It’s that time of year again, when the evening light stretches just a little longer and, yes, the new range of drivers arrive to catch our eyes and to tempt us.
“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive,” was one of Arnold Palmer’s pearls of wisdom, and the tools of the trade, aka the big stick, have changed over the years even if the desire to be hit long, straight drives remains the primary goal.
There’s the old adage, of course, about driving for show and putting for dough which applies to those on tour playing for a living. There is something about hitting a good drive, though, that warms the cockles of your heart regardless of playing ability.
Very few golfers on the planet can aspire to hit the ball like, say, Rory McIlroy: in winning the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour last week, using a TaylorMade Qi10, the Northern Irishman averaged 336.7 yards. For handicap golfers, by comparison, the average drive for a man is 216 yards and for a woman 148 yards.
According to those in the equipment industry, the regular club player should change drivers every three to five years.
This year’s offerings are coming at us thick and fast, it must be said, with last month’s PGA Show in Florida used as the launch pad for many of the new products to the market and, in a sign of good forward planning, already available in Irish golf retail outlets.
Given the amount of research and development involved, it won’t come as any surprise to anyone that drivers are the most expensive club in the bag.
One of the new drivers on the market is Ping’s G440 family of Max, LST and SFT drivers which, according to Ping CEO & President John K Solheim, is taking that range of club to “an even higher” level.
As Solheim puts it, “Through multiple technologies across all the product categories, the next generation of our G franchise is delivering more speed and more distance while ensuring the forgiveness expected from every Ping club. The powerful combination of distance and forgiveness yields maximum performance when golfers are properly fitted. We see that every day in our testing and we’re excited to get the G440 into the hands of golfers so they can enjoy the same benefits.”
Ping claims that the G440 is capable of “delivering more speed and distance through engineering advancements,” including its lowest centre of gravity ever in a driver
McIlroy continues to have the TaylorMade Qi10 in his bag, but the manufacturer’s newest driver to the market is the Qi35 which features a 60-layer carbon fibre face that is lighter than the titanium faces which the company used in the past. All of the Qi35 drivers feature chromium carbon fibre crowns that reduce weight on top of the club head which, the company claims, has “allowed designers to drop the centre of gravity substantially.”
All of the club manufacturers are aware that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all driver, given the different abilities. The average club member typically wants forgiveness and distance if often playing in a different postcode to the fast-swinging, elite players.
An example of the different requirements of players comes in the offering from Wilson’s Dynapwr range (of three drivers) which, according to the company, is targeted at satisfying the different standards of players equally.
Titleist, too, have a newly launched driver with the GT range promised to be faster from the TSR model. This claim is due to the manufacturer moving away from titanium and instead using a new material which Titleist calls a Proprietary Matrix Polymer used in the crown section.
One thing is for sure, the newly launched 2025 ranges of drivers – across the different club manufacturers – come with the promises of added distance and forgiveness. Don’t blame the tool.
Best drivers for 2025
- Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond (costs €639) The Elyte Triple Diamond model is designed for forgiveness, targeting players who desire a smaller footprint, lower spin and launch, and a neutral to fade bias shape off the tee.
- Cobra DS Adapt (costs €549) Designed for golfers looking for increased stability and forgiveness, will be a hugely popular choice for those looking for consistency.
- Ping G440 Max (costs €639) Uses Carbonfly Wrap crown technology. The combination of a shallower face, lightweight carbon crown and an internal technology called Free Hosel design, help save significant weight and align the CG closer to the force line for faster ball speed, optimal spin and higher launch.
- TaylorMade Qi35 (costs €629) Comes in 8, 9, 10.5 degrees loft and includes three adjustable weights – a 13-gram weight and two 3-gram weights – with ports in the back and the heel and toe areas up front.
- Titleist GT2 (costs €699) Designed to produce consistently impressive distance with maximum forgiveness, the GT2 is built for players who don’t always find the centre of the face and need the stability of a high-MOI (moment of inertia) driver without sacrificing speed.
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