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
01:16a driver.
01:16Well, in that instance, you can think about it as a large, friendlier three-wood. The footprint's a
01:22lot 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
01:32models come in 11.5 and 13.5 degree options and you can loft them up on the loft sleeve,
01:38so you can
01:38actually get them to a pretty standard three-wood loft and you've just got a tiny bit of extra shaft
01:43length and 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, I find it really, really
02:05useful,
02:06a nice penetrating ball flight and it helps me find a lot more fairways and I think this is a
02:11trend
02:11that's here to stay. Another gear trend that I think is here to stay, in fact, no, I'm going to
02:17go a step further, I think is the future of putters, is lie angle balance. Now, I've got with me
02:23here
02:23the Labgolf DF3 putters and Labgolf are the early adopters of lie angle balance. It's their name,
02:30Lab, L-A-B, lie angle balance. What is a lie angle balance putter, I hear you ask? Well,
02:35you might have heard the term toe, hang, and face balance before. Lie angle balance putters sit kind
02:40with the toe up. If I don't touch that shaft and I leave it to orientate itself, see how the
02:44toe
02:44of the putter stays up? That is lie angle balance. If you've seen any of the social media stuff from
02:50Labgolf in their revealer, that orientation allows the club face to stay square to the path throughout
02:57the stroke without any manipulation and that's something I really, really like. I think in years
03:02to come, people are actively going to wonder why we ever manufactured putters that wanted to
03:06actively rotate away from square to the target. In my head, that doesn't make much sense. Tiger likes
03:13it, but Tiger's a particularly special athlete that I think maybe we shouldn't all necessarily model
03:18ourselves on. For me, it really simplifies things if the putter blade wants to stay square. When
03:23you're on short putts in particular, assuming you've got the right read and the right alignment,
03:28that putter blade just wants to stay square to the target. It doesn't want to rotate
03:32away from square and that really helps with your start line. It's something I'm really passionate
03:37about and I genuinely think that is the future of putting and that is a gear trend that's here to
03:41stay.
03:43Okay, while we are on the putting green, I've got another gear trend for you to do with putting that
03:48I think is here to stay from 2024. Those of you who listen to the Kickpoint Golf Gear podcast from
03:54Golf Monthly will know I've got a bit of a weird fascination with grips and this is to do with
03:58the
03:59putter grips. In my hand, I've got the Golf Pride reverse taper grips. These were released this year
04:04and to me, it just makes perfect sense. We spend a lot of time with putting, technically trying to
04:11remove that bottom hand from the game, trying to slow it down and give it less power over the stroke,
04:16but we've been using grips for years that are either tapering from wider to thinner down to the bottom
04:22end, which tends to give that right hand or the lower hand in your putting stroke more power,
04:27or we're using perfectly parallel grips, which companies like Superstroke have been doing for
04:31some time, which has really, really helped, but Golf Pride this year have engineered a reverse
04:36taper grip. In fact, they've engineered three reverse taper fits. We've got the round, we've got the pistol
04:41and we've got the flat and they go the opposite way, as you can imagine, thinner at the top and
04:46they get
04:46thicker down the bottom. When you think about it, if we've got something thicker in that bottom hand,
04:51most of us know that thicker grips tend to deactivate hands a little bit. When we've got
04:56something thicker in the bottom hand, that's got to be good for our stroke. I've tested, obviously,
05:01these aren't on a putter, but I've tested these out quite significantly and I've had some really,
05:05really good results. I've actually got one on my game of putter at the moment, so I feel like I
05:09can
05:09talk with some authority on the topic. It really does quieten down that bottom hand. It's really helping
05:14me hit my start lines more often. Again, I think this is a gear trend that's going to be with
05:18us for a long,
05:19long time. I've come down the fairway here off that lovely mini driver t-shirt, one of my other
05:25trends, to talk to you about another trend that I think is here to stay and that is full face
05:29grooves.
05:30Now, we've seen full face grooves for a number of years on wedges like the tailor-made hi-toe wedges,
05:36various Callaway iterations, but not so much on irons. I think it is something that we really need
05:44to consider. I've got with me here the Cleveland Halo XL full face irons. Now, when you first look
05:50at it, it is a visual that takes a little bit of getting used to, but when you dig into
05:55it,
05:55you dig into the science and the tech behind it, it makes perfect sense. Firstly, from a spin point of
06:01view, why would you not want to standardize the spin on heel and toe strike? Sometimes,
06:05if you hit a very extreme toe strike on an iron and you're hitting no grooves,
06:09you're going to get a very strange low spinning flight. Why would you not extend those grooves
06:14all the way to the edge of the face? Secondly, we're always looking to save weight in irons. Now,
06:21there's not going to be masses of saving just by milling extra grooves from there to the edge of the
06:25club, but there will be some. Every little milligram you can save in the club head can be redistributed
06:31elsewhere to increase MOI and put the CG where you want it. Now, for me, again, like I've said,
06:37it's been in wedges for a little while, but I don't know why it's not across the board commonplace.
06:42When you think about it, it makes no sense. Why would we ever stop the grooves there?
06:46I think sometimes in golf, we're very much victims of just accepting things
06:50how they've always been and not questioning it. For me, and I'm just going to hit one away for you
06:55here,
06:56the full face grooves in irons
07:01is something I think is here to stay. Also, I think it's going to be across the board commonplace
07:06in wedges before too long. Another trend that is 100% here to stay are 3D printed golf clubs,
07:15and 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
07:52I've ever tried. It's quite extraordinary. If Bryson DeChambeau is to believe, and this is quite a
07:57terrifying thought, before too long, 3D printers at home, you could be sat there with an idea in
08:03your head watching the golf, head to your garage, and you could be prototyping your very own irons
08:08and wedges before too long and have them almost hittable within a day or so, pop a shaft on and
08:12go
08:13and test out a new concept down the golf course. Now, that's a terrifying thought for some of my
08:17friends who've got some really wacky ideas, but it's also exciting for the innovation in the golf industry,
08:23and I think that's something to keep an eye on moving forward and if the feel of these is anything
08:28to go by, then we're in for a really nice treat in the future with some of these 3D printed
08:36golf clubs.
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