Tag: Wilson Drivers

Best golf drivers in 2024: New drivers from Callaway, Cobra, Ping and more

Check out Golfweek’s list of the best drivers available to purchase in 2024.

Everyone wants to hit the ball farther, so distance is always going to be important when it comes to new drivers, but if there is a buzzword or concept that is going to dominate the scene in 2024, it’s moment of inertia or MOI.

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In golf equipment – and specifically, drivers – the higher a club’s MOI, the more it will resist twisting on off-center hits, so shots hit toward the toe or the heel will fly straighter and farther.

The USGA and R&A cap the heel-to-toe MOI in drivers at 5,900 g/cm2, but several major golf equipment makers are offering their highest MOI drivers ever in 2024, including Ping and TaylorMade, which are both now featuring a driver than as a combined MOI (heel-to-toe plus sole-to-crown) over 10,000 g/cm2, which should make the Ping G430 Max 10K and the TaylorMade Qi10 Max the most stable and forgiving drivers those brands have ever made.

These gains in driver stability are now possible because more companies are using weight-saving materials like carbon fiber in drivers, which allows engineers to redistribute mass into performance-enhancing locations. Several driver makers are also offering multiple models in 2024, with each driver being ideally suited to golfers who are looking for different specific traits. For instance, Callaway is offering four different Paradym Ai Smoke drivers including the high-MOI Max, the low-spin LS, the Max D for slicers and the Max Fast for slower-swinging players. Ping offers four G430 drivers and Titleist has TSR drivers available too, while Cobra, Mizuno, Srixon and TaylorMade each have three different options.

The key to finding the driver that best suits your game and your budget is to work with a custom fitter and hit several different clubs using a launch monitor so you can accurately compare things like ball speed, spin rate, launch angle and carry distance. Good fitters can help you find the ideal shaft, tweak the lie angle and the loft of your driver and explain why one model might be a better option for you than another.

Pro tip: During a driver fitting, be sure to wear your golf shoes and test clubs using the golf ball that you use when you play so you can get information that will translate more accurately to the course.

Below are many of the most popular drivers that you are likely to see in pro shops and golf specialty stores this season, along with a brief description of each club and a link to Golfweek’s fuller review. Use this as a jumping-off point to educate yourself about the new drives for 2024 before you go for a fitting.

Most popular drivers in 2024:

Wilson Dynapower irons, woods and hybrids

Wilson brings back the Dynapower family of woods and irons, adding modern distance-enhancing technologies and materials.

Long before social media influencers were filming themselves playing glamorous courses and hitting trick shots, decades before moveable weights, titanium drivers and TrackMan, golfers in the ’50s and ’60s such as Sam Snead and Arnold Palmer won major championships using Wilson’s Dynapower irons. When astronaut Alan Sheppard snuck a retractible golf club aboard Apollo 14 and hit a shot on the moon, he used a Wilson Staff Dynapower 6-iron.

Seventy years ago, Dynapower irons were state-of-the-art, with a bore-through hosel that removed weight from the heel. Back then, that made them “game-improvement” clubs, but they were muscleback blades with razor-thin toplines and minimal offset. By today’s standards, they’d be elite-player clubs.

Eventually, Wilson stopped making Dynapower irons and woods, but now the Chicago-based equipment maker is bringing the family back using modern shapes, materials and technologies.

Wilson DYNAPWR and DYNAPWR Carbon drivers hit USGA Conforming Driver Head list

For golfers who are old enough, the name harkens back to the days when Arnold Palmer was swinging Wilson clubs.

Back in March, at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, Wilson staff player Brendan Steele was spotted hitting a prototype driver that appeared to have a carbon fiber crown and red trim. We can now see that club appears to have been a prototype of a club that just hit the USGA’s Conforming Driver Head list, the Wilson Staff DYNAPWR Carbon. Also hitting the list this week is the standard Wilson Staff DYNAPWR.

If you are relatively new to golf, the DYNAPWR name likely doesn’t mean anything to you, but for golfers who are old enough, it harkens back to the days when Arnold Palmer was swinging Wilson clubs, Cadillac’s had massive tail fins and the radio waves were filled with Elvis Presley. DYNAPWR irons were extremely popular in the 1950s and ’60s and the name adorned several generations of woods as well.

Having been added to the Conforming Driver Head list, the new DYNAPWR drivers are now legal for play, but they look nothing like their predecessors.

While Wilson has not released any details about the clubs, the standard DYNAPWR driver appears to have ad adjustable hosel and at least one large carbon fiber piece on the toe side of the sole. There also appears to be an L-shaped weight in the back of the head.

The DYNAPWR Carbon also appears to have a large carbon fiber piece in the toe second of the sole, an adjustable hosel and an L-shaped weight in the sole, but the sole shaping is different. It has a crease in the back section that the standard DYNAPWR lacks.

According to the USGA’s website, there is only one loft currently available, 9 degrees, but if these drivers make their way to retail in 2023, there will certainly be more loft offerings available.

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Wilson Staff Launch Pad driver

Internal weighting, offset and an upright lie angle designed into the Staff Launch Pad driver should help golfers hit straighter drives.

Gear: Wilson Staff Launch Pad driver
Price: $299.99 with UST Mamiya Helium shaft and Lamkin MicroLite grip
Specs: 460-cubic-centimeter titanium head. 10.5 or 13 degrees of loft
Available: Jan. 13, 2020

Thanks to a win at the U.S. Open by Gary Woodland, Wilson’s better-player equipment got plenty of attention in 2019, but with the release of the Staff Launch Pad family, the company is showing it still knows how to make gear for slower-swinging, high-handicap players.

The Staff Launch Pad driver was designed to help cure one of the most common problems for golfers who shoot in the 90s and 100s: a slice. Inside the 460-cubic-centimeter head, designers added a 13-gram weight to the heel area. That should encourage the face to close more efficiently on the downswing and produce less sidespin.

Wilson Staff Launch Pad driver
Offset and an internal weight help to close the Wilson Staff Launch Pad driver’s face to reduce sidespin and fight a slice. (Wilson)

The driver also was designed with a 60-degree lie angle, making it more upright than the typical driver, which has a lie angle of 58 degrees. That 2-degree difference may not sound like much, but clubs that are too flat tend to encourage a fade (or a slice) while more upright clubs typically encourage a right-to-left ball flight.

The Staff Launch Pad driver also was given offset, which should help close the face and reduce slice-creating sidespin.

Wilson Staff Launch Pad driver
A more-upright lie angle should promote straighter shots. (Wilson)

To help higher-handicap players create more distance, Wilson designed the Staff Launch Pad driver to be as light as possible. For that reason, it was not made with either moveable weights or an adjustable hosel because those elements would increase overall weight, and many players in this category are not looking for those technologies. As a result, the Staff Launch Pad weighs just 272 grams, which is about 30 grams less than many drivers. So with the same amount of effort, golfers should be able to swing it faster and create more ball speed.

Designers also gave the club a variable thickness face that protects ball speed on mis-hits.