Nobody NEEDS a new driver

Lots of talk lately about getting ready for Spring and perhaps getting some new clubs or wait for it … a new driver. Well, as the title says, nobody NEEDS a new driver. Maybe you WANT a new driver but unless you snapped the shaft or crushed the face on your old one, there’s no plausible reason for needing a new one.

Drivers aren’t like cell phones and have to be replaced every two years whether you want to or not. Unless you’ve bought into the manufacturer’s claims of an added five, ten or fifteen yards with the latest and greatest, you don’t have to chase some mythical technology. And we all know that those claims are suspect anyway. I’ve been hearing them for at least thirty years and if true, I should be hitting it over 400 yards by now.

Our man Quinn in Vancouver told me recently that he was looking at a new Callaway Paradym AI Smoke MAX D driver ($799). Quinn puts in some shifts at Golf Town, so he has access to all the new stuff and a hitting bay to try them out. He also told me his old driver was dead and had the Golf Town techies check it out for confirmation. Sure enough there was a dead spot on the face of his driver.

I guess it happens, but in all my years of playing, I only know of one other player that wrecked his driver that way. He was a Long Drive guy with a swing speed in excess of 130 mph and he crushed the face – actually hit it so hard the face caved in.

Maybe Quinn’s been working out without telling us, but chances are the rest of us aren’t swinging anywhere near the speed that might break a driver. I’d like to but pretty sure I’d break something else first.

Sometimes you check out a new driver and it ‘feels’ better. Before you use this as an excuse to fork over $800 bucks, put a new grip on your old driver. Feels pretty good, eh?

Getting a new driver is exciting. It gives you the idea that maybe it’s a game changer, the magic solution to an extra 10 yards, the final answer to your lifelong struggle to break 100, 90, 80 or par. Well, it’s not. You’re the solution to that puzzle.

I’ve told the story before about being on the range and wondering if there was something wrong with my driver. It just didn’t seem to be going as far as it used to. I asked a friend to try it and he striped a few that carried 25-30 yards longer than mine. OK, case closed, definitely not the club’s fault.

I like to think of my golf clubs like shovels, unique tools to do a very special job. As you can see in the image above, I have snow shovels, a long-handled, pointed shovel that’s really good for digging, a short-handled shovel with the same kind of head that’s great for scooping dog poop off my lawn, a spade that I can use to edge the garden and a square flat shovel for picking up piles of sawdust and wood chips from the garage floor. There are likely other varieties of shovel available but the ones I have seem to do most of the work I need to do.

My shovels generally don’t break, they don’t wear out, and I never have to worry that some new technology is going to help me dig holes twice as fast. These are good – and they do the job, year after year. If I want to dig faster, that’s up to me.

Drivers don’t wear out. Wedges do, sometimes your irons too. But not drivers. You might lose confidence in your gamer but that’s a whole other issue.

We’ve all heard the axioms that ‘you can’t buy a better golf game’ or ‘game improvement doesn’t come in a box’. I believe that’s still true today and maybe even more so. Speed has become the name of the game and players that want more distance need to swing faster. That comes from fitness, training and practice.

This probably sounds like a knock on the equipment companies and golf retailers. Perhaps a bit. They’re trying to sell you something based on what’s good for them. If you like shiny new toys and money’s no object, knock yourself out. You’ll be the envy of all your buddies. Maybe you’ll even hit that new driver a few yards longer than the old one.

However, if you really want to improve your golf game, before you drop $800 bucks on a new driver, talk to a coach or an instructor that’s not in the business of selling clubs. Talk to someone who can fix your swing or help fix you. Coaches, instructors, nutritionists, fitness experts and mental gurus are standing by.