The 11 biggest golf equipment stories of 2024

As 2024 winds to a close, it’s time to look back on what was a quietly big year for golf gear. Just in 2024, we had a major championship throw six headcovers in the bag, a pro use two drivers at the Masters, the same player involved in the two weirdest gear stories and a rival suggest a putter change to another player and that player go on a tear unlike anything we’ve seen since Tiger Woods. And there’s more.

With that, keep reading below for the 11 biggest equipment stories of 2024.

Matt Fitzpatrick’s strange regripping discovery

Some pros are absolutely meticulous about their gear, knowing each and every specification down to the gram. Matt Fitzpatrick, given his insane dedication to stat and record keeping, could usually be thrown into that bucket, except for earlier this year, when he was struggling with a left miss off the tee.

The issue? Fitzpatrick had tested small back weights in the butt end of his grips in 2023 and had accidentally left a 4g weight in the end of the shaft of his Titleist TSR3 driver until just before this year’s Players Championship. He only discovered the issue when he went to have his driver regripped.

“I got it regripped at home and the guy that did it, he put a little bit too much tape on, so I took it to Titleist,” Fitzpatrick said at TPC Sawgrass. “They regripped it for me and they’re like, ‘Oh, you know there’s a weight in there,’ and I almost had a heart attack.”

Tony two drivers

Employing two drivers is nothing new at the Masters, but unless your name is Phil Mickelson, people will call you crazy for trying it.

Yet, that’s exactly what Tony Finau did this year at Augusta National after Ping reps helped him “supercharge” his gamer Ping G430 LST and then built him another one three-quarters of an inch shorter and with more loft. His plan was to use the shorter driver on holes like Nos. 2, 7, 10, 14, 17 and 18, pending course and wind conditions.

Pros opt for 10k

The biggest innovation in drivers in 2024 was two OEMs, TaylorMade and Ping, eclipsing the 10,000 g/cm2 combined moment of inertia, or “10k” threshold with their “MAX” products.

Max products were typically reserved for players on the slower end of the speed spectrum needing higher spin and launch conditions, but with the introduction of “10k” forgiveness, pros like Cameron Champ, Collin Morikawa, Lydia Ko and Nelly Korda all dabbled with the new high-forgiving tech.

Maxfli returns

Lexi Thompson made waves in 2024, announcing her retirement from regular competition on the LPGA Tour, but also for signing an endorsement contract with Maxfli golf balls.

Maxfli has a storied history among the upper echelons of pro golf, but is now owned by Dick’s Sporting Goods and hadn’t sponsored a professional in years. The company inquired with Thompson’s agent, Brett Falkoff if she would test their new Tour Series golf ball when her previous endorsement contract came up and after initially declining, Falkoff said, “We were all in shock,” at the results.

“I’ve been testing the ball for the last month or two, especially in the wind,” Thompson said in January. “In the wind is the most important [for] ball testing, and I’ve seen nothing but a little bit lower spin, which is great in the wind, and it does even better in the crosswind. That’s super-important for me, and I’m looking forward to playing it.”

Maxfli also made a return to the PGA Tour in landing Ben Griffin.

Ben An resurrects the 1-iron

Speaking of bringing relicts of the past back to the PGA Tour, Ben An won in Korea on the DP World Tour in late October with a head turning setup: A 1-iron instead of 3-wood.

This is not your grandpa’s 1-iron, of course, as the Titleist U505 16-degree 1-iron An employs a hollow-bodied driving iron designed with weight placed as low as possible using tungsten to give the iron nearly wood-like launch characteristics.

“I hit it high enough, I have enough speed, I have enough spin rates,” An said in a Titleist YouTube video earlier this year, “so why not try to build that iron that has really low loft, so I can hit it straighter off the tee? Because that’s the whole purpose of using the 3-wood.”

Fred Couples games a 6-wood/hybrid setup

Fred Couples, now 65, is going a completely different direction with his bag setup these days. The 1992 Masters champion starting gaming a bag filled with headcovers this year, six (not counting the putter) including a driver, two fairway woods and three hybrids. That means the longest iron in his bag is a 7-iron (for which his stock yardage is still 170).

“Everyone keeps talking about ‘em,” he says of his newly configured setup in a video from September. Other golfers might be embarrassed. Couples simply shrugs off the stigma. “I’m like, so my longest iron is a 7. Who cares?”

Matt Fitzpatrick denied relief for cracked driver

In his second appearance on this list, Fitzpatrick was at the center of another 2024 gear controversy, but this time through no fault of his own.

During the final round of the BMW Championship, Fitzpatrick discovered a crack in the face of his driver and when he presented it to a rules official, he was denied the ability to substitute the club because it was determined the club wasn’t “significantly damaged” damaged enough to be replaced. Because of Model Local Rule G-9, a driver isn’t replaceable solely because of a crack on the face.

After the incident, the PGA Tour, in conjunction with the other governing bodies, announced an update to Model Local Rule G-9, updating the grounds for replacing a club to cracks in the club head and club face.

Year of the mini driver

TaylorMade had been releasing a “mini driver,” a smaller clubhead with 11 or 13 degrees of loft, every year or so for the last decade, but this year, they started having company.

Along with TaylorMade’s BRNR Mini Copper, Callaway released the Paradym Ai Smoke Ti 340 Mini Driver to retail while Titleist put out a Tour-only TSR mini driver.

The appeal is for players to replace their 3-woods with a club that travels shorter than their driver, possible to hit off the deck, but is easier to hit off the tee than a 3-wood, and pros have flocked to them.

While TaylorMade and Callaway are the only OEMs with mini drivers on the market now, all signs point to more companies dipping their toes in that market in 2025.

“Zero-Torque” becomes the latest putting craze

“Zero-torque” and “lie-angle balanced” putters are nothing new in golf, but their popularity increased on the PGA Tour and many of the major OEMs began coming out with their own versions of “zero-torque” putters.

Brands like PXG, Odyssey, Bettinardi and more all released putters advertising “zero” or “reduced” torque, meaning the putter faces have an aversion to twisting during the stroke, leading to a more square face at impact. This all follows the trend of upstart brands like L.A.B. Golf and Axis1, which led the movement over the last couple years.

Bryson’s last-minute 3D-printed irons

Bryson DeChambeau doesn’t need much convincing to try something radical in his bag, and the prototype Avoda irons he debuted at the Masters would certainly qualify.

DeChambeau had Avoda, a direct-to-consumer brand based in California, 3D-print the irons for him just before the Masters, and after the first go ’round, the USGA deemed them non-conforming. But DeChambeau’s manager hand-buffed and ground the grooves himself just in time for the clubs to be given the seal of approval for Augusta.

DeChambeau, of course, went on to seize the opening round lead at the Masters before finishing tied for 6th, earned a runner-up at the PGA Championship, then won the U.S. Open for his second major title.

Spider Scottie

This list wasn’t ranked, but if it was, Scottie Scheffler’s switch to a Spider Tour X mallet just before the Arnold Palmer Invitational has to be the gear story of 2024.

While Scheffler had tried various mallets during his putting woes of 2023, in early 2024, Rory McIlroy was asked his suggestion for the World No. 1 and McIlroy explained how a mallet putter had helped his own game.

To everyone else’s disappointment, Scheffler listened and gamed an off-the-rack TaylorMade Spider Tour X with a plumber’s neck at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and won by five. He then won eight more worldwide events in 2024, including the Masters, Players Championship, Olympic Gold medal, Tour Championship and three other PGA Tour Signature events.