Bill’s 2021 Golf Season What’s In the Bag: Driver Addition

This season has been really interesting to me. Golf is more popular than ever, but given the weird 2020 and start of 2021 the world has seen, so much of the golf industry is in a state of flux and trying to settle into a new equilibrium. Whatever that’s going to like. The same can be said for the equipment going into my bag for the 2021 golf season. It’s looking like more change than I’ve seen in my bag in the past few years, and as a result, this process has been taking a lot longer than usual. Rather than just focusing on replacing a club or two, I’m ultimately thoroughly exploring each spot in my bag.

Well, after spending the past few seasons playing driver brands that are familiar to me, a new name entered the mix. It all started by doing my usual “start of the season” testing for reviews on this site. A driver from a brand I’ve never had in the bag before made a real strong impression. So much so that I started to pay a little more attention to it and gave it extra range time. After literally months of testing different combinations, a new driver has officially won “the bag position”. As it stands, the Tour Edge Exotics C721 driver will be my driver of choice for the 2021 golf season.

How We Got Here…

Like I mentioned, a lot of stuff you can read about in my review really caught my eye. The C721 driver is so easy to hit, sounds and feels amazing, and has a ton of power. That said, I quickly realized the setup I had in my club was just a little bit off. I had been testing the driver in 9.5º with a Project X HZRDUS Smoke Black RDX and I just couldn’t quite find ideal results. But there was just something about the feel and speeds that made me feel like I had to figure it out because I may be onto something.

We’ll talk shaft testing in the next section, but I could tell I was fighting the lack of loft. I had to work really hard to routinely get enough launch out of the 9.5º head. Don’t get me wrong, it was doable but it didn’t feel natural for me. I want to be able to just swing away with a driver, not feel like I have to think about what I’m doing off the tee every time. Well, it turned out that my good buddy/That Range Life co-host, Kris McEwen, ALSO had the new Tour Edge driver in for testing, and he was hitting his 10.5º head too high. So we agreed to trade driver heads next time we played and it was back to testing.

Well, fast forward, I started seeing more ideal launch angles without having to work for them. Though I increased my loft and the CG is low and back, my spin stayed low and I was hitting the Exotics C721 driver better and more accurate than anything else. We were almost in business! I just had to get dialed in with the best shaft to optimize my tee game.

The 2021 Golf Season Driver Shaft Winner

When I initially knew I was onto something with the 9.5º head, a lot of the usual shaft suspects weren’t working for me. Like I said, I needed a little more launch and I was trying everything I had in the garage. Having relied on the VA Drago and Nemesys extensively in the past, I reached out to Victor of VA Shafts to pick his brain. I explained what I was experiencing and that I was unwilling to take my Nemesys out of my previous gamer (as it was my current gamer at the time) and my faithful Drago wasn’t working in this setup. Being the legend that he is, Victor just says “let’s try you in a more mid-launch model like the Raijin.”

A few days later, a VA box was at my door with a new Raijin in it. I got it built up and ready to go the range as fast as I could. I was still testing in the 9.5º head, but within three swings, everything was looking and feeling a lot better. Still, I needed to find a little easier launch. That’s when the swap with Kris happened. Once that occurred, everything fell into place. I had a nice launch with great carry and tight dispersion. AND it felt easy and routine! That to me was as dialed as I could ask for and finally settled the driver spot in the bag for this year.

Final Thoughts

If you told me I’d have a Tour Edge driver in the bag before the season started, I’m not sure I would have believed you. Don’t get me wrong, the last few generations of Tour Edge drivers have been very good as well, but others have performed better for me. Until now. Admittedly, I haven’t hit EVERY new driver on the market (yet), but this setup with the C721 driver is giving me better numbers than anything else in my house right now. I’m not surprised that a VA shaft made my bag either. I’ve had a VA shaft in my driver basically ever since the Drago was released. There’s a certain level of comfort from the feel in VA’s lineup, but the numbers and control speak for themselves.

Sure, there’s a lot of season left and no club is ever safe. All it takes is one ugly round with a lot mystery slices or diving duck hooks and I’ll start the whole process over. Obviously. I know myself well enough… But for now, I’m really excited and confident about what I’m seeing with the C721/Raijin and I’m pumped to have this setup in the bag!