I Can't Believe What Srixon Did With This Driver...

Srixon has made some big changes with this new driver release, the ZXi RKT, and one of those changes is instantly noticeable. But is it actually any better than last year's ZXI driver? As you can see, I've got both LS heads right here, nine degrees. I'm going to put the same shaft in both of these drivers, same setting, same everything. And I want to compare everything, sound, feel, look, performance, ball flight, you name it. And if the data suggests this thing is a better driver, I'm going to go take it to the golf course and see if it can rival what's already in my golf bag. But before anything, you've got to hear. The differences in these drivers. That looks nice. This is my first time even looking at this driver. That looks clear. That was off the toe. That sounded good for the ZXi. I haven't looked at this thing since last year. Definitely a different head shape. I still love Strixon's matte finish, but the scoring on the face in the RKT, it really makes the face pronounced. This kind of blends in more with the ground. Okay, let's see the difference. It is so obvious. It's so stinking obvious. This sounds like an aluminum bat. It looks so good and feels so good. But that was hit off the center of the face just to kind of high floater. That sounded like an aluminum bat. Let's go back to RKT. I am not concerned with the flight, the performance, or anything just yet. These are just me making really safe, really trying to make safe, good golf swings. If we hear a difference, I told that as well. Still, the sound is so different. I'd like to hit this one off the center. Let's go one more time back to ZXI. Some reviews have also done a good job of identifying that this year's RKT, the sound is different model to model. Like they've worked with the acoustics in the max head and the core head and the LS head so that they all sound different from each other. And ultimately that none sound like this. Thank Toe bangers, but toe to toe, literally off the toe. This sounds like an Easton aluminum bat. I like this driver when I tested it. I liked the driver before when I tested it, the 2024 driver. But I mean, it's not that the sound makes me not want to play it. Just the sound is not good. you. And for some people, that is enough to not want to play a driver. If the performance is great, the sound is completely irrelevant. So I'm going to hit one more. We know, we know the sound is so different. I would just like to hit a good one. Yeah, that was just a little off the center with an open face and that sounds really, really good. Now let's see if there's any performance difference between the two heads. Before we go to the studio and get these numbers, I wanna talk about the sponsor of today's video, which is Bear Mattress. They sent us this mattress two weeks ago and my sleep has never been better. I have not scored less than 90% on my WHOOP sleep scores. Since getting this mattress, quick example, I PR'd my 5k on Saturday, a couple of celebratory bourbons as well. 95% sleep score, 81% recovered. This mattress is allowing me to get incredible recovery, incredible sleep to be able to tackle my day ahead. And I have a pretty active lifestyle. I'm training for a marathon. I'm still hitting a lot of golf balls for testing equipment. I go to the gym. I try to keep up with my five-year-old. My lifestyle is more active than when I was playing full-time. So I understand the importance of quality, quality sleep. And this ticks the boxes. I suffer with a little bit of tenderness in my back. And these mattresses have been awarded or deemed the best mattress for back pain. And I certainly experienced that. I'm a back sleeper and I'm not waking up sore and having to kind of stretch or put heat on my back as often as I used to. My wife is a side sleeper and she's experiencing great sleep, great rest from this thing. I run hot too. And there's a cooling foam in this top that I have not once had to like take the sheets off to like let your leg hang out because you're overheating. We've tried the heating, cooling mattresses systems and they just weren't comfortable. They were hard to control. Eventually, I still would get too hot. I have not experienced it. With this, it comes in a box so easy. You can open it and go straight to sleep. You don't have to let this thing air out. And Bear is backing it with a 365-day sleep guarantee. So you have essentially a year to determine if it's the best mattress for you. And right now, through the end of November, the whole site's 40% off. So click that link below, 40% off. And if you're watching this video after November, that link below is still going to give you 40% off the site. My code Andrew Jensen is still gonna get you 40% off on a Bear mattress. Can't say enough great things about this mattress. So if you're looking for better recovery, better sleep, so that you can tackle the day ahead, check out Bear mattress at that link below. Now, let's go see how these drivers stack up at that. Crazy, just how much better this thing sounds. The feel is fantastic, the sound is fantastic. This thing feels good, but the sound really I think affects the feel. I wouldn't even say this sound is not for everyone. It's not for many. Whereas this. 10 out of 10 it sounds exactly how you want a driver to sound but what is the performance like because out there I mean that was five swings just getting an idea of the sound so I brought them in here and yeah same shaft blink white from UST Mamiya same settings nine degrees the weights in the same place what kind of data difference are we going to see if if any and I started with ZXI the performance was really good it's been it's been over a year since I hit it And the performance was good. And this was 10 drives. I only... redid a drive if I hit it really bad. So I think maybe I hit 11 or 12 drives to get this data set. But everything is solid. The spin is a little high launch, a little high peak heights, a little high, but pretty, pretty impressive numbers for this driver. And I was like, OK, let's let's see. And then I hit this one and I was swinging really, really well on this. And it was actually quite fun. I was like, man, this is probably the best I've been swinging it in here all year. Holy cow. This thing was just fantastic but if we really compare them and again it was maybe 11 or 12 but to really like compare them head to head ball speeds awash basically the same launch is noticeably lower in this and spin is noticeably lower in this so that if you extrapolate that to carry in total distance it's crazy. ZXI was a little straighter but RKT was not. Not straight, but the ball flight, launching, spinning, going far and sounding and feeling good. I was very, very excited to take this to the golf course because originally when I planned to do this, I was just going to go back to the range with these. And see if we can't, you know, see it and hear it a little bit more. And oh, can you shape this? But the data in this was just so stinking good that I'm like, oh, I want to go play golf with this thing and see if out there it performs as well as it performs in here. So let's go to the golf course. This is a perfect hole to test this thing on the golf course, first and foremost. Just let it fly. There's really no trouble. So just. See how this ball flight is outside based on how good it was inside. I mean, that was a little thin. Gosh, that was a great ball flight, but not perfectly struck. This is a great drive to check in on because first par 5 on the back 9. I want to hit one at that house, maybe a hair left of it. But if I bail out right, I've got a wood into the par 5. If I'm left, I'm really in trouble. So this is one where you want to hit a really great drive, hit your target. Let's see if this, uh, this driver can deliver and if I can deliver. Oh, see, I, that was such a good miss. I got a little happy at the top and jumped on it, thin the crap out of it. That was an unbelievable miss because if I did that in the simulator, kind of jumped on it, it went left and I didn't go left. I kind of got a little happy, a little excited, rushed transition, caught it thin Then off the heel and it would just. I mean it missed my target by a few yards obviously I lost some distance because that kind of spinner into the wind but didn't go into the trees that's really encouraging because drivers it's not about how good the good ones are it's about how good the bad ones are and that bad one still gives me a great opportunity to make a birdie on this par five so I don't often try to draw it on the golf course maybe once around if it's very necessary but I think this is A good time to see if we can draw this under control because I want to get as close or get a little half flip wedge to the green So there's a gap in the trees up there. I'm basically trying to draw it off the right side of that bunker. So I need to really stay with this or behind it and down a little bit of wind into off the left. So let's see if we can shape this thing without losing it left dead straight. That was awesome. Oh man, that was really good. Out here, it's launching a little higher than what it was doing in the simulator. But if I were to keep experimenting with this, you could maybe bring the loft down a hair, which would bring launch and spin down. But the sim numbers were incredible Out here, just launching higher but I can tell it's fast and solid and sounds really good. One more drive to show before we wrap this up This is the one This is the ultimate audition. Can I just? Fully send this thing downwind on this par five. That tall tree, I can't hit anything right of it. Right of it, we need a prayer to cover the water. That little dirt patch just left of it, it's 275 to that dirt patch That tree on a line is like maybe 290 to carry to the rough, which will get to the fairway Little wind helping. I wanna take something at that dirt patch And if I hit it straight, great If it fades, great. But I just want to really commit. Wind's kind of going like this. So this is just full send and you do it You've got a mid-iron into this par 5 Oh man, that's amazing. A little left of my target, but gosh, that thing is gonzo. That was unbelievable. I could have taken that right at that tree. Wow, that was awesome That thing's flying so straight, so high, and really far There's the tree. There's my ball. This thing landed like... Right here. So that dirt patch. So that thing flew like 295, maybe 300 in the air. That tree was 317 when I zapped it. Just confidently let it go. And now we have, what does it say in this? We got 200. So basically I have a six iron in this par five because of a great drive. I hit this driver six times in that nine hole. I hit the fairway six times in that nine hole. And the miss. A little heely on that second drive and a little thin on that first drive was not like the miss in here because the miss in here I could hit it left out there. I wasn't. I mean, maybe that's just how I was releasing it in here. But my goodness, the performance out there was so good. Launched a little bit higher and flew a little bit higher than this data set. But that's probably more me. I was looking at the video getting here instead of Here, so probably launching a degree and a half higher, hitting a higher peak height, very similar to probably what this was doing in here. But my gosh, you saw how straight that thing flew and then the mishit to do that. That was really, really. Impressive, like really impressive. Yes, six fairways, six times I hit it. I made three birdies from those six, and I made two bogeys on the other holes, par threes, and when I hit a three wood off the tee? So for nine holes, it just ticked the boxes. The sound, the performance, the look, the feel, Srixon has made... An unbelievable driver right here. It's no surprise Ryan Fox won the Open Championship with this almost instantly upon putting it in the bag. Not a lot of people on tour choose Srixon drivers, but I think some free agents might be messing around with this because Strixon has finally made something that rivals the other amazing drivers in the game. I love my gamer. It's over there. I love my Cobra Optum because The mishit is really really good for me. What I experience in those nine holes, good ones and mishit ones, want me to keep it in the bag as it is. I want to play more with it. I just want to see if it can continue to do what it did for those nine holes over the course of 18 and around or two. So this will stay in the bag for the time being. It's going to be hard to take that off another bag. I just love it so much. But I did not have this on my bingo card this year. That A, Strixon was going to release a new driver. And B, it was going to just blow this one out of the water in all facets. Maybe other than ball speed, but everything else, this thing. This is fantastic. Do you use a Strixon driver? Is this enough to make you want to switch, upgrade? Let me know in those comments. And yeah, Strixon, really, really great job with this one.