With Gary Woodland winning at Houston using a prototype Cobra OPTM Max-K driverthe days of LS heads dominating the PGA Tour are surely over.
Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a speedy player like Woodland, who leads the PGA Tour in club speed this season, to consider anything other than a compact, low-spin style driver.
But thanks to modern technology, more and more players are opting for more forgiving drivers while still packing plenty of speed.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow debated the death of the “LS” driver.
Woodland said earlier this year that he chose to OPTM Max LS-Kor Prototype version of Cobra’s high MOI Max-K driver that would still be considered a more forgiving head with a deep, low CG because he found he drove better when the weight is deep.
Wunder found that when he was at Callaway, Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele also drove it well with the weight of their drivers more neutral instead of forward, characteristic of LS drivers.
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“None of those guys were front-loaded, and they all drove well when they played,” Wunder said. “The only time they had a ton of weight up front is if they were playing with a lot of loft. So what I’m seeing is that these main heads, for example, if we’re going to talk about Callaway, the reason TD Max works so wellis that you can do it super low spin or you can do it super fast and super fake. (TaylorMade) Qi4D it is like that. This is why you are seeing so many Ping players leave 440 LST at 440K. Because you can go down to the attic.”
Because adjustability has come so far in modern drivers, companies are able to take more forgiving shapes and make them roll low by neutralizing CG and lowering loft. The only problem there is the difficulty of seeing the loft, which can be fixed with little optical tricks like drawing lines on the face or brighter faces.
Morrow noted that the line between a company’s flagship model driver and the LS driver has blurred over the years, thanks to this adaptability. But it also means that the LS heads have gained forgiveness, which makes them great tools for players who struggle a part.
“I put a lot of slicey people in one LS head with low loft That’s high because it closes the face and eliminates a lot of spin,” Morrow said. “They say, ‘Well, I’m supposed to play this because this is for the fast guy.’ Well, no, no, no. It’s just a rolling thing.”
So is the LS driver ready to die? Probably not, but their use cases are definitely changing.
