A little while back, I wrote a piece about the TaylorMade Stealth fairway woods and their presence in tour bags. Players like Ludvig Åberg, Jason Day and Nelly Korda have had every opportunity to upgrade and haven’t. Researching that article got me curious so I went looking for one myself.
I bought one on 2nd Swing Golf
Finding the right specs took a little more digging than I expected. Options on the used market exist but when you narrow it down by loft, shaft flex and condition, the choices thin out pretty quickly. I shopped around and ended up landing on 2nd Swing Golf.
They had the best deal I could find. I got a TaylorMade Stealth 2 3-wood with 15 degrees of loft for $150 including shipping. I was already carrying a driver and a 5-wood and I’d been thinking about adding a 3-wood for a while.
First impressions
I’ve never owned a TaylorMade fairway wood. I’ve hit them over the years—actually tested a few when I was shopping for my Callaway 5-wood—but I never found one that clicked for me. So, going into this, I had some mild skepticism.
Out of the box
The listing on 2nd Swing described the condition in a way that, once the club arrived, felt slightly generous. The actual quality was a step better than what the photos suggested which is a good thing.
The first thing I did was change the grip. Playing a grip someone else has already used isn’t really my thing and the midsize Winn that came on it wasn’t a fit for my hands anyway. I swapped it for a Lamkin undersize.
Range session
The first few swings went left. I worked through it and by the time I had a feel for it, the ball flight started doing exactly what I wanted. It took about five balls.
What stood out most was how easy it was to get the ball in the air. That’s not something I’ve always been able to say about a 3-wood. The main reason I’ve kept the 3-wood out of my bag for so long is that I’ve consistently found them difficult to hit with any real confidence. The trajectory was unpredictable or I had to make too good a swing to get a result worth trusting.
Distance and ball flight were strong with the Stealth 2 and I left that range session thinking this might be the easiest 3-wood I’ve ever hit.
On the course
I’ve played a few rounds with it and I’m still dialing it in but the confidence level is already high. I’m not standing over the ball running through a checklist of things that could go wrong.
The club does enough of the work that I can just commit to the shot. What I wanted most was a realistic path at hitting par-5s in two. My 5-wood gets me close sometimes but leaves me just short enough that I’m rarely putting for eagle. With the Stealth 2, I’m at least starting to see the approach to those greens. It’s early but I think it will get me there.
Final thoughts
I’m still in the early stages with this club so it’s too soon to say with certainty whether it stays in the bag long-term. What I can say is that for $150, it’s already filling a gap and solving a problem I’d had for a while. If it’s good enough for Ludvig Åberg, Jason Day, Nelly Korda and Dustin Johnson to keep gaming when they could swap to anything newer, it’s certainly good enough for me to find out what the fuss is about.
ericsokp
2 months ago
My only issue with purchasing any driver/wood from 2nd Swing is that they never include the headcover! When I’ve asked about this at my local store, one employee told me that 80% of their trade-ins come in without the headcover (why would someone keep a headcover for a club they’re trading in, and I can’t believe that 80% of people lose them either). Another employee walking by overheard this conversation and later approached me in the store and confidentially told me that in reality they just throw them away because they don’t want to deal with storing them somewhere! Aarrgghh!!!!
Fake
2 months ago
That makes a lot more sense, unfortunately.