- 4 months ago
Just when it looks like golf equipment manufacturers have have run out of ideas, a handful of new ideas seem to pop up out of nowhere. Admittedly, some are better than others, but last year has been a particularly good year for fans of innovative golf gear so in this video, Joe Ferguson runs through the five golf gear trends from last year that he thinks are here to stay!
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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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