On paper, TaylorMade’s “Fargiveness Long Drive Challenge” is a brilliant marketing campaign for the latest Stealth 2 driver. To highlight the driver’s strong performance on off-center strikes (a fancy way to say “mishits”), TaylorMade reps asked five of the best golfers on the planet to purposely hit it out of the heel or toe to show the minimal drop in carry distance Carbon Fiber Twist Face provides.
As we highlighted in this year’s robotic testing for GOLF’s 2023 ClubTest, Stealth 2 saw an impressive bump in ball speed on mishits, so every pro in the video was going to see a tighter carry delta with the 2023 version.
As TaylorMade Tour reps Chris Trott and Adrian Rietveld added a layer of impact spray to the face and went over the rules, only one pro seemed to be genuinely confused by the goal of the competition: Tiger Woods.
When told he needed to miss the coin dot in the middle by almost a full ball, Woods delivered a classic line: “What? I trained my whole life to hit the ball in the middle.”
TaylorMade Stealth 2, Stealth 2 HD and Stealth 2 Plus Drivers
Woods is what you’d call an all-time flusher. The sound of his strike remains just different, and he rarely misses the center. It’s important to point this out because as much as weekend golfers have trouble hitting the ball out of the middle on command, Woods suffered a similar, albeit hilarious, fate as he attempted to miss to drives during the competition.
On the the first drive, he placed the ball all the way on the toe and impacted it closer to the center dot. On the second drive, Woods went for the heel section and ended up catching, you guessed it, the center dot again.
All Woods could do was laugh and smile. When you’re the GOAT, missing the center on purpose isn’t an option.
Check out the full video below to see who won the long drive belt.
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