There comes a moment in life when you have to start accepting the golfer you are now, is not the one you once were. The effortless power of your youth has gone, and you realise that golf does not get any easier as you get older.
We can’t all be like Justin Rose or Padraig Harrington, who have managed to find more distance as they’ve gotten older. For most of us, the job is simpler: accept what’s changed, then get smarter about how we play.
Drivers are a great place to start.
I’m not getting any younger. I do not have tour-level swing speed, and no amount of carbon, titanium or marketing is going to manufacture it. My body is changing, as bodies do, and that shifts what a good drive looks like. These days, I care less about the one perfect rocket and more about what happens on an average swing, on an average day, when there’s a narrow fairway and a bit of trouble waiting on one side.
That is probably why drivers hold such a powerful place in golf.
The story we tell ourselves
A new driver does not arrive as a piece of metal and carbon. It arrives as an idea. A new driver is not just a club. It is a small reset. The idea that the next one will be longer, straighter and easier. That it will make the tee shot feel simple again. That if this club works, golf itself might feel better again. That it might give you a little flashback to when the ball used to fly without quite so much effort.
Drivers are sold as progress. Not incremental progress, but proper progress. Ten more yards. Straighter ball flight. More forgiveness. More confidence. Fewer disasters.
And the story in our heads is usually some version of this:
If I buy this driver, then I’ll hit it better.
If I hit it better, then I’ll hit more fairways.
If I hit more fairways, then I’ll shoot lower scores.
If I shoot lower scores, then I’ll enjoy golf more.
That is not irrational. It’s just a lot to ask of a golf club. Especially when the limiting factor is standing over the ball, slightly tight, aware that your body has its own opinions these days, and wondering whether the swing you brought to the first tee is the same one you had on the range yesterday.
The problem is that the feeling rarely lasts. The first poor strike has a way of dragging you back to reality, and suddenly you are not thinking about materials and face technology. You are back in the same negotiation as before, asking the same old question: Can I trust this thing when it matters?
This post is the front door to my driver reviews. It’s not a “new drivers are a waste of money” post, or a “stop buying things” post, because that would be rather hypocritical coming from a gear nerd like me. It’s a more honest look at what we are really buying when we buy a driver, and the approach I’m building to test them in the real world.
What are we actually buying?
Sometimes we are buying genuine performance, especially if we are playing an older driver. Better launch. Better spin. A shaft that fits how we actually move the club, not how we think we move it.
But quite often we are buying something else:
Confidence: the sense that this club will behave if we do our bit.
Permission: a reason to stop worrying about driving, at least for a while.
Hope: that golf will feel simpler again.
A new story: about who we are off the tee.
None of that is shameful. Golf is hard. The tee shot is exposed. Everyone is watching, including the people pretending not to. A driver that makes you feel capable and confident is an easy thing to want.
The only problem is that hope can be short-lived.
When does a new driver genuinely help?
A new driver can genuinely help when:
Your current setup is clearly fighting you on launch and spin
Your miss pattern is predictable, and a different head or shaft genuinely compensates for it
You have changed physically, and the old club no longer matches the golfer you are now
Confidence has eroded, and you need something you can commit to again
You play different courses, and what used to work no longer suits the golf you actually play
These are the questions that matter more as you get older. When you can no longer outmuscle a course, you start caring more about playability and positioning. It’s not glamorous, but it is effective.
How will I review drivers?
I’m not trying to run a tour van. I’m trying to answer a simpler question: Does this driver actually make golf easier for a normal, low-handicap golfer who knows he is not getting any younger?
When I say a driver is good, I do not mean it produced one huge number. I mean, it produced better golf for me more often. A tighter, less damaging miss. A more playable flight. A club I would happily take to the first tee when it matters.
What I see will not be what everyone sees. My swing, my strike pattern and my miss are mine. The point of these reviews is not to predict your numbers, but to share what held up in real golf and what earned my confidence.
If something I write makes you curious about a driver, the best next step is always the same: get properly fitted and try it yourself. Not just for ball speed and launch, but for the subjective bits too; how it looks behind the ball, how it feels, how it sounds, and whether you can actually commit to it.
The testing side of this is still a bit of a work in progress. I’ll keep refining it as I go, and I’m genuinely keen to hear what you’d find most useful in these reviews. More on-course context? More about strike and miss patterns? More fitting detail? More data? Tell me, and I’ll build towards it.
What will the testing look like?
Some posts will be built around fitting sessions or demo days, where I’ll usually have launch monitor data to help see what different head and shaft combinations are doing. Those sessions are great for clean numbers and quick comparisons. The downside is obvious: you rarely get to take the club away and see what it’s like on the course.
Other posts will come from time with a demo club, a second-hand find, or something I can actually take away and use. Sometimes that will be on the course, sometimes at the driving range, and sometimes both. It won’t always be as tidy as a fitting bay, but it will usually tell me more about what the club is like to live with.
I’ll always be clear about the context and how much time I’ve had with the club, so you can judge the conclusions appropriately.
What’s my benchmark driver?
Driver testing will be similar to my putter testing: everything will be compared to what I’m currently playing. For now, that’s my professionally fitted Titleist GT2. It is the club I know best, and it gives me a reference point for distance, dispersion and confidence. If it gets displaced through testing, then the new gamer becomes the benchmark. That’s how the process stays honest.
If you want background on the GT2, then the fitting session notes (and video) are linked below. I was originally fitted into the GT3 head, but after a few months, I switched to the more forgiving GT2. Same loft, same shaft.
Zooming out for a moment
Once you start paying attention to why drivers tempt us, you notice the same pattern elsewhere. In putters, wedges, gadgets, lessons, practice aids, and in many other areas of life, too.
Psychologists call it the conditional happiness cycle. If I can get this sorted, then I’ll be happy. Then becomes now, now becomes normal, and we start looking for the next thing to fix.
Golf makes the cycle easy to spot, and if there is one club where it feels most believable, it’s the driver. The one we all want to trust.
Where to go next
Driver reviews are still a small corner of the site, but I will be doing more of them.
When I test a driver, I’ll be clear about the context and the limits of what I’ve seen: whether it was a fitting session, a demo day, a range test, or time on the course. I’ll share what stood out, what held up, and what influenced my confidence.
If you enjoy thoughtful gear writing and honest reviews, you can subscribe below and follow the driver testing as it develops.
Links:
SGGT driver fitting: here and the YouTube video: here
Auchterlonies new fitting studio: here
Thoughts on club fitting: here
I heard somewhere the people keep buying books they’ll never read because they romanticize the idea that one day they’ll have the free time to sit down and read a book.
I think it’s often the same idea in golf, we buy a new driver or any club for that matter romanticizing the idea that this might be the key that unlocks the fairway.
I'll be intrigued to see what metric you use for ranking them Keith. I know my tendency when testing drivers is to remove all the worst shots and compare the best 5-10 drives from each driver, seeing which gives me the best ball speed, most optimum spin numbers etc. in order to see which one has the capacity to go the furthest on a god hit, which is what I expect most people do when considering a new driver (without the help of a fitter). I suspect, and knowing what you have looked at in the past, what we should do is also consider the dispersion on "all" of the shots (I'll let you take out the cold top if you must😉) and see which driver produces the most consistent results and decide which dispersion pattern is best for your game.
That might be a driver that produces a smaller l-r pattern, but is slightly shorter, or for some people depending on the courses they play they may prefer to accept an increase in l-r dispersion with a 10y longer average. Horses for courses....
For me I want a driver that when I stand on the tee, I'm looking at my target spot and have the confidence to swing it freely and believe I can hit it there. Not be worrying that I might pull it, or slice it into the trees / OOB.