The marketing engine starts every year with, “This new driver will go so many more yards” and “These new irons will be many times straighter.”
So how do you sort through all of this and decide if this year’s technology is Is it really worth buying new golf clubs?
That very question was posed by GOLF multimedia wizard Darren Riehl to our equipment team, and co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow tackled it on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped.
Basically, as Wunder says, you know when every OEM has outstanding products AND 2026 could be one of those years.
“This year is one of those years where you can just go, you know what? I’m going to spend a few bucks this year because there’s really good stuff because you can’t go wrong this year,” he said. “And I’ve experienced in the past, like this year, I always feel like everyone has noise all the time. Some better than others, but this year, I feel like neck and neck is more of a real statement now than it’s ever been. And that’s for the smaller companies and the giants.”
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ALSO ALSO IN: PGA Tour Superstore, Taylor Made
Morrow compared this year of driver releases to 2016, when TaylorMade had the M1 and M2 – the latter was Rory McIlroy’s favorite driver – Callaway was about to unveil the GBB Epic driver (the first to feature Jailbreak technology) – Titleist had the 915 line of drivers JordanT Spieth had been using for years from KingryT CobrauC.
“Part of what made it such a successful year for everyone was that they were all doing their own thing,” Morrow said. “And depending on what kind of player you were, you fit better into a brand.”
He said that now there is a difference, because everyone The OEM offers three or four different driver models, unlike one or two then, but he expects many to fit into the same brand they played 10 years ago.
“I think if you were an Epic or Epic Flash player, I think you’re going to really like the new Callaway stuff,” Morrow added. “I think if you’re an M2 person, you’ll really like it the Qi4D stuff. And the same thing, I think, and Cobra actually told us this as well, the new lineup is the closest they’ve gotten in indoor and touring advertising to the LTD and then the F9.”
