The marketing engine kicks in every year with, “This new driver will go that many yards further,” and “These new irons will be that many times straighter.”
So how can you sort through all that and decide if this year’s technology is really worth buying new golf clubs for?
That exact question was asked by GOLF multimedia wiz Darren Riehl to our gear team, and co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow answered it on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Exhaust.
Basically, as Wunder puts it, you know when every OEM has incredible 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 some really good stuff, because you can’t go wrong anywhere this year,” he said. “And I’ve always felt in the past, like this year, that everyone always has bangers. Some better than others, but this year I feel like neck and neck is now more of a true statement than ever before. And that goes for the smaller companies and the giant companies.”
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Morrow compared this year’s driver releases to 2016, when TaylorMade had the M1 and M2 – the latter was Rory McIlroy’s driver of choice – Callaway was about to unveil the GBB Epic driver (the first with Jailbreak technology) – Titleist had the 915 series drivers that Jordan Spieth used for years and Cobra had Bryson DeChambeau’s King LTD.
“Part of what made that year so successful for everyone was that they were all doing their own thing,” Morrow said. “And depending on the type of player you were, you fit better into a brand.”
He said there is a difference now, as each OEM offers three or four different driver models, as opposed to one or two then, but he expects many of those to fit into the same brand as they did a decade ago.
“I think if you were an Epic or an 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 I think the same, and Cobra actually said this to us too: the new lineup is the closest in terms of internal hype and tour hype to LTD and then F9.
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