The product itself, as you can see above, is an inflatable ball attached to an adjustable lanyard. You simply place the lanyard around your neck and tighten it until the ball rests between your forearms. At that point, you simply make swings while keeping the ball between your forearms. It was hard to find a ball that was the right size, plus inflating it was a pain, and if the ball dropped out of your arms you had to chase it down.
The Tour Striker Smart Ball eliminates all of those problems, and is compact enough to store in your golf bag. The central aim of the training aid is to keep the ball between your arms throughout the swing, which ensures your arms are working together.
It feels good to have your arms working together. You can also use the Smart Ball for putting practice. With that in mind, a little about myself:. I am 27 years old, I work out daily and am relatively athletic. This past season I got my handicap as low as a 9, and then started reconstructing my golf swing with the help of GolfTEC. I work in a golf store and I get to hit balls virtually every day.
Hopefully that will help you understand my perspective for this review. The Original Tour Striker is targeted for mid-to-high handicap golfers and those with slower swing speeds under 90 mph with driver , while the Tour Striker Pro is geared for dedicated players with higher swing speeds and a handicap of 10 or less. Also available is a Tour Striker for women and younger players who wish to improve their game.
Tour Striker training clubs are cast of stainless steel. The vibration dampening logo affixed within the back cavity helps reduce shock on miss-hit shots while developing ball striking skills.
The lie angle and shaft length may be customized for a nominal additional fee. There is no set up with the Tour Striker — unwrap it and take it to the range. I have found it be a very effective tool for instilling the feeling of leading with the hands. The thing that I most like about the Tour Striker is the immediate feedback.
If you lead with your hands, the club performs like a normal 7 iron. When I practice, I like to hit five shots with the Tour Striker, then five shots with a normal club. Since I started using the Tour Striker, I find that I am hitting the ball more consistently, particularly with regard to trajectory.
The other thing that I have found very valuable about the Tour Striker is that it allows you to work on other parts of your swing while monitoring your flip. As anyone who has built or rebuilt their swing knows, it is a process that happens one step at a time. For me, it started with the takeaway, then progressed to my position at the top, then to not flipping, then rotating the body, and so on.
You work on one thing until you feel like you have it, then you move on, but those early changes need to be checked from time to time. The beauty of the Tour Striker is that I can focus my thoughts on rotating my body or any other element of the swing , and still get feedback on whether or not I flipped.
My only negative comment about the Tour Striker is that, like any training device, it can be cheated. In my Peanut Gallery testing, I handed the club to a friend who is a chronic flipper. We were filming his swing to see if the Tour Striker would fix the problem. Upon reviewing the tape, he had indeed flipped.
I still think that the Tour Striker is a very good and effective tool, but it is not infallible. Most training aids, much like exercise equipment, are very exciting for about a week or two. We take them to the range, show our friends, use them religiously…then the shine wears off.
To me, longevity is almost as important in a training aid as effectiveness. In my opinion, the Tour Striker is every bit as impressive in longevity as it is in effectiveness.
When I practice, I want to hit the Tour Striker. Part of the long term appeal of the Tour Striker is its ease of use. I could see going to the range with a friend and building a game around it: first one to shank buys the next bucket of balls. While in the short term they wanted to keep swinging until they did it right, I have a suspicion that over the long term they would end up leaving the Tour Striker at home.
Tour Striker does offer a variety of products targeted to various levels of golfers. The original Tour Striker 8 iron is for players with higher handicaps, the PRO model 5 and 7 irons are for better players, and the PRO X, with a face the size of a quarter, is for those who want a real test of their ball striking.
This puts it solidly in the middle of the pack as far as training aids go — not cheap, but not outrageous. To me, the Tour Striker is an above average training aid, so compared to other training aids I think the Tour Striker offers very significant value. My conclusion is: yes, the Tour Striker is a worthwhile tool to have and I would give up a couple rounds of golf to have it.
We will start with the PGA Professionals. Probably the most telling thing is that they have recently purchased a Tour Striker for their own professional use — a very strong endorsement of the product.
They have found the Tour Striker to be popular and effective among their students. My co-workers all seemed to enjoy working with the Tour Striker.
Their feelings were much in line with my own: they enjoyed the instant feedback and the sense of success when they executed a good shot. To be fair, the players who am I referring to here are all fairly skilled and had good success with the Tour Striker.
The most interesting group of testers was the customers in the store. One thing was consistent across all of these groups: they would not give the Tour Striker back until they could hit it with some consistency.
While all these players were eager to make the Tour Striker work in that moment, I did get the sense that it left the higher handicap players feeling defeated. Some players did hit nine out of ten shots badly, and it was clearly embarrassing for them. For these players, it is even more critical that they pick the right model lest it collect dust in a corner after one bad range session.
The difficulty there is that I know of very few stores with Tour Strikers in stock to demo. I obviously think very highly of the Tour Striker.
I found it to be effective, and I found myself wanting to use it and wanting to share it with others. While I enjoyed the Tour Striker very much, I do have to acknowledge some of the concerns that came up during the review process. Better players might find that success comes too easily, and higher handicap players might find it too frustrating. First I want to make the point that you cannot hit these irons from a golf range, you have to go into the grass.
I can handle the PW however have no success with the 7 iron. Any suggestions? Thanks for the detailed review. Hit a bucket of balls on my way home on Monday. Played Tuesday afternoon shot 38 on the front with 2 birdies. Birdied 10 , lipped out on 11 for birdie and holed my second shot on 12 on a short par 4 for eagle. Hung on for a
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