Best drivers for golfers who shoot in the 90s

Gear: Mizuno ST-Max 230 driver
Price: $500 with Project X HZRDUS Smoke Green RDX, Mitsubishi Lai’ Li Blue or UST Mamiya Helium NanoCore 4F1 shaft and Lamkin ST Hybrid grip
Specs: 460-cc head with a forged titanium face and chassis, carbon fiber crown and sole panels, and adjustable hosel. 9.5, 10.5 and 12-degree head options.

Who It’s For: Golfers who prioritize forgiveness and who want to hit straighter drives.

The Skinny: The new ST-Max 230 takes the weight saved by using a large carbon fiber crown and sole panel and redistributes it to the back of the head to boost the forgiveness and make the club Mizuno’s most stable driver.

The Deep Dive: Just as you can tell a lot about a man by the quality of his shoes and belts, you can tell a lot about a driver by observing where designers and engineers position weight in the head. Mizuno’s ST-G driver has more weight concentrated in the front, which helps it reduce spin and put an emphasis on ball speed. The Japanese company’s newest driver, the ST-Max, utilizes an entirely different design, materials and weighting concept, and the result, according to Mizuno, is its most stable and forgiving driver.

Mizuno ST-Max 230 driver — In the address position, the ST-Max 230 looks large, but clean with a glossy black tone covering the carbon fiber. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

In the address position, the ST-Max looks bigger and wider than the other ST drivers, even though its 460-cc size gives it the same volume as the ST-Z and ST-X drivers. It has a lower profile but is larger from heel to toe and from front to back, and when it comes to stability, bigger is better.

The key to increasing the moment of inertia (MOI) and making a club less likely to twist on off-center hits is to position more weight in the back of the head. To do that in the 460-cc ST-Max, Mizuno designed the club with a massive carbon fiber crown and increased the size of the carbon fiber sole panel. Replacing titanium with carbon fiber reduces weight, and that saved weight was put back in the head by adding a 54-gram weight to the very back of the head. Having that much mass concentrated in the rear of the club keeps it moving forward and wobbling less on mis-hits, which should result in straighter drives.

To increase ball speed, Mizuno opted to use the same Beta Rich Ti LFS titanium in the face that debuted in the ST-G driver. It is lighter and has a higher tensile strength, so the multi-thickness face can flex more efficiently while maintaining durability.

Mizuno also increased the size of the CorTech Chamber, which is behind the leading edge in the sole. Mizuno has used this technology in recent drivers, and it involves creating a slot in the sole and then filling it with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) to keep water and debris from getting inside the head. Inside the TPU, Mizuno adds a stainless steel bar, so while the soft TPU material allows the lower portion of the face to flex more efficiently on low-struck shots, the bar helps the head maintain momentum. The TPU material also soaks up excessive vibrations and enhances sound, so drives feel and sound better.

Below are several close-up photos of the Mizuno ST-Max driver.

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Gear: Ping G430 Max 10K driver
Price: $650 with Ping Alta CB shaft, Project X HZRDUS Red Smoke RDX shaft or Mitsubishi Kai’ Li White shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet 360 grip
Specs: Forged titanium face and body with carbon fiber crown and adjustable hosel. Available in 9, 10.5 and 12 degrees of loft.
Available: Jan. 9

Who It’s For: Golfers who want to maximize forgiveness and stability and moderate-swinging players who want a higher launch and lower spin off the tee to maximize distance.

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The Skinny: Along with having the largest carbon fiber crown in company history, the Ping G430 Max 10K has an exceptionally high moment of inertia to help the club resist twisting on off-center hits to promote longer, straighter drives.

The Deep Dive: Driver prices have crept up over the years, but don’t let the 10K in this driver’s name scare you into thinking it will cost $10,000. That figure, 10K, refers to something else, but this addition to the Ping G430 driver family could be priceless to golfers who struggle with consistency off the tee.

Starting in the mid-2010s, Ping drivers became synonymous with stability and forgiveness, with clubs like the G30, G and G400 Max helping golfers who struggle to find the center of face hit straighter tee shots. With the release of the G430 Max 10K, the Phoenix, Arizona-based company boasts that it has made its most stable driver ever.

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Like other Ping drivers, the G430 Max 10K has a 460-cubic-centimeter volume, which is the maximum allowable size, but dimensionally, from heel to toe and front to back, it is larger than the other G430 drivers.

The crown is designed using carbon fiber, and the material wraps over the edges and into the sides of the head. Ping refers to this design as Carbonfly Wrap, and it helps save 5 grams of weight from the top of the club and lower the center of gravity. Previously, Carbonfly Wrap had only been available in the G430 LST driver.

The driver was designed with a variable-thickness, forged titanium face that has a unique curvature. Although you may not always see it, driver faces curve vertically and horizontally. In the G430 Max 10K, Ping reduced the roll curvature in the lower portion and increased it above the center of the hitting area. This helps normalize spin over a larger area, so low-hit drives don’t have excessive spin and high-struck tee shots retain spin.

The face is also thinner than the standard G430 to allow the hitting area to flex more efficiently over a larger area to protect ball speed on mis-hits.

The weight saved using a Carbonfly Wrap crown and a thinner face has been redistributed into a 28-gram weight in the back of the sole. It is 3 grams heavier than the G430 Max’s weight, and since it is located farther back away from the face, it helps increase the moment of inertia even more.

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Working together, Ping’s technologies in the G430 Max 10K produce a heel-toe moment of inertia of 5,860 g-cm2, which pushes up against the USGA limit of 5,900 g-cm2. Add in the up-and-down MOI, and the total reaches 10,100 g-cm2, which is why the 10K was added to the club’s name. With that number being the highest in Ping’s history, no driver the company has previously made resists twisting on off-center hits better, so golfers can expect to see straighter shots and less distance loss on mis-hits.

All of that forgiveness should make the G430 Max 10K appealing to golfers who want to hit straighter shots, but during player testing, Ping discovered the G430 Max 10K produced a launch angle up to 1 degree higher with slightly less spin. For slower-swinging golfers, that can mean more carry distance and more overall distance. It also means that fitters can use the adjustable hosel and try the club at a lower loft, which can produce more ball speed and tighter dispersion while still achieving the launch angle that a golfer needs.

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Below are several close-up images of the Ping G430 Max 10K driver: