BIGGER SWEET SPOT Nelly Korda uses Taylormade’s Ultra-forgiving Qi10 Max.
Just Like Us Why some pros are opting for drivers designed for the masses BY MIKE STACHURA
has played Ping’s very forgiving G430 Max 10K. Chandler Phillips even uses a Ping G430 LST that features a stock build, including the standard 55-gram shaft you might find on a floor model at The Pro Shop. With the widespread use of weight- saving carbon composite in the body of new drivers, the centre of gravity isn’t drifting back and higher as much as it used to, and that results in forgiveness with low spin. Scheffler, for example, is playing a more forgiving driver this year than he did two years ago, and his average spin rate has barely changed. Although these forgiveness-focused drivers are not the standard on tour, their presence in the bags of some of the game’s best players suggests that there is no right driver for a certain skill level. No handicap level or swing
NOT LONG AGO THE BEST players in the world preferred the least-forgiving drivers
Max). Fellow TaylorMade staffer Rory McIlroy, who leads the PGA Tour in Total Driving, also uses the standard Qi10 model as opposed to the compact, low-spinning Qi10 LS. Dig deeper into the driver usage on the professional tours and you find that models designed for maximum forgiveness are becoming increasingly popular. Akshay Bhatia and Alex Norén have used the Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Max D (draw). Cameron Champ
with the lowest launch angle and the least amount of spin with no built-in draw bias. Then the two best players on the planet, Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda, showed that it is possible to play world-class golf using a driver designed for everyday players (Scheffler’s TaylorMade Qi10) with maximum forgiveness (Korda’s Qi10
94 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator