HOT LIST EXTRA
Easy-to-Hit Drivers Aren’t What They Used To Be – and That’s Good Manufacturers are rewriting the forgiveness formula with clubs that stay more stable on mis-hits, fly straighter and even look better BY MIKE STACHURA
Despite the MOI being limited all those years ago, there is little doubt that drivers today are more forgiving
TAKE YOUR PICK Our testers’ grades for “forgiveness” in drivers set a new high.
than they’ve ever been. It’s one reason why we now ask our players during the Golf Digest Hot List testing sessions specifically to rate a driver’s forgive- ness. It’s also why we measure the MOI of every driver to see how close they’re getting to the legal limit. Together, those factors produce a list of the most forgiving drivers on the 2026 Hot List. Although very few drivers these days are bumping against the MOI limit, manufacturers have found a whole host of ways to make them easier to use. MOI might sound like a complicated idea, but it’s simply a measurement of how stable a driver is when impact is off-centre. The more stable it is, the higher the MOI, and the less distance the player tends to lose on mis-hits.
TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE USGA was so concerned about how forgiving drivers were get-
USGA described it at the time, there was fear about “the extent to which a good result can be achieved from a less-than-ideal contact with the ball.” The USGA went on to say, “Further increases to MOI could reduce the challenge of the game by reducing the skill required to hit the ball straight. In addition, that could also result in an increase in average driving distance by reducing the likelihood that swinging faster will produce a poor result.”
ting that it put a limit on what then was an arcane engineering measurement known as moment of inertia (MOI). Citing that drivers in 2005 had basi- cally tripled in their MOI over 15 years, the equipment rules-makers issued a notice that a limit would be set on MOI because they were concerned about forgiveness. More specifically, as the
82 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JUNE 2026
PHOTOGRAPHS BY J D CUBAN
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