The Equipment Debrief: Mini Driver Usage Is Surging On Tour... So Should You Put One In Your Golf Bag?

In case you hadn’t noticed, mini drivers are back. Have you got one yet? Maybe you have a 2014 model at the back of your garage along with a square driver? These will be back, too - just give it time.

We’ve been reporting on the rise of the mini driver for most of the year. As my colleague, Joe Ferguson (aka ‘Kick Point Joe’), said in the summer, it’s not been so much of an explosion as a growing trend among the world’s best players.

How big a trend are we talking about? Well, according to SMS on TOUR, 16% of the field put a mini driver in the bag at the DP World India Championship in October, and almost one in four players carried one at Wentworth the previous month.

We're talking about the professionals playing in the BMW PGA Championship, of course, not the amateurs who teed it up in the pro-am, although we can expect this current trend to have an impact on the game at club level, can’t we?

You'll see a few more down your club, of course - and you'll no doubt ask to have a hit with if your friend pulls one out the bag - but we probably won't see quite the uptake at club level as we saw with white drivers, even if most major brands have now released a mini driver.

Just to clarify - in case you hadn’t worked it out from the name - this club is a smaller version of the driver - roughly a third smaller in volume.

Basically, it's a club that sits somewhere between a traditional driver and a 3-wood. This means a smaller head, typically with more loft, and a shorter shaft length.

Joe’s written about (and talked about in Kick Point) the best mini drivers and his love of the new TaylorMade R7 Quad Mini. The brand released its first mini back in 2014.

Typically, professionals will put them in the bag when they are faced with tight fairways, when a premium is placed on finding the fairways.

For example, Scottie Scheffler was seen testing a TaylorMade model at the RBC Heritage Classic earlier this year, with Hilton Head being one of the tightest courses the players face on the PGA Tour.

The list of players now using a mini driver - not that the World No.1 can be credited with starting this boom - is becoming longer, with Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Marco Penge and Rory McIlroy among those to have used this club in tournament play.

And that list of pros seems to be growing by the week.

Does this mean we should all go out and buy one, or are they a better players club?

“Just because we’re seeing tour pros use them, it doesn’t mean they can’t serve a purpose for higher handicap players,” says our resident equipment expert, Joe, also a former PGA professional and club fitter.

“But if you struggle with accuracy off the tee, the shorter shaft length that mini drivers have might actually help you to reduce your number of off-center strikes and find more fairways.”

WINNING EXAMPLES

We’ve been monitoring how successful this club has been on tour. If we measure success in terms of wins, it’s proving to be quite a weapon, with three victories on the PGA Tour for the mini driver this season, all of which have come in the last 10 events.

Put this one in your Christmas quiz: Which three players won on the PGA Tour season in 2025 using a mini driver?

The answer - and we gave you a little help by naming two mini driver users above - is Fleetwood (Tour Championship), Rose (FedEx St Jude Championship), and Sami Valimaki (RSM Classic).

More players have won on the PGA Tour using a mini driver, the gear nuts reading this might be shouting.

Maybe you’re thinking of Karl Vilips (Puerto Rico Open) and Garrick Higgo (Corales Puntacana Championship). Correct, they do have mini drivers, but they didn’t have one in their bag when they won.

Even so, the trend is clear: mini drivers are back and growing in popularity - and the general consensus from a range of the leading brands is that they’re here to stay.