Tight Lie? Hand Me My Adams! (Adams Tight Lies Fairway Woods)

Member Name: kenjohn

Product:	Adams Tight Lies Fairway Woods
Date:	10/07/06 (1550 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Hits the ball a long way with a high degree of accuracy

Disadvantages: Quite expensive (But not the dearest on the market ! )

~ ~ Golf is a game of confidence. Once you’ve reached a certain level of proficiency and cobbled together a swing that you can feel reasonably sure will allow you to make a good contact with the wee white ball, then the game becomes more mental than physical. And what is more important than any other factor in inspiring that feeling of mental confidence is that you feel comfortable with your clubs. Simply put, that you feel “right” about the club, and that they give you the confidence that you’re going to strike the ball the direction and distance you want.

~ ~ I got that feeling the very first time I hefted an “Adams Tight Lies” fairway wood into my hands. Even before I hit a ball, I simply knew instinctively that this was a golf club that was going to do the business for me, and that I was going to play many great rounds of golf with them in the years ahead. That was back in 1995, and 11 years later that same feeling has never left me, and the Adams woods are still an integral part of my golf bag. They’ve been re-gripped innumerable times and re-shafted twice, but the only time I’ll ever part with them is when they finally decide to fall asunder in my hands!
Strangely enough, while I felt this way about the clubs I’m writing about here (the 3-wood and the 5-wood) I never got to grips with the driver, which has long been banished to a dark corner of the hall cupboard!

~ ~ So what is it about these woods that I find so good?
Well, put simply, they deliver everything I want from a fairway wood. They hit the ball a long way, they’re forgiving on shots that are hit slightly off-centre, they send the ball where you want it to go, (most of the time!) and most importantly they are very easy to hit, getting the ball airborne very quickly and keeping it there for a long time. There are plenty of other golfers out there who must agree with me, because even at a time when manufacturer’s Callaway and TaylorMade are dominant in the woods market, Adams Tight Lies still managed to top the fairway woods sales charts in the USA for three consecutive years from 1999 to 2001.

~ ~ The technology of the clubs is sound. They have the maximum legal “COR factor”, which is the amount of bounce you get when the club head makes contact with the golf ball. (Don’t ask me how they manage to measure it, but they do!) The face of the club is made from ultra-thin titanium, and they are available in 3, 5, 7, and 9 woods, with varying degrees of loft and different flex of shafts to suit the games of everyone from the top professional down to the weekend hacker.
What is unique about the Adams woods is that they have the lowest centre of gravity of any fairway wood. Where most other fairway woods have a centre of gravity (sweet spot) somewhere about the middle of the clubface, the sweet spot on the Adams woods is nearer to the bottom of the face. What all this gobbledegook means in real terms is that it makes it easier for the average golfer to get the golf ball airborne, and gives them the opportunity to hit the ball of the sweet spot more of the time. This relates to better and more consistent shot making and greater distance.
They achieve this feat by what the company calls an “upside-down” head design. Now what that means exactly I’m not too sure, and Adams go to no great lengths to explain themselves. I suspect that really it’s just another piece of technological “golf speak” that makes for a good sound bite in advertisements. What is a fact is that the clubface on the Adams woods is slightly narrower and not so deep as on the average deep-faced woods that abound on the market today. This, for me, makes me feel more confident I can hit the ball well with them, as huge, oversized woods make me feel like I’m swinging a shovel and not a golf club. (Sorry Callaway, but its different strokes for different folks!)

~ ~ The clubs I own are the original Adams Tight Lies Woods which came on the market around the mid-1990’s, and which were endorsed by no less a player than the great Tom Watson. (Who as far as I’m aware is still playing them) I paid big bucks for these clubs at the time. £360 (old Irish Punts) which relates to about €440 for three clubs.
They have since been replaced by updated versions on a number of occasions, and the current price for the latest Adams Tight Lies “GT Fairway Woods” is about €250 per club. However, you’ll probably find a better price if you shop around, as the golf market is highly competitive these days.
You could probably lay your hands on the original clubs that I own for buttons these days. But to me they are priceless, and I wouldn’t part with them for any amount of lolly.

~ ~ Highly recommended.

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© KenJ

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Summary: A very much under-rated alternative to the likes of Taylormade and Callaway.