The TRUTH About Drivers (What Big Brands Won’t Tell You)

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Golfers have such a hard time knowing the truth about drivers and fall victim to marketing claims. In this video, I’ll teach you how to look past those claims and learn more about how drivers ACTUALLY work.

Who am I?

My name is Jon Sherman 👋. I’m a best-selling author, PGA Tour coach, and a golfer just like you. I aim to help golfers of all levels lower their scores and enjoy the game more, but without talking about the golf swing. I focus on four topics – expectation management, strategy, practice, and the mental game. I’ll share some of my best advice on this channel in an easy-to-understand, actionable format.

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This took me 10 years to learn and I’ll teach it to you faster than all the time you wasted watching driver reviews that have no relevance to your swing. What if I told you that most golfers are getting the wrong driver head, wrong loft, and a shaft that doesn’t even match their swing tempo? All because of a complete misunderstanding of how driver technology actually works. In this video, I’m going to show you what really matters in a driver. not what tour players are using or the $500 aftermarket shaft that the gear head from the Golf Works forum swears by, but rather the engineering decisions that actually affect how the ball comes off the face and why most golfers are losing distance and accuracy because of mismatched gear. Hi, my name is John Sherman. I’m the author of the Four Foundations of Golf, co-host of the Sweet Spot podcast, and PGA Tour Coach. Most importantly, I’m a golfer just like you. So, I’m going to break down this discussion between picking the right head and shaft separately for the sake of simplicity, and hopefully I won’t confuse you, and I think by the end of this video, you’re going to learn a ton. An easy way to think about the two is that the driver head controls what the ball actually does, how it launches, the spin rate, and ultimately the distance, curvature, and trajectory of your shots. And the shaft helps you do this more consistently. And before I get into all of that, I just want to give a huge thanks to my friend Woody Lashen from Pete’s Golf. I’ve spent over 10 years learning directly from him, and they are recognized as some of the best club fitters in the industry. Now, let’s talk about the most misunderstood and perhaps most important part of driver fitting, the center of gravity, also referred to as the CG. Now, I know that sounds like something out of a physics textbook, but here’s a simple explanation for you. So, every driver head has a center of gravity. This is also known as the point within the club head where weight is evenly distributed. And where it’s placed in the driver head massively impacts how your shots launch, spin, and curve. So, here’s what you really need to know. If the CG is lower on the face, it helps launch the ball higher with less spin. And that’s actually a good matchup for most golfers. A higher center of gravity does the opposite. Lower launch and more spin. If it’s towards the heel of the club, that helps close the face, which is great if you’re a chronic slicer of the ball. And if it’s towards the toe, that slows down face rotation, which is good if you’re always hooking it to the left for a right-handed golfer. Now, here’s the big trade-off that you need to understand. A center of gravity that is pushed back from the face gives you more forgiveness. That’s what’s called higher MOI or moment of inertia, which basically means when you miss the center of the face, the club’s not going to twist as much. But moving the center of gravity back tends also to raise it on the face, which adds spin. So engineers have to balance launch, spin, and forgiveness. And you can’t max out all three. And this is why every brand’s driver performs differently, even if the lofts are exactly the same. They’re all engineering trade-offs based on the type of golfer who they think is swinging the golf club. So, every driver on the market is designed with a specific golfer profile in mind. And if you fit that profile, then it’s great. But if you don’t, then your m hits might lose more distance or curve away from the target more, missing more fairways and getting you into more trouble. And that’s a general rule of thumb that you need to know about golf club design and fitting for all clubs. This is really not about your perfect swings. If you access the center of the face, good things will obviously happen in your ball flight. It’s more about what’s occurring on m hits. The technology is getting way better at addressing things like more spin stability across the club face. So, if you get a driver head that is addressing your tendencies when you miss the center of the face, you’re going to have shots going farther and straighter. And yes, that absolutely can lower your scores. It is worth strokes on the course. Now, let’s talk about loft because this trips up and confuses a lot of golfers. Most people think that a lower loft is automatically going to mean more distance, but that’s not always true. In fact, for a lot of players, it could be the exact opposite. You might add 15 yards of carry distance with a driver set at 12° versus one that is set at 9°. The real job of loft is to get your launch angle and spin rate in the right window for your swing. And that really depends on how you deliver the club, your angle of attack, your swing speed, and obviously where you’re striking it on the club face. Are you more towards the heel or the toe, for example? But here’s the kicker. The number stamped on the bottom of the club actually doesn’t mean much. A driver that says 9 1/2° might actually measure 11° depending on the brand and how it’s built. A reoccurring theme in this video is that there are no standards in the golf industry. Plus, where the center of gravity is placed on the head also changes how that loft behaves. You should really think of static loft as a starting point, and then the center of gravity will alter how the ball launches at impact. And this is why two drivers with the same exact loft can launch and spin completely differently, resulting in much different carry distances. That’s why finding the right loft and center of gravity combo is one of the biggest unlocks for distance, not just cranking your loft down and hoping for the best. Obviously, your main goal with any driver fitting is to maximize distance, but you also want to improve your accuracy off the tee and as I said, how the club performs on mits. And that’s where moment of inertia comes in. Also referred to as MOI. MOI is really just a fancy way of saying how forgiving a driver is when you don’t hit the sweet spot, which let’s be honest is most of the time for all of us. Now, if your driver has a really high MOI, it resists twisting when you hit it off the toe or the heel. the club face is going to stay more stable. You lose less ball speed and the ball doesn’t curve as much due to gear effect. So, let’s say you tend to strike it on the heel of the club. Because of gear effect, that would impart more slice spin on the ball for a right-handed player. But our friend MOI helps reduce the amount of slice spin so that the ball might stay in the fairway versus slicing into the trees. So, the natural question is, well, why don’t I just play a driver with an incredibly high MOI to help me out on these mits? Well, it all gets back to trade-offs in design. MOI isn’t free. You’re going to pay for it somewhere. As I said earlier, if you push the center of gravity further back to get more forgiveness, it usually raises the CG on the face, and that adds spin. Nike tried this a long time ago with those really ugly squareheaded drivers. And the issue was was that they spun way too much, and that kills distance. So, there’s the trade-off. More forgiveness, but maybe more spin and less distance. That’s why some driver heads are designed with lower MOI but lower center of gravity. This is better for faster players who strike it consistently and want to reduce spin rate. And other drivers will go allin on forgiveness. So when you’re testing drivers, it’s not just about ball speed. You have to pay attention to how it performs on mits. That’s where MOI does its job. Now, before I get into shafts, I just want to briefly explain adjustability because about every driver now is offering it and it can be really confusing to players. Now, on paper, adjustability sounds amazing. You can move the center of gravity, change the loft and lie angle, and even tweak the face angle at impact. It’s like having a custom driver in your hands. Brands will even brag about having 36 different configurations. But here’s the truth. Most golfers have no idea what they’re changing. Also, those weights that you see, they’re not magic. Shifting them might help close or open the face a little bit, but of course, there’s always trade-offs. To make a weight track work, designers have to reinforce the head in ways that they always don’t want to, and that can reduce forgiveness or mess with the center of gravity in ways. And it’s the same with adjustable hoszles as well. Yes, you can add or subtract loft or even tweak lie angle at this point. But if you don’t know how that affects your face angle and ball flight, it can get really messy fast. So, here’s the takeaway. Adjustability is a great tool, but usually in the hands of an experienced club fitter. So, keep the wrench in your bag just in case a screw comes loose and leave the settings alone unless you’ve got data and understand how it works. or even better if you have access to someone who knows what they’re doing to help you make these adjustments. So, we’ve talked about the driver head. That’s the engine of the car, so to speak. Now, let’s talk about the transmission, also known as the shaft. Because if the shaft isn’t right, it doesn’t matter how powerful the engine of the car is, it’s not going to perform nearly as well as it could. Getting the right shaft will help you access the center of the club face more often and do what the club is designed to do, which is give you optimal trajectory and distance on your shots. But the shaft industry is the wild wild west. It’s very misunderstood by golfers and there’s really no standards. A lot of companies are actually doing some shady things and golfers are not being set up for success because of this. So, there’s a few things to discuss like weight, profile, and stiffness, but I want to start with something that I believe is really important, and that’s shaft length. The average driver you’ll see off the rack today is about 45 12 to 46 in. And why do club companies do this? Because longer shafts create more club head speed, and more speed means more distance. At least in theory, that’s what they want to sell you. But a longer shaft can only add distance if you’re able to access the center of the face more often. And for a lot of golfers, longer shafts make that way harder, which actually can cost you distance and accuracy due to gear effect. Like I mentioned earlier, most recreational golfers can actually get better results, more solid strikes, tighter dispersion, and certainly more total distance with a shorter shaft like 44 to even 45 in. Yes, you are giving up a little swing speed, but you hit the center of the face more often, and that’s the real driver cheat code. I actually played a 44in shaft for years when I really struggled with my control off the tea, and it helped me tremendously. It was kind of like having the training wheels on for a bit. Now, can longer shafts work? Absolutely. I played a 47in driver shaft for a couple of years once I learned to strike the center of the face and control the club face more effectively. And now I’ve kind of settled on 46 inches as my happy medium. So, a lot of golfers who struggle with their driver should consider the shorter shaft. And you can even go below 44 inches if you want. Just know that you’ll likely have to add some weight back into the club head, and a fitter can help you do that. Now, let’s move on to the most misunderstood part of shaft fitting, flex. Here’s something that most golfers don’t realize. There are zero standards for shaft flex in the golf industry. What that means is that one company’s stiff might feel like another company’s regular and another company’s regular might actually be softer than a senior flex from someone else. So when someone says, “I use a stiff shaft,” that doesn’t actually tell you anything useful unless you know exactly how that shaft performs. Now, most people are taught and assume that flex is all about swing speed. If you swing fast, go with a stiffer shaft. If you swing slow, try a senior or regular shaft. It sounds pretty simple in theory, but as Woody Lashen always explained to me, the shaft doesn’t care how fast you’re swinging. It cares how you load it. And I’ll give you a quick example to explain how this works. Picture two golfers who swing at 100 mph. One has a smooth, wide, and rhythmic swing where the other has a short back swing and rips it from the top. So, they’ve got the same speed, but a totally different feel in their swing. And because of that, they have totally different shaft needs. The player with the rhythmic swing is not going to need as stiff of a shaft, while the golfer with the more violent transition will need an extra stiff one perhaps. So, yes, swing speed does matter when picking the shaft flex, but tempo and transition force matter just as much, if not more. And this is also why a lot of good players end up with shafts that feel awful for them. And that’s because they’re chasing names, not feel. Bottom line, don’t choose your shaft based on what’s stamped on it. Test it, feel it, see what helps you hit the center of the face, and don’t be surprised if it’s something different than you expected. I’ve been surprised many times in fittings with what made me access the center of the face more often and gave me better launch monitor numbers. All right, so let’s talk about something that most golfers don’t even know exists, but they feel it every time they swing. It’s called shaft profile, and it’s basically the blueprint for how the shaft bends while you swing. Some shafts are going to bend more near the grip. That’s called a soft butt section. Others are going to bend closer to the tip of the club, right behind the face. And some shafts are going to bend evenly throughout. And here’s the kicker. You could have two shafts with the same flex and weight, but if the bend profiles are different, they’ll feel like totally different clubs to you while you’re swinging it. profile is kind of what gives the shaft its character. It’s that feeling of it being too whippy or feeling just right. So, let’s say you grab a shaft that has a softer tip section. That might feel like it kicks more through impact. Some players love that feeling. Other players are going to hate it. And the same goes for a shaft that’s stiff near the hands. It could feel super stable or totally dead depending on your golf swing. This is why feel and delivery is important when testing, not the label. And that is very subjective to each golfer because the profile is what makes one stiff shaft feel amazing and another one feel completely unplayable and you won’t know that until you try them. So the next time you test a shaft and it feels off, it might not be because of the weight or the flex. It could be how the bend profile interacts with your swing. And trust me, when you find one that matches, you’ll feel it instantly. I’ve been playing the same driver shaft for many years and I’m not going to change anytime soon. Okay, so now let’s talk about shaft weight and how it’s totally different from the flex and the profile. Even though people confuse these two all of the time. So where flex is about how much your shaft bends during transition, weight is really about feel and control. The goal with shaft weight is actually pretty simple. You want to feel where the club head is during your swing so that you can time things up and actually deliver it more consistently. That’s kind of the point of golf in general. I can tell you that in my golf swing, one of the most important feels I have is club face awareness. And if I can’t feel the club head properly, I won’t be able to make the necessary adjustments, like maybe opening it a little bit or closing it. And if the shaft is too light for you, it might feel like you’re swinging air, and then you will lose awareness of the club face. But if it’s too heavy, you might feel like you’re dragging it, and it messes with your rhythm and release. And this is not about being strong or weak. Woody’s told me that he’s fit 70-year-old golfers into heavy shafts because they had quick tempos and needed more weight to stay in sync. And he’s fit younger, stronger players into super light shafts because they had smoother, lazy tempos. So again, the big mistake is just assuming you need more weight to match your strength. It’s not a strength thing. It’s a tempo and feel thing quite often with shaft fitting. And when you do get the weight right, everything improves. your timing, your strike quality, and even your ability to repeat your swing more often. All right, I know I’ve thrown a lot at you at this point, so let’s recap some of the big takeaways on shafts. So, when it comes to fitting the right shaft, it’s not about chasing stiffness or what tour guys are using. The real goal is to find a shaft that helps you deliver the club more consistently. One that matches your tempo, helps you feel the head throughout your swing, and of course, allows you to access the center of the face more often. Now, a quick note on stock versus aftermarket shafts because there’s a lot of confusion here as well. Aftermarket shafts usually have tighter quality control, better materials, and more consistency from one shaft to the next. So, let’s say you broke one and you had to reorder it. You’re more likely to get something that’s identical to what you originally had. But that doesn’t mean stock shafts won’t perform as well for your golf swing. Plenty of golfers can play really well with a well-fit stock shaft. You don’t always need to spend $400 on the upgrade. You just need what works for you. So, always you have to beware of being sold and not fit. Obviously, I can’t account for every club fitter in the world, and I wish all of them were knowledgeable and honest, but I’m sure we’re going to get some comments on the video about how people were sold a $900 driver setup that didn’t show any meaningful improvements. And I really hate hearing that. So whether it’s weight, flex, profile, or even the price, none of it matters unless the shaft actually helps you repeat your best swing more often. And if you’re picking a shaft based on what’s printed on the label, how pretty the paint job is, or what your favorite YouTuber uses, you are guessing. So, I’ve gone over a lot in this video, and I don’t want everyone to rush out and go buy a new driver. You might not need it, and it’s possible you might not have access to a great fitter. Obviously, I can’t account for all of your personal situations, your geography, and your budget levels. Either way, if you are someone who cares about equipment and is in the market for new clubs, you should have a basic understanding of how all of this works, so you’re a smarter, more knowledgeable consumer. And if you do get fit and it’s done properly, your driver should easily last you for 5 to 10 years before you’re going to see a major technological upgrade. My driver is over five years old at this point and I still love it and I have no intentions of changing it anytime soon. If you want to do an even deeper dive on driver fitting, I’ll include the link to the podcast episode that we did with Woody Lashen. And I’m also going to include a link to Pete’s Golf. If you are in the New York metro area or even willing to travel there, Woody and his team are the absolute best. And we’ve had tons of golfers from around the world who listen to our podcast, visit them, and have amazing results. They are truly legends, and I love these guys. And if you want to learn more about club fitting, you can check out my other video where I share you everything the OEMs don’t want you to