Back to drivers, I played the Rogue ST Max on Saturday and continued to hit it great....the irons not so much 😞 For Sunday I took the Ai Smoke Max head and used the shaft from the Rogue so it would be an even comparison. The Ai Smoke was a bit lighter by maybe 3g so I added some lead tape.
The end results were about the same, but there were some differences. I seemed to have to tee the ball a bit higher with the Ai Smoke and line up with the center rather than the toe. May have just been my inconsistent setup as the weights were identical and the heads don't look vastly different. It was only 1 round so I need more reps.
The Ai Smoke may be slightly more forgiving. My first 3 tee shots were off the toe and the distance was better than expected. I seemed to get a bit more distance out of the low shots with the Ai Smoke. I have been hitting the Rogue fairly low and getting a lot of run and longer drives. The Smoke was going a bit lower and running more. I could hit it higher, but I had to tee it higher than the Rogue. It was pretty windy though so I kept hitting it lower.
The Ai Smoke may be a bit more draw biased than the Rogue ST Max. I set the slider weight in the middle, but I was hitting more right to left than usual even once I stopped hitting toe shots. Not a big deal for me as I'm mainly a fader with the driver. I'll have to play with the slider weight and see how much bias can be achieved. This could also just be the swing I had that day.
I liked the feel/sound of the Smoke. It's very muted for the most part, but center strikes have almost no sound while toe misses have a light annoying "ting" to let you know you missed. The Rogue ST Max is harder to tell when you miss the center and almost always has nice crack IMO.
