NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
In popular music, the notion of a “song of the summer” – a hit that seems to capture the moment or the mood of the season – has been around for more than a century. Of course it’s all a matter of taste. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” or Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” aren’t for everyone. Others might have been grabbed by Hozier’s “Too Sweet” or Teddy Swims’ hot hits, “Lose Control” or “The Door.”
Golf’s equipment industry, being driven by a pretty big summer wave of participation, always seems to have something that resonates a little bit more than the rest of what’s on the market each year. For instance, the summer song that gearheads were singing loudest in 2023 was the Odyssey Jailbird putter craze sparked by a sudden tsunami of successes by Wyndham Clark, Rickie Fowler and Keegan Bradley.
The Summer of ’24 equipment song getting the most airplay was the rollout of Titleist’s new GT drivers and fairway metals. Since debuting in June at the Memorial, hundreds of players across all global men’s and women’s tours made haste adopting the “highest-performing driver” Titleist says it’s ever made, touting GT’s attributes of being faster, longer, straighter and more forgiving than anything else it has put on the market.
Patton Kizzire was just the latest to enjoy success with it, riding his 9-degree GT3 driver to a five-shot victory in the PGA Tour’s fall opener at the Procore Championship. Kizzire’s winning setup included six different models of Titleist clubs: T200 (5-iron); T100 (6); 620 CB (7-9); 620 MB (PW); and four SM10 wedges (48, 52, 56 and 60 degrees).
Of course, it was Kizzire’s putter – a Ping Vault Bergen mallet – that did most of the work in snapping a six-year winning drought, as he gained nearly nine (8.957) strokes on the field putting on the Silverado Resort’s North Course in Napa, California.
In another big trend, mini drivers haven’t made this much buzz since winning an Oscar for the 1997 hit “Good Will Hunting.” The tweener club – smaller and more workable than a driver, but bigger and easier to hit than a 3-wood – picked up traction when rookie Jake Knapp won in Mexico using a TaylorMade BRNR Mini Driver and then Cameron Young had Titleist build him a prototype TSR “2-wood” especially for use at TPC Sawgrass for the Players.
Plenty of others gamed mini drivers at some point in 2024. The TaylorMade BRNR Mini was used by Max Homa, Tommy Fleetwood, Adam Scott and Chris Gotterup, and Webb Simpson joined Young in utilizing a Titleist TSR 2-wood.
Akshay Bhatia capped the trend by putting a Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Ti340 Mini Driver in his bag at the Tour Championship to help him find the fairways at the rebuilt East Lake.
“I can draw a driver, but if I have this mini driver to where I can turn it a lot easier, then it’s a nice option,” Bhatia said. “The mini driver gives me more options; it’s faster, but it spins a little more, so the consistency of the ball flight is tighter, and that’s what I need.”
Scott Michaux