Cleveland Hibore XLS Tour Driver

New for 2008 is the new Cleveland HiBore XLS Tour driver, which is aimed at the golfer in search of increased distance, workability, higher ball speed, and high launch angle. I’ve been testing the new Cleveland HiBore XLS Tour driver (10.5* Regular Flex) for the past month and I’m quite pleased with the results and is a welcome addition to the already popular HiBore XL line of golf clubs.

Look and Feel

The first thing you’ll notice about the Cleveland HiBore XLS Tour driver is it has a more traditional compact pear shape, which is much smaller than a traditional looking 460 cc driver, and it also has a longer Tour length hosel. The design is based on precise PGA Tour specifications and Tour testing and feedback. The stock Fujikura 55 gram Fit-On M Gold regular flex shaft makes the club very easy to swing and lightweight. The face of the HiBore XLS Tour is opened 2 degrees and weighted at the toe to promote a fade based workability. The enhanced sweet spot of the face of the HiBore XLS is 17% larger than the HiBore XL, making it Cleveland’s largest ever and one of the biggest on the market. The HiBore XLS Tour also features the maximum USGA clubhead dimensions to push the MOI limit. 5300 MOI represents a 13% increase from the HiBore XL for control off the tee for straighter drives. Weight was added to the heel and toe in the form of “stability foils”, which create a higher MOI and more stable clubface. A really cool feature of the HiBore XLS Tour driver is the authenticity feature built into the toe of the club. The HiBore XLS toe graphics will change from white to yellow in daylight or UV conditions.

Performance

The sound the HiBore XLS Tour makes when you hit this club reminded me of the sound a baseball makes when you hit it with a aluminum bat, it did take a little time to get used to the sound. One of the things they did with the HiBore XLS Tour is open the clubface 2 degrees, and weighted the toe for fade based workability. Now I normally play a fade and the open face design really accentuated my fade, making my shots fade very severely. But after some alignment and swing adjustments, I was able to factor in the built fade bias of the clubface, which is quite nice. Cleveland has packed the HiBore XLS Tour driver with three technology features, that they claim give you higher ball speeds, optimal launch angle, and greater overall distance. One of those features is Distance Driven Geometry. What this means is they moved the weight lower and deeper in the clubhead, which creates an optimized center of gravity in the center of the face, resulting in optimal launch conditions and higher ball speeds for greater distance off the tee. In my tests, I did notice that my launch angle was much higher than with my Callaway BigBertha 360 driver and gave me more distance, but not as much as the TaylorMade Tour Burner driver I reviewed. The other technology utilized by the HiBore XLS Tour is Energy Transfer Core. This is basically an engineered system of thin, lightweight titanium spines that transfers energy to the ball to create more efficient transfer of energy from the club to the ball and create higher ball speeds. The higher ball speeds will give you greater distance and launch conditions that will increase your overall distance. The final piece of technology employed by the Cleveland HiBore XLS Tour, is Full Face Performance (FFP). Full Face Performacne is just the expansion of the sweet spot over a larger area of the face of the club, which gives you maximum ball speed for increased driving distance. Another bonus of the FFP “Hot Zone” is it gives you more forgiveness off of mishits. In my testing of the HiBore XLS Tour, I did notice that the larger sweet spot made it very easy to produce solid shots repeatedly, and even when not hit perfectly square, the shots went relatively straight and far.

Will this club give you the tour distance of Vijay Singh and Boo Weekly? No, but probably close enough to make you pleased to have this driver in the bag. If your looking for a club that is Tour tested, provides fade based workability, a large sweet spot, and stable on mishits, then checkout the Cleveland HiBore XL Tour Driver.