Review: TaylorMade R9 3-wood
The driver is outstanding and so is the 3-wood. You might want to pick up both right away on you next trip to the golf store. Now the 3-wood isn’t as adjustable because it doesn’t have MWT, but the shaft does the have FCT with the 8 options from closed through open. The stainless steel face felt extremely hot. It was relatively shallow, just a mm or so taller than the really shallow face 3-woods, but not at all like past deep faced 3-woods. The stainless click of the R9 3-wood is so nice to hear. This 3-wood is also extremely versatile. I could hit a strong stinger with it or high cut on command. I found it easy to elevate and due to the low profile I could even bomb it out of some moderate rough.
This club has a new acronym to describe what it can do; FCT (Flight Control Technology). This aspect of the 3-wood offers so many adjustments. I started tinkering and moving stuff around I quickly realized that the options seemed endless. There are 8 different orientations that the shaft can be used in the head, this is the FCT. Neutral, Open, Closed and Neutral Flat are the 4 main and then there are ½ setting between each of these. I had fun with this at a launch monitor fitting. I could pass the 3-wood around, and everyone liked a different setting. I found a bunch of guys liked the full 2* Open setting while I preferred the Neutral flat setting.
Now lets spend a little time talking about the Motore Shafts. It has similar spec to the Fujikura Z series, which if you read my review from last fall; it was just about my favorite shaft in 2008. I had incredible result with it and the Motore acted almost exactly the same. The Fuji Motore is extremely smooth and now just a touch more stable with the addition of H.I.T technology. I had great success with the proprietary Motore 70 in the 3-wood. It felt very stable and offered a great penetrating ball flight.
