Nickent Genex 3DX Driver and Fairway Wood

Nickent is one of our favorite companies, a golf manufacturer that has turned out one terrific product after another while flying a little under-the-radar with the average golfer. The growing Tour success of the company's 3DX Ironwood hybrids is starting to raise Nickent's profile, and now Nickent expands the 3DX line with the Genex 3DX Driver and Genex 3DX Fairway Wood. Do they live up to the 3DX pedigree? They sure do. (Ed. - Nickent Golf has since gone out of business.)

"3DX" stands for "3-D Extreme Weighting." It's a weighting system that combines both interior and exterior weighting properties through Nickent's proprietary 3DX weight ports.

The 3DX system allows weight to be concentrated in positions that are low, back and towards the heel and toe of the club, resulting in extreme perimeter weighting. That produces an enlarged sweet spot and ultra-forgiveness.

The positioning of the 3DX weight ports is tweaked a bit depending on loft to help produce the optimum launch angle and trajectory.

The weight ports are not interchangeable, but the weights are preset in the new driver to help the golfer achieve the desired effect (what Nickent calls "directional control with no screws attached").

The Genex 3DX Driver comes in two versions, the D-Spec and T-Spec. The D-Spec's 3DX weighting and other properties are set up to counteract a slice or produce a draw. The neutral T-Spec is for players who want more workability and a flatter trajectory.

We put a 10-degree D-Spec through its paces, along with a good number of other golfers of varying abilities. The first thing of note about the driver is that this baby is huge. It's maxed out in volume (460cc), COR (.830) and effective hitting area (5 inches from heel to toe, 2.8 inches in face height). You'll feel like you can drive every par-4 standing over this monster at address.

Just make sure you tee it high. With such a deep face, you'll need a long tee to catch it just right. But the forgiveness properties of the Genex 3DX driver are very evident on mis-hits. Not that we're, ahem, admitting to mis-hitting any of our drives. It was, um, other testers who mis-hit the ball. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Here's the real ticket: this driver's weighting, size and bulge and roll all conspire to minimize the effects of a mis-hit, and even bring a ball a little back towards the fairway on heel and toe shots.

Mid- and high-handicappers with faster or jerky swings will definitely want the D-Spec rather than the T-Spec. With these huge clubheads, the toe often trails the heel through the swing, creating an open face at impact. Better players can feel their way through this by adjusting their hands during the swing; most of us aren't that good. The D-Spec definitely counteracts that effect.

About the only negative thing we've noticed about Nickent clubs is that many of them come with a stock Winn grip that is ribbed and also hase a couple smooth spots that roughly correspond to hand placement. Having played a lot of Nickent clubs, we've noticed that this grip tends to get slick a little more quickly than many other grips we've tried. We recommend frequent washing and occasional coarsening of these grips; as long as attention is paid, they work great.

The MSRP of the new Nickent Genex 3DX woods, at the time of this writing, is $349 for the driver and $199 for the fairway woods.

The D-Spec driver lofts range from 9 degrees to 12 degrees and the T-Spec from 7 degrees to 10 degrees. Left-handed versions are available for all but one of the D-Spec lofts, but none of the T-Spec lofts.

Both the driver and fairway wood come with Aldila NV as the stock shaft, and are constructed using plasma welding for more discretionary weight. The driver face is SP700 titanium, but the fairway woods are stainless steel. The Genex 3DX Fairway Woods come in 3+ (14 degrees), 3 (16 degrees), 4 (17.5 degrees), 5 (19 degrees) and 7 (21 degrees).

We used the 16-degree 3-wood, which features a deep head from front to back and shallow face that helps get the ball up quickly. All of its weighting properties produce a low, deep center of gravity; add in the face bulge and you have a very forgiving setup.

All who tried it found the 3DX fairway wood easy to hit and liked the feel. The ball gets up quickly and the club worked well from a variety of lies.

Something the fairway wood shares with the driver is its dark finish. When the light glints off it, it becomes clear that these clubs sport a deep burgundy sheen that is quite attractive. Almost as attractive as these clubs' performance.

For more info about these clubs or other Nickent clubs, click the "manufacturer's site" link.