The main story around the 2024 best driver releases seems to have been all about MOI, forgiveness, and playability. These are all important elements of a driver, but we still want it to go miles, don’t we?!
I recently set up a good old-fashioned slugfest to see which of the 2024 models I could carry the furthest. From each of the major manufacturers that I tested, I cherry-picked the model that I was getting my highest carry number with and pitted them against each other in a three-round shoot-out.
Watch: Joe Ferguson finds out which of the 2024 driver releases he can carry the furthest...
The rules were simple; One shot with each driver, indoors on the Foresight Sports GCQuad launch monitor, using Titleist Pro V1 x golf balls, and repeat three times. The longest carry of the day is my longest driver of 2024…
Whilst I didn’t have the exact same shaft in all of the drivers, they were with 5 or 6 grams of one another, all X-flex, and all of them were set at as close as possible to 8 degrees. This wasn’t meant to be a clinical scientific study, just a bit of fun!
The Titleist TSR2 jumped out into the lead in round one, with a carry of 311 yards, and was followed by the TaylorMade Qi10 and Ping G430 Max 10K in second and third, with carries of 308 and 305 yards respectively.
There was no change to the top three in round two, and the only really big move came from the Srixon ZX5 Mk II LS, which jumped up 16 yards to 296 and into 6th place.
In the all-important final round, there was a lot of jostling for position. The Cobra Darkspeed LS propelled itself to the top of the leaderboard early in the round with a great carry of 314 yards which looked like it might be enough to take the win. The lead was shortlived, however, with the PXG Black Ops Tour-1 leapfrogging its way into the lead with a mighty 316-yard carry. But when it needed to produce the goods, the Taylormade Qi10 absolutely did so, unleashing a massive 318-yard carry and in doing so, became my longest driver of 2024.
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