Wilson Staff Smooth driver

The Wilson Staff Smooth driver took its place in my bag alongside my long-suffering Cobra L5V this weekend. My driving has been the weakness in my game and whilst I was fairly straight with the Cobra, my confidence was quite low so I decided to try something that looked a little more classic. 

So out came the Smooth driver. It is certainly smooth to look at with an eye-catching rounded-shape, but how did it perform? I can honestly say I’ve never been so pleased with a new driver.

According to Wilson the 460cc Smooth driver features a proprietary variable face thickness design that delivers a sweet spot twice as wide as a constant thickness face. For me, this is the most important thing, as I know I’m not always finding the sweet spot, so a bit of forgiveness is great.

The shape of the clubhead is perfect and there was more feel than the light-weight Cobra L5V driver. In Cobra’s defence, I would add that a certain temptation exists to thrash the ball as hard as you can knowing it’s the "longest and most forgiving driver" out there. The L5V a very light-weight driver and I think it would really suit slower swing speeds. Mine is relatively quick and it certainly gets faster under pressure.

With the 9° s-flex graphite shaft in the Smooth driver, I was getting quite a low ball flight. Although I would say the Cobra L5V was longer, I was far more accurate with the Wilson Smooth and with drier fairways hopefully just around the corner, I’m looking forward to seeing how many extra yards I can squeeze out in the summer.

Where next?

More blogs: Cobra L5V driver Equipment gallery: Wilson Smooth driver pictures