When TaylorMade announced the new M4 driver, I was of two minds. On the one hand, I love my 2017 M2. By my reckoning, it is the best driver I’ve ever owned.
That’s big for me—it’s huge because I’ve literally hit them all. The M2 allows me to play my game and swing with abandon knowing that it’s there to save me from myself. Like any other driver, it won’t help the worst of swings but mishits fare much better than with any of my other drivers.
On the other hand, my curiosity was piqued. Could they actually improve on the best?
The M4 has been out for a while now but has only just hit the Philippines. The product brief for the M4 was to make a driver that would be easier to hit and perhaps a bit longer and straighter than the outgoing M2. That’s insane.
Ease of use and performance sit on opposite ends of the spectrum. Making clubs easier to hit has always impacted how playable they were and what kind of distance you could squeeze out of them. Take the old square drivers. Any of them. To a club, they were all shorter off the tee than their traditionally shaped stablemates, but they hit the ball so straight that some golfers didn’t seem to mind. Never mind the fact that they were hideous.
That’s changed in recent product cycles and in TaylorMade’s case, it peaked with the M2. This was a club that Rory and Tiger had in their bags. How could you possibly make it any better?
All kinds of ways, it seems.
Twist Face exists to make all our fairways wider. Most golfers seem to miss toward the high toe or low heel. To mitigate those misses, TaylorMade added loft in the high toe area and took away loft in the low heel to compensate for how the golfers presented the clubface during those misses. If you’re concerned about the look at address, don’t be; it’s barely noticeable.
The new face is significantly lighter than the old one and the weight saved there together with a few more grams from the spiffy new aerodynamic carbon crown freed up 86 percent more discretionary weight. That now sits in the 41-gram weight at the back of the clubhead.
The improvement in the M4’s moment of inertia (MOI) was so significant it allowed TaylorMade to make the M4 slightly shorter from face to skirt than the M2. It looks more pear-shaped at address and sports a deeper clubface. It might not look it, but the face of the M4 is larger than the one on the M2, thanks in part to Geocoustic Technology. See, it does something besides making the M4 sound good.
My feelings are mixed about the switch from white to silver on the new M series. The contrast is less subdued. I’d quite gotten used to the white heads over the years.
Finally, to try and squeeze out more performance, Hammerhead reinforces the clubhead and allows for a more flexible sole slot. We can argue about it, but Hammerhead seems to perform the same function on the clubhead as Jailbreak does for Callaway by stabilizing the clubhead and, in the M4’s case, providing more performance for mishits low on the clubface.
The shaft that I’m using is the Graphite Design Tour AD TP-6 in stiff flex. It works very well with the M6. The ball leaves at the height and trajectory to which I’m accustomed. Spin seems to be low based on how much run I was getting after the ball hit the fairway.
My first tee shot of my very first round with the M4 immediately put Twist Face to the test. I hit one dead off the low heel. It was a terrible strike, but the ball still found the right side of the fairway. For reference, I hit a second ball and crushed it. It was in the middle of the fairway just 12 yards past the mishit. Impressive.
As the round went on I grew in confidence. By the last three holes on our front side, I was just letting it rip. The confidence the M4 gives you is considerable. I had shorter shots into every green than I ever had with my M2. Performance with hits low on the clubface was exemplary. I didn’t feel like I was losing any distance.
I hit a horrible shot off the toe on one of the closing holes. I was trying to kill it and missed badly. The ball hooked into the fairway bunker and seemed to roll into the hazard beyond it. Upon arriving in the bunker, I found the ball close to the hazard line but still in play. Twist Face at work again? What else could it be?
The aerodynamic improvements on the M4 are noticeable. The M4 goes through the air much easier than the M2 ever did. On the launch monitor during the product launch I was getting incrementally more clubhead speed and more ball speed as a result. Out on the golf course, you can actually feel it.
Now, the caveat here is that I only have two rounds and a little range time with the M4 as you read this. It could be a bit of the honeymoon effect that I’m getting such good results, but I can’t deny how impressed I am with the M4. TaylorMade has taken everything I liked about the M2 and made it better. The results are undeniable. More distance, more fairways hit. Even the color is starting to grow on me.
If you already have an M2, should you sell it to get the M4? That depends. If you’re as happy as I was with mine, then keep it. It’s still an awesome driver that will give you plenty of performance. But if you’ve got the financial wherewithal or just enjoy new toys, you won’t regret it.
We’ll see if the honeymoon lasts. Right now, I wouldn’t bet against it. The M4 driver is very, very good. So good, it’s staying in the bag.