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!
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00As an equipment tester, innovation in the golf industry
00:03never fails to surprise me.
00:05Just when you think they've invented everything,
00:07something new comes out.
00:08Now, some of these innovations are better than others,
00:11and some stand the test of time.
00:132024 has been a particularly good year for innovation,
00:15so in this bag, I've got five gear trends
00:19that I think are here to stay.
00:22Okay, mini drivers.
00:23Now, you might be thinking,
00:24that's not a new gear trend, Joe,
00:26and you're probably right.
00:28TaylorMade have been making their variations of it
00:29for a few years, but what I'm talking about
00:32is it's really picked up momentum in 2024.
00:35Players like Mikkelsen have been using one for a while,
00:38Tommy Fleetwood loves his mini driver,
00:39even Rory McIlroy was testing earlier in the year.
00:43And the two models I've got here
00:44are the TaylorMade Burner Copper mini driver,
00:46and I've got the new AI Smoke mini driver from Callaway.
00:50Now, they do two quite different things,
00:51but they're both very versatile.
00:54Now, a lot of people get confused
00:55about what the mini driver is for,
00:58and I think it's very, very player-dependent.
01:00As a PGA professional, I've started to see
01:01a lot of my peers popping a mini driver in tournaments
01:05where things tighten up a little bit
01:07as a pure driver alternative.
01:09And some people might think that's not a great idea
01:11with a higher handicap,
01:12you might want that extra shaft length to get your speed up,
01:14and you might want the extra head size to use as a driver.
01:17Well, in that instance, you can think about it
01:19as a large, friendlier three-wheeler.
01:22The footprint's a lot bigger,
01:23which I'll show you in a second.
01:25So if I put down the TaylorMade mini driver there,
01:27in behind the ball,
01:28that feels like double the size of a standard three-wheel.
01:31Now, both of these models come in 11.5
01:33and 13.5 degree options,
01:36and you can loft them up on the loft sleeve,
01:38so you can actually get them
01:39to a pretty standard three-wheel loft.
01:42And you've just got a tiny bit of extra shaft length,
01:44and you've got that extra mass behind the ball.
01:47So I think this trend is here to stay,
01:49and for me, as a higher speed player,
01:51I see it as that driver alternative.
01:54So I've got mine at 11.5,
01:55lofted down just a fraction,
01:57just a shade over 10 and a half,
02:00and on tight holes like this,
02:04I find it really, really useful,
02:06a nice penetrating ball flight,
02:08and it helps me find a lot more fairways,
02:10and I think this is a trend that's here to stay.
02:14So another gear trend that I think is here to stay,
02:16in fact, no, I'm going to go a step further,
02:18I think is the future of putters,
02:20is lie angle balance.
02:22Now I've got with me here the Lab Golf DF3 putters,
02:26and Lab Golf are the early adopters of lie angle balance,
02:29it's their name, Lab, L-A-B, lie angle balance.
02:32So what is a lie angle balance putter, I hear you ask.
02:35Well, you might have heard the term
02:36toe, hang, and face balance before.
02:38Lie angle balance putters sit kind of with a toe up.
02:41If I don't touch that shaft,
02:42and I leave it to orientate itself,
02:44you see how the toe of the putter stays up?
02:46That is lie angle balance.
02:47If you've seen any of the social media stuff
02:50from Lab Golf in their revealer,
02:52that orientation allows the club face to stay square
02:56to the path throughout the stroke without any manipulation,
02:59and that's something I really, really like.
03:01I think in years to come,
03:02people are actively going to wonder
03:03why we ever manufactured putters
03:06that wanted to actively rotate away
03:08from square to the target.
03:10In my head, that doesn't make much sense.
03:12Tiger likes it, but Tiger's a particularly special athlete
03:16that I think maybe we shouldn't all
03:17necessarily model ourselves on.
03:19For me, it really simplifies things
03:21if the putter blade wants to stay square.
03:23So when you're on short putts in particular,
03:25assuming you've got the right read and the right alignment,
03:28that putter blade just wants to stay square to the target.
03:31It doesn't want to rotate away from square,
03:34and that really helps with your start line.
03:36It's something I'm really passionate about,
03:38and I genuinely think that is the future of putting,
03:40and that is a gear trend that's here to stay.
03:43Okay, while we are on the putting green,
03:46I've got another gear trend for you
03:47to do with putting that I think is here to stay from 2024.
03:51And those of you who listen
03:52to the Kick Point Golf Gear podcast from Golf Monthly
03:55will know I've got a bit of a weird fascination with grips,
03:58and this is to do with the putter grips.
04:00So in my hand, I've got the Golf Pride Reverse Taper Grips.
04:03Now, these were released this year,
04:05and to me, it just makes perfect sense.
04:07We spend a lot of time with putting,
04:10technically trying to remove that bottom hand from the game,
04:13trying to slow it down and give it less power
04:16over the stroke.
04:16But we've been using grips for years
04:19that are either tapering from wider to thinner
04:22down to the bottom end,
04:22which tends to give that right hand
04:24or the lower hand in your putting stroke more power,
04:27or we're using perfectly parallel grips,
04:29which companies like Superstroke
04:30have been doing for some time,
04:32which has really, really helped.
04:33But Golf Pride this year have engineered
04:35a reverse taper grip.
04:36In fact, they've engineered three reverse taper fits.
04:39We've got the round, we've got the pistol,
04:41and we've got the flat.
04:42And they go the opposite way, as you can imagine.
04:45Thinner at the top, and they get thicker down the bottom.
04:47And when you think about it,
04:49if we've got something thicker in that bottom hand,
04:51most of us know that thicker grips
04:53tend to deactivate hands a little bit.
04:55So when we've got something thicker in the bottom hand,
04:58that's got to be good for our stroke.
05:00I've tested, obviously these aren't on a putter,
05:01but I've tested these out quite significantly,
05:04and I've had some really, really good results.
05:06And I've actually got one on my game of putter
05:07at the moment, so I feel like I can talk
05:09with some authority on the topic.
05:11It really does quieten down that bottom hand.
05:14It's really helping me hit my start lines more often.
05:16And again, I think this is a gear trend
05:18that's going to be with us for a long, long time.
05:21So I've come down the fairway here,
05:22off that lovely Mini Driver T-shirt,
05:24one of my other trends, to talk to you about another trend
05:26that I think is here to stay.
05:28And that is full-face grooves.
05:30Now we've seen full-face grooves
05:32for a number of years on wedges,
05:34like the tailor-made high-toe wedges,
05:36various Callaway iterations, but not so much on irons.
05:41And I think it is something that we really need to consider.
05:45So I've got with me here
05:46the Cleveland Halo XL full-face irons.
05:49Now, when you first look at it,
05:51it is a visual that takes a little bit of getting used to.
05:54But when you dig into it, you dig into the science
05:56and the tech behind it, it makes perfect sense.
05:59Firstly, from a spin point of view,
06:01why would you not want to standardize the spin
06:04on heel and toe strike?
06:05Sometimes if you hit a very extreme toe strike on an iron
06:08and you're hitting no grooves,
06:09you're going to get a very strange, low-spinning flight.
06:12So why would you not extend those grooves
06:14all the way to the edge of the face?
06:16Secondly, we're always looking to save weight in irons.
06:20Now, there's not going to be masses of saving
06:22just by milling extra grooves from there
06:24to the edge of the club, but there will be some.
06:27And every little milligram you can save in the club head
06:30can be redistributed elsewhere to increase MOI
06:33and put the CG where you want it.
06:36Now, for me, again, like I've said,
06:37it's been in wedges for a little while,
06:40but I don't know why it's not across the board commonplace.
06:42When you think about it, it makes no sense.
06:44Why would we ever stop the grooves there?
06:46I think sometimes in golf, we're very much victims
06:49of just accepting things how they've always been
06:51and not questioning it.
06:52So for me, and I'm just going to hit one away for you here,
06:56the full face grooves in irons
07:01is something I think is here to stay.
07:03And also, I think it's going to be across the board
07:06commonplace in wedges before too long.
07:08Another trend that is 100% here to stay
07:12are 3D printed golf clubs.
07:16And Cobra have been leading the way on this front.
07:18They've had putters out for a little while.
07:19And what I've got in my hands here
07:21is a beautiful Cobra limited 3D printed iron.
07:26Now, 3D printing has been used a lot in prototyping,
07:28speeding up the prototyping process
07:30and people checking out what designs
07:32they're going to bring to market.
07:33But this is really the first consumer available
07:363D printed iron and I've tested this quite extensively
07:39and the feel is extraordinary.
07:41I'm not going to get into all of the tech
07:42because that's for another video.
07:44But basically what Cobra have done here
07:46is they've created a player looking iron
07:48with about as much game improvement technology
07:51as in any other club I've ever tried.
07:53It's quite extraordinary.
07:55And if Bryson DeChambeau is to believe,
07:57and this is quite a terrifying thought,
07:58before too long, 3D printers at home,
08:01you could be sat there with an idea in your head
08:03watching the golf, head to your garage
08:05and you could be prototyping your very own irons
08:08and wedges before too long
08:09and have them almost hittable within a day or so,
08:11pop a shaft on and go and test out a new concept
08:14down the golf course.
08:15Now, that's a terrifying thought for some of my friends
08:18who've got some really wacky ideas,
08:20but it's also exciting for the innovation
08:22in the golf industry.
08:24And I think that's something to keep an eye on
08:25moving forward.
08:26And if the feel of these is anything to go by,
08:30then we're in for a really nice treat in the future
08:33with some of these 3D printed golf clubs.