you start to get these adjustments as well, like if we hit a couple of bad ones here on this first T box with the Cobra, I might think, you know what, I’ll just put that 12 g weight in the back. I’ll make it a little bit more. Thank you very much, Bob. A little bit more forgiving. And from there, that’ll really, really help us. Rad speed did stand for radial speed. So, the weighting is more in the radius of the club. You can see we’ve got these great two eight gram weights here, Bob. Yeah. See, if you open your ears, Bob, then we know exactly what we’re on about. But should we go Cobra first? Cuz we’ve just spent ages messing around with it. Motor shafting. This from memory by Fujicora. Right. This looks so good on top, by the way. Looks really good. And I’ll tell you what, that might need to be the only the only shot we hit in this video. How good is that? It kind of dipped out the air a little bit, but that’s where you might start to play with these weights. We’ll go another one. Then we’ll go into the Costco. Obviously, with the Costco, I am really pleased we’re doing this cuz it shows, yeah, we can change the neck on it, but obviously we can’t change any weights or adjustments or anything like that. So, we’ll um we’ll go another cobra this time. Sounded fantastic, didn’t I? I don’t remember it sounding that good to you. That was really, really nice. The face actually like kind of morphs up onto the top. So, if you’re like Dave Harrison or Bret Cooper and you roof a couple, you’ll not be able to really tell. Right, can we hit the same one? That was a really nice shape as well. I really enjoyed that as a shot. That’s even better. Look at that. Where’s that been? And for sub200 pound for a driver, secondhand or not, I’m absolutely over the moon with that. Really, really happy. Yeah, isn’t it? It’s like Well, it’s a little bit more money now, but you can really get these as a as a bit of a steal now. Um, can I have the key, Bob? Because someone’s borrowed this and not do hate it when someone borrows a drive and don’t put it back to the specs that you gave it them at. Who’s borrowed it? Al And that’s all all over. So you see how much more simple that is. I mean it still does the job. Like it still changes the lie angle. You can put that in draw if you want to as well. I don’t realize you could do that, but I’m going to go minus one. So it’s 9 and a half. And we’ll have this as a really nice fair test. I I’m going to put this out there. I think they’re going to be tough to beat, especially that second one. The second one might just be left hand rough, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Sorry, did you put your hand out to to get that there? That’s awful, isn’t it? Totally different looking crown on this. You can visually see the carbon a little bit more as opposed to with the Cobra. You can see those kind of ridges, that aerodynamic ridgeback technology. This is going to have to be everything. I think I’ve given it everything. What about that? I don’t know why I surprise myself quite often when I hit a good drive at the moment because I’ve kind of been in limbo with my driver game since 2021, I think, something like that. It’s not. It’s not. But um JP out in Arizona has fixed me. We’ve got the shoulders working better. I still think that was a little bit higher and more spinny. You looking at that. Come on. Let’s send one out there. Oh, that’s left. Oh, left. I do sometimes think with this shaft in the Kirkland, if you do really try to overpower it, it can sometimes just kick out in front of you a little bit. I did try it with a a better shaft in a Mazuno shaft because the fitting is the same as a Mizuno head and it was a little bit better. Like it wasn’t really worth the extra money of putting it in this head. I’d just get a Mizuno driver. But that’s interesting. Did the one we hit in the fairway catch up to the Cobra? Let’s find out. Right. So, this is rather interesting because we have a Cobra and a Costco right next to each other. We have the co Cobra Cobra. They have the Cobra right here that was on the left. And the Costco that we hit was like 30 yards back there because it hit the trees. But I didn’t expect the Costco driver to keep up with that initial cobra shot. It was a little bit dippy out the air, but it re it was a really powerful shot. I do feel like in summer that would be a different outcome. The ground’s quite moist at the minute. The ball isn’t rolling that far, so the cobra would have stopped quicker than it would have done in the summer. The same yard. It’s exactly the same, isn’t it? Should we try a different T-shot? Let’s have another go. Right, that for me has kind of put the cat amongst the pigeons because I I honestly thought the Cobra would be the initial winner straight away here. Whereas I feel like the Kirkland is showing up for work. It’s really doing what you would hope it would do because at 200 and odd pounds or 200, it’s it is still a cheap budget driver, isn’t it? For a brand new golf club. I was thinking about doing this with the Tacoma drive. The Tacoma drive is like 299, so it’s pushing on to that 300 mark, which in 2025 is still relatively cheapish. Cheap’s the wrong word, but it’s it’s affordable, isn’t it? But I feel like at 200 or £170 for that Cobra, what a drive you getting for the money. It’s like ridiculous, really. We’ll go one with each here because I also feel like it’s a bit unfair like smashing two and then expecting to hit two more. pretty good ones. Cobra first and it’s not because this is the Costco. Why do two two drivers that are CO to start really mixed myself up? That’s pretty much as good as I’ve got. I’ve hit that really good. If we’re being really picky, it was like a touch out of the toe, but I really don’t think that’s a bad drive at all. What do you think from on top? Is it Do you have a preference? I do like the Cobra. I like the crown on it. Yeah, I do. I feel like that’s such a better looking Cobra drive than like the current ones. I I really hope that the Cobra drivers that come out next year have a little bit more to them, you know, rather than being like all black. Like I understand what they’re trying to do there. It’s cool for certain people, but the F9 was the one, wasn’t it? F9 you can get for like The F9 is still about a similar price to this actually, which shows how good it was at the time. So the radial weighting as well. I’ve just kind of spied it and remembered from when I reviewed this years ago. We have the eight gram weights there, but you also have a bit of a eight gram weight there as well. So like the weighting structure in this driver, we have 16 g worth of weights there. Another eight there. So that’s 24 and then two and 12. So 16. So that’s 40 grams worth of weight. Quick maths. 14 of which you can move. You threw me there by saying quick maths. I would have got that quicker. Similar shot down the right side. That’s an absolute bomb, by the way. That one, it’s an absolute bomb. I’m going to hit another one just cuz I’m enjoying myself, Bob. And to be able to do that when you’re talking about something that costs less than 200 is quite frankly remarkable. That’s even better. Little bit cuty, but it’s a much higher ball flight, and that could be quite long. Do we go one more with this now as well? I’m just going to hit one because it’s not fair, he says. And then just gets properly ahead of himself and really starts to enjoy what he’s doing. Oh dear, we’ve got another one. Look with the I know that is me and I’m not blaming the driver, but it has happened twice now and it happened when we started first reviewing the Costco as well. And I do feel like it’s the shaft. I know it’s me. I know it’s me, but I feel like it’s hindering me. It’s like crashing your car and blaming the car in it. Yeah, but the steering was just a bit funny. Right, we’ll concentrate on the first two we hit because they were the ones realistically for the test. We have the Costco here where I openly said I haven’t got much better in me than that. And the Cobra is 10 yards further up, five, seven, between five and 10 yards further up and it’s more central in play because it had that better spin axis on it. That could be down to the line of the driver. It could be down to just my dynamics a little bit and my um delivery position, but realistically there I’m going to give that to the Cobra. Let’s talk some numbers and let’s finish this on the 18th hole with an epic long drive challenge. No, we’re not reintroducing the Epic because the Epic was a Callaway driver which could probably have been in this video today cuz I bet you can get it for 200 quid. So, I’m well aware this could be what you all came to see. Let’s discuss some of the numbers for this Costco Kirkland Signature Driver and of course the secondhand Cobra Radspeed coming in around the same price. Now, I tried to do this testing more on the golf course recently. I know a lot of you guys have really enjoyed it because you’re actually hitting golf shots where you have to hit fairways and hopefully not to lose too many balls. So, as you can see, we hit quite a lot of decent shots here. Quite a lot of nice big draws and a couple of low fades to the center of the fairway. And one of the big things here, you might think looking at those numbers initially, you go, “Oh, well, the ball speed is quite low on the Kirkland.” Now, the Kirkland was never good for ball speed. And I actually struggled to get that high toe strike to bring the spin rate down. So, the spin is quite high as well. So, on the day, we don’t have an amazing carrier with the Kirkland. I know I have better in my locker than that, but unfortunately on the day, that’s what it looks like. You can see the rad speed has a few more mph ball speed. And the big story here is that much lower spin rate, which is giving us, of course, much more distance. So numbers wise, you can see much lower spin rates there with the Cobra. That is going to be down to having that heavy weight forward and of course having that element of adjustability. And I still think they’re having the best of both worlds realistically when it comes to what you want from a driver. That is going to be where I think I’m going to go with my actual and that’s going to be my actual verdict I think in this video in that if I was going to delve into the secondhand market, I think this is where I’d go. And I feel like some of the bigger name brands should be quite worried that there is still something like this out on the market. Look at the mud in there now. But still something out there on the market like this because you can hit long drives. You can get low spin. You can get the forgiveness. Is anyone up there on the right hand side? Bob can’t see anyone. We have to look, don’t we? Some people like to cut in. But it really excites me to come out and play and practice for less than £200. Look at that. Straight over the bunker. Nice and low, boring flight. And if I wanted it to be a higher flight, have I got a ball? Unprepared. If I wanted a higher flight, then I could do it by tweaking it and adjusting the loft and even the weighting. Right, one last dance for the Costco. Can we get it past it? The wind’s up, so it might struggle. You see that’s a nice low fly, but you see how it’s like spinning up? That’s in the bunker. And that is the conclusion to this video, guys. If you enjoyed it, please do smash that subscribe below. Thank you so much for your time. As always, I’ll see you the same. It was about 15 yards there. By the way, that cove has gone straight over the bunker. We’ll see you at the same time tomorrow. Goodbye.