Greetings gentlemen. Just thought I would share my recent success with a mini driver I have just built figuring some of you old guys would appreciate it since its an old school driver lol.
The build: Titleist 975J, 8.5deg, Fenwick world class 7.0 shaft, cut down to 43", 10 grams of lead tape. I have a golf buddy who likes the old stuff and luckily he had this driver and we did a good ol' hillbilly trade - a few beers for his driver!
Well, I have played 2 rounds so far and this thing produces beastly stingers off the tee - perfect for windy conditions and hard fairways. The best part is that it has become a fairway finder for me - so far I am 13/16 with it and really only 1 bad miss due to a terrible swing. It feels great and just what I was looking for. I have tried short drivers before and really wanted my 12 deg M1 with an extra weight to be my fairway finder but just wasn't consistent with it for some reason - same setup (43" at 3 wood weight). For some reason it just didn't feel right and since I was having success with a 3 wood off the tee, I figured I would try to make a bigger 3 wood essentially. I originally was going to try something like the 3deep but after looking at prices on ebay, just way too expensive, which then led me to considering an school driver head which are dirt cheap.
Now, I have the builder bug and want to try to build a couple more mini drivers for shits and giggles. Any suggestions (including non-conforming) heads to consider in the 300cc range??
The truly sad part of it all is that this driver is keeping up with the latest and greatest - against the wind and with hard fairways I am hitting it virtually the same distance as my Epic sub zero, ping G etc. It's about 20 yards shorter when comparing good hits downwind and/or average hard fairways versus the newer stuff but the crazy accuracy nullifies the distance loss. My buddy and I were joking the other day that it's pretty bad when the grip and the lead tape costs more than the driver itself and a when a $5 driver is keeping up to the $400 driver in distance with more accuracy. 