My 5 Tools for Getting Gear from 2025 and How You Can Use Them in 2026

I’ve been playing golf for 20 years now, and yet I’m always amazed at how many new things I can learn.

This was my first full year hitting the gear as GOLF’s Associate Gear Editor, so naturally, it was a year of lessons and “aha” moments.

Some were personal, such as determining what types of shafts best suit my swing or the grind I should use on a wedge, while others, like the ones below, apply to anyone.

Continue reading below for my top tools from 2025 and how they can help your game in 2026.

1. Going to the opposite field

We’ll start with an easy one here because I understood this intuitively, just not technically.

I’ve always known that modern adjustable drivers are designed to close and add loft, making them draw biased. I also knew you could adjust the driver head in the opposite direction and open it up, removing the club and making it dull.

While my natural shot shape has always been a draw, for the past few years, I’ve been playing with my drivers slightly open. Turns out that’s how I have to do it!

You usually want to bias your driver in the opposite direction of your natural stroke shape. The angle of the face will affect the launch line of the ball, so for a golf ball drawer, you want to launch the ball to the right (for a right-handed player) and swing it to the left.

The opposite is true for someone who wants to fade the golf ball. They want to close the club face to get the ball to start left and turn right.

You see this a lot on the PGA Tour with draws like Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood, who both use 9 and 10 degree driver heads and open them up, while cutters like Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler use lower 8 degree heads and close the face.

So while I was already opening the club to remove the loft, now I know why I liked it.

2. You never know how you will react

When you add loft to an iron, you can expect to start it higher. But that’s not true for me.

During my adjustment to Titleist’s new 2025 T Series ironsMy fitter, Louis, found that when he took my irons two degrees off par, I actually launched the ball lower and much more consistently.

This is a great example of how being introduced to a new device can make you react differently, whether you know it or not.

What I’ve learned is that when I’m presented with more loft—like the 35-degree 7-iron I’m playing now versus the 32-degree one I started the year with—I cover the ball better and come in with less dynamic loft, resulting in lower launch but higher spin and higher tip heights.

This is huge for durability for me too.

3. Shafts do not release and shafts do not rotate

This is one that has been out there for a while, but please ignore it every time you hear a salesperson say that the axle is “low release” or “high torque” or anything of that nature.

I’m a high release player who was always given “low release” shafts (like Ventus Black or Tensei White) to lower my ball flight and spin, but it actually had the opposite effect. For most of 2023 and 2024, I was playing with a driver with only 7 degrees of loft to combat spin.

But when I first got fitted to TaylorMade, I got into the Ventus TR Red, which is marketed as a “high release” shaft, yet it brought my launch and spin into a better window.

My point is: The axles may not actually control launch and rotation as marketed. A spindle is a timing mechanism and the timing of each one is slightly different.

The important thing is to find a shaft that grows with your swing, not one that trades to achieve your desired ball flight!

4. Mini drivers have a purpose

I was a skeptical mini driver when I first saw them come out, but then I actually started playing the TaylorMade R7 Quad Mini driver this spring and without major benefits.

My mini driver gives me a club that I can swing with the forgiveness of a driver but the distance of a 3-wood.

Since I hit the ball far enough, I rarely use a 3-wood off the deck, so the 3-wood/mini driver’s place in my bag is almost strictly a tipped club. I’m able to hit minis from the deck, but that’s a rare use case.

At the end of the day, I prioritize over-the-top performance from this spot in the bag, and I’ve found it in a mini driver.

5. Maybe the low torque setters are onto something

I really wasn’t sure what to put here because I was also a low-torque (or “zero-torque”) skeptic, but one is ending the year in my bag as well.

Although I never imagined playing with a low-torque putter, I learned that I’m actually a very good candidate for one because I don’t have a lot of spin on the stroke.

I was starting to mess around with the low torque machines and decided on an experiment: I’ll run one until March and then come back to see what it does to my stroke.

So far, the placement analysis I’ve done has shown that I’m a significantly more accurate shooter with the low-torque option in the bag – so I might not go for it in March anyway.