00:00As an equipment tester, innovation in the golf industry never fails to surprise me. Just when
00:05you think they've invented everything, something new comes out. Now, some of these innovations are
00:10better than others and some stand the test of time. 2024 has been a particularly good year
00:15for innovation, so in this bag, I've got five gear trends that I think are here to stay.
00:22Okay, mini drivers. Now, you might be thinking, that's not a new gear trend, Joe, and you're
00:26probably right. TaylorMade have been making their variations of it for a few years, but what I'm
00:31talking about is it's really picked up momentum in 2024. Players like Mickelson have been using one
00:37for a while. Tommy Fleetwood loves his mini driver. Even Rory McIlroy was testing earlier in the year,
00:42and the two models I've got here are the TaylorMade Burner Copper mini driver, and I've got the new AI
00:47Smoke mini driver from Callaway. Now, they do two quite different things, but they're both
00:52very versatile. Now, a lot of people get confused about what the mini driver is for, and I think
00:57it's very, very player dependent. As a PGA professional, I've started to see a lot of my
01:02peers popping a mini driver in tournaments where things tighten up a little bit as a pure driver
01:08alternative, and some people might think that's not a great idea with a higher handicap. You might want
01:12that extra shaft length to get your speed up, and you might want the extra head size to use as a
01:16driver. Well, in that instance, you can think about it as a large, friendlier three-wood. The footprint's
01:22a lot bigger, which I'll show you in a second. If I put down the TaylorMade mini driver there,
01:27in behind the ball, that feels like double the size of a standard three-wood. Now, both of these models
01:32come in 11.5 and 13.5 degree options, and you can lock them up on the loft sleeve, so you can actually
01:38get them to a pretty standard three-wood loft, and you've just got a tiny bit of extra shaft length,
01:44and you've got that extra mass behind the ball. I think this trend is here to stay. For me,
01:50as a higher speed player, I see it as that driver alternative. I've got mine at 11.5 lofted down
01:56just a fraction, just a shade over 10.5, and on tight holes like this,
02:04I find it really, really useful, a nice penetrating ball flight, and it helps me find a lot more
02:09fairways, and I think this is a trend that's here to stay. Another gear trend that I think is here to
02:16stay, in fact, no, I'm going to go a step further, I think is the future of putters, is lie angle
02:21balance. Now, I've got with me here the Labgolf DF3 putters, and Labgolf are the early adopters of
02:28lie angle balance. It's their name, Lab, L-A-B, lie angle balance. What is a lie angle balance putter,
02:34I hear you ask? Well, you might have heard the term toe, hang, and face balance before. Lie angle
02:39balance putters sit with the toe up. If I don't touch that shaft, and I leave it to orientate
02:43itself, see how the toe of the putter stays up? That is lie angle balanced. If you've seen any of
02:48the social media stuff from Labgolf in their revealer, that orientation allows the club face
02:54to stay square to the path throughout the stroke without any manipulation, and that's something I
03:00really, really like. I think in years to come, people are actively going to wonder,
03:03why we ever manufactured putters that wanted to actively rotate away from square to the target.
03:09In my head, that doesn't make much sense. Tiger likes it, but Tiger's a particularly special athlete
03:16that I think maybe we shouldn't all necessarily model ourselves on. For me, it really simplifies
03:20things if the putter blade wants to stay square. When you're on short putts in particular, assuming
03:25you've got the right read and the right alignment, that putter blade just wants to stay square to the
03:30target. It doesn't want to rotate away from square, and that really helps with your start line. It's
03:36something I'm really passionate about, and I genuinely think that is the future of putting,
03:40and that is a gear trend that's here to stay. While we are on the putting green, I've got another gear
03:46trend for you to do with putting that I think is here to stay from 2024. Those of you who listen to the
03:52Kickpoint Golf Gear podcast from Golf Monthly, we know I've got a bit of a weird fascination with
03:57grips, and this is to do with the putter grips. In my hand, I've got the Golf Pride reverse taper
04:02grips. These were released this year, and to me, it just makes perfect sense. We spend a lot of time
04:08with putting, technically trying to remove that bottom hand from the game, trying to slow it down
04:14and give it less power over the stroke. We've been using grips for years that are either tapering from
04:20wider to thinner down to the bottom end, which tends to give that right hand or the lower hand
04:25in your putting stroke more power, or we're using perfectly parallel grips, which companies like
04:30Superstroke have been doing for some time, which has really, really helped. Golf Pride this year
04:34have engineered a reverse taper grip. In fact, they've engineered three reverse taper fits. We've
04:39got the round, we've got the pistol, and we've got the flat, and they go the opposite way, as you can
04:44imagine. Thinner at the top, and they get thicker down the bottom. When you think about it, if we've got
04:49something thicker in that bottom hand, most of us know that thicker grips tend to deactivate hands
04:54a little bit. When we've got something thicker in the bottom hand, that's got to be good for our
04:59stroke. I've tested, obviously, these aren't on a putter, but I've tested these out quite
05:03significantly, and I've had some really, really good results. I've actually got one on my game of
05:07putter at the moment, so I feel like I can talk with some authority on the topic. It really does
05:12quiet down that bottom hand. It's really helping me hit my start lines more often. Again, I think this is
05:17a gear trend that's going to be with us for a long, long time. I've come down the fairway here,
05:22off that lovely Mini Driver t-shirt, one of my other trends, to talk to you about another trend
05:26that I think is here to stay, and that is full-face grooves. Now, we've seen full-face grooves
05:32for a number of years on wedges, like the tailor-made high-toe wedges, various Callaway iterations, but
05:39not so much on irons. I think it is something that we really need to consider. I've got with me here
05:46the Cleveland Halo XL full-face irons. Now, when you first look at it, it is a visual that takes a
05:52little bit of getting used to, but when you dig into it, you dig into the science and the tech behind
05:57it, it makes perfect sense. Firstly, from a spin point of view, why would you not want to standardize
06:03the spin on heel and toe strike? Sometimes, if you hit a very extreme toe strike on an iron and you're
06:08hitting no grooves, you're going to get a very strange low-spinning flight. Why would you not extend
06:14those grooves all the way to the edge of the face? Secondly, we're always looking to save weight in
06:20irons. Now, there's not going to be masses of saving just by milling extra grooves from there
06:24to the edge of the club, but there will be some, and every little milligram you can save in the club
06:30head can be redistributed elsewhere to increase MOI and put the CG where you want it. Now, for me,
06:36again, like I've said, it's been in wedges for a little while, but I don't know why it's not across
06:41the board commonplace. When you think about it, it makes no sense. Why would we ever stop the grooves
06:46there? I think sometimes in golf, we're very much victims of just accepting things how they've always
06:51been and not questioning it. For me, and I'm just going to hit one away for you here, the full face
06:56grooves in irons is something I think is here to stay. Also, I think it's going to be across the board,
07:06commonplace in wedges before too long. Another trend that is 100% here to stay are 3D printed
07:14golf clubs. Cobra have been leading the way on this front. They've had putters out for a little while
07:19and what I've got in my hands here is a beautiful Cobra limited 3D printed iron. Now, 3D printing has
07:26been used a lot in prototyping, speeding up the prototyping process and people checking out what
07:31designs they're going to bring to market, but this is really the first consumer available 3D printed
07:36iron. I've tested this quite extensively and the feel is extraordinary. I'm not going to get into
07:42all of the tech because that's for another video, but basically what Cobra have done here is they've
07:46created a player looking iron with about as much game improvement technology as in any other club I've
07:52ever tried. It's quite extraordinary. If Bryson DeChambeau is to believe, and this is quite a terrifying
07:58thought, before too long, 3D printers at home, you could be sat there with an idea in your head watching
08:03the golf, head to your garage and you could be prototyping your very own irons and wedges before
08:08too long and have them almost hittable within a day or so, pop a shaft on and go and test out a new
08:13concept down the golf course. Now, that's a terrifying thought for some of my friends who've got some
08:18really wacky ideas, but it's also exciting for the innovation in the golf industry and I think that's
08:24something to keep an eye on moving forward and if the feel of these is anything to go by
08:33then we're in for a really nice treat in the future with some of these 3D printed golf clubs.
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