I Got Fitted For A Mini Driver And Here’s What I Learned

In life and in golf equipment, I firmly believe the Walt Whitman/Ted Lasso Credo applies.

Be curious, not judgmental.

However, when I walked into Golftec in Danvers, Mass., earlier this month, my mind was made up. I booked a mini driver fitting, and I wasn’t leaving without one.

My plan was simple: I’d dump both my driver and 3-wood, crank my 5-wood down to 16 degrees and open up a course-specific slot in my bag. It was a sound plan and it worked right up until the part where we applied the Earl Weaver Corollary to the Walt Whitman/Ted Lasso Credo:

It’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.

Why did I want a mini driver?

My mini driver flirtation dates back to 2015 when I bagged a Callaway X2Hot Pro 2 Deep. Callaway called it a fairway wood but at 12.5 degrees, it was a beast off the tee. Over the past decade, however, I’ve evolved into a conventional driver/3-wood setup. The problem is that the 3-wood has become my 50-50 club. Fifty percent of the time, it works every time.

I play most of my golf at Breakfast Hill in Greenland, New Hampshire. The Brian Silva design isn’t long, but it does demand accuracy off the tee and is punishing if you fly the green. Of the 14 fairways, only seven require driver. Four more favor accuracy but a bit more distance than a 3-wood offers wouldn’t hurt.

Two of Breakfast Hill’s three par-5s are reachable in two but only if you’re accurate enough to avoid the water or the woods. More often than not, this 64-year-old plays it safe.

When my driver gets squirrely, it’s usually a snap hook. When my 3-wood off the tee gets squirrely, it’s usually a toe shot that finds uncharted territory on the right. My goal was to find a club to mitigate both squirrely misses. I wanted long and straight without being too long, but only on certain holes.

As I type those words, I now realize why Steve, my fitter, smiled at me with bemusement with just a touch of sadness.

Setting the baseline

Golftec instructor/fitter Steve Thomson has been working with me for three years, rebuilding my swing after knee surgery. He’s seen my handicap drop from an iffy 10 to a 5.8 that travels. He knows I can reach 255 to 260 with a driver when I’m swinging well. He also knows that when I’m not, anyone or anything on the left is in grave danger.

We started by laying down a baseline with my gamer, that gorgeous Dorito-looking MF-er, the Cleveland HiBore XL with the stock Mitsubishi Tensei Blue in stiff (It plays a little softer than that).

“You’re on the low end of the launch window (14.4 degrees) but with a smidge high spin (2,800 rpm average), but that’s kind of what this driver does,” he told me. “This pattern is atypical of you; you usually smash it a bit better, but we’re taking the good shots with the bad. We won’t sugarcoat anything.”

My best shots were between 246 and 250 yards; my worst were in the 220s with over 3,200 rpm spin.  The bigger problem was that my best shots were around eight yards left of center while my worst were nearly 30. My averages were 235 yards and 16.5 yards left of center.  

“Let’s look at your first nine real drives,” Steve told me. “That’s your front nine (holes). You mostly kept it in play but you had one double-bogey tee shot, a few that could lead to a birdie attempt and a couple par-bogey attempts. There’s your 41 on the front.”

Our goal, then, wasn’t necessarily to get longer. It was to get straighter.

Callaway and TaylorMade duke it out

I had high hopes for the Callaway Elyte Mini. With the stock Denali Black 60 shaft, spin dropped to around 2,500 rpm. Launch angle was about the same, even though the Elyte was set to 11.5 degrees while the Dorito was set at nine degrees.

Distance was very close, with the Elyte averaging 231 yards with an average ball speed of 135 mph. My best was a 244-yard piss-missile right down the middle, only about a yard offline. That one, however, was an outlier. My average was 14 yards offline to the left with a couple of snap hooks last seen flying to the left of the Golden Banana on Route 1.

Next was the TaylorMade R7 Quad Mini set to 13.5 degrees. Surprisingly, spin dropped another 100 rpm, while launch angle was about the same despite the added loft. More surprisingly, ball speed jumped a couple of mph and average distance was 239.5.

Hey, now…

We did get a little straighter, too, at 12.5 yards offline left.

That was an attention-getter. What happened next blew my mind.

An XS shaft? Are you freakin’ kidding me?

So far, the TaylorMade was longer and straighter, so it was ta-ta Elyte and a big Hello, sailor to the R7 Mini.

“The Elyte Mini wasn’t helping us adjust for left bias,” Steve said. “Sometimes it’s like, why try to make it work? Launch and spin were fine, but you’re hitting it the same way you’re hitting the Dorito.”

Yeah, I got him calling it the Dorito, too.

Steve got out his wrench and made the R7 Quad do R7 Quad things. He moved the heavier sole weight toward the toe to make it fade-biased. Then he put in – hang on to your hat – a stock extra-stiff shaft.

Friends, I haven’t played an extra-stiff shaft since the Clinton administration.

Son of a gun if that didn’t do the trick. My average offline dropped from 12.5 yards left to just over seven. My distance was down a touch but this old man was getting a bit spent after all those shots.

“Your tendency is the snapper,” said Steve. “But what we’re seeing here is the smaller head and the XS shaft are helping you to not hit snappers. The goal here is to keep the ball online.”

For the record, we did not try the new Titleist GT280 mini driver for a very good reason: Golftec didn’t have one yet.

An existential crisis

For giggles and grins, Steve set up a Callaway Elyte Triple Diamond big boy driver for me. It was set to 10.5 degrees with an Aretera EC1 Blue 65 shaft in extra-stiff. Ball speed and distance weren’t much different from the Cleveland but the eye-opener was accuracy: an average of 5.8 yards offline.

That’s 11 yards straighter than the Dorito. My worst shot offline with the Triple Diamond was better than my average offline with the Cleveland.

“You’re in modern equipment so we’re not going to see much in the way of distance gains,” Steve told me. “You just want to hit the ball straighter and this one’s 11 yards straighter. Your swing speed is slower because the shaft is a half-inch shorter but you’re still hitting it just as far.”

That sound you hear is the gang at MyGolfSpy headquarters laughing hysterically at my expense.

“The Dorito is a good gamer for you,” says Steve. “It’s not the longest but you do hit the ball pretty well with it. The average offline, however, is worse than the R7 Mini.”

For the record, I did ask Steve which driver he’d recommend: the Cleveland or the Triple Diamond. He didn’t even let me finish the sentence before answering.

“The Triple Diamond – it’s not nearly as fade-biased as previous versions. Your worst offline to the left was what your average was with the Cleveland. We’re seeing a lot of bad golfers get fit into it.”

Gee, thanks.

What did we learn?

When I’m hitting the driver well, 250 to 260 is a distinct possibility. When I’m not, I can settle in at around 225 to 235. As long as I’m in the fairway, I’m a happy guy.

However, my plan to dump both the driver and fairway wood turned out to be a bad idea. We reached that conclusion even though, on fitting day at least, the R7 Mini was actually longer than my driver.

“I would put the mini driver in your bag to complement your driver,” said Steve. “If you have a good driving day, you won’t need it except for the holes where driver is too long.

“If you struggle with the 3-wood off the turf and it doesn’t do enough off the tee, what’s the point of it? Just use your 5-wood off the turf; you’re going to hit it better.”

We did try the mini driver off the mat and it was surprisingly easy to hit. The ball didn’t go very high but it did go far and reasonably straight.

“You can hit the mini driver off the turf if you need to,” Steve said. “But you’re not good enough at golf to where it’s going to change your game.”

Gee, thanks again.

The mini driver fits

So I plunked down my credit card and bought the TaylorMade R7 Mini. It’s on order so I don’t have it yet but I will update you on how it works on the course. It will be a complement to my driver, not a replacement. The mini should be a useful weapon on a tidy little course like Breakfast Hill. At courses with a little more room, maybe not so much.

“You might be having a nice driving day and a pretty good round, the mini driver isn’t going to screw it up,” says Steve. “Maybe you’re on a tight hole coming down the stretch. You don’t want to miss with your driver and make a double and you don’t have the confidence in your 3-wood.

“With the mini, you know you’re going to be out there 230 to 240 and be in the fairway or at least close to it.”

You should also know that my 3-wood knows something is up. It’s the new Wilson Carbon model and ever since the mini driver fitting, it’s been a beast. I’ve even reached a couple of par-5s in two with it.

I don’t know how but these things just know. The Carbon isn’t going down without a fight.

As with any fitting, there are a few loose ends. First, would the Titleist GT280 change things? What’ll happen if (when) I crank the TaylorMade Mini down to 11.5 degrees? What would happen if I stick an XS shaft into the Elyte Mini, or even the Dorito? And what about the PXG Secret Weapon?

Questions like these, dear friends, make the life of a golf writer worth living.

Final thoughts

Earl Weaver was right: it is what you learn after you know it all that really counts. My plan going in was well thought out and eminently reasonable. The data, however, had other ideas. I’ll keep the driver (whatever it winds up being) in the bag, dump the 3-wood, crank the 5-wood down to maybe 16 degrees and add in the R7 Mini.

Also, it pays to get fitted by someone who knows your swing if you can. Steve and I have a long coaching relationship. He knows my tendencies. If I had a bad day during the fitting, he still knows what I’m capable of. If I were off-the-charts awesome, he’d rein me back in. He also talked me through what I was looking for.

“I’m not just trying to sell you a club. I’m trying to help you play better. We just went through all of the scenarios where you would use a mini driver. It’s a complement to your bag, not a replacement for your driver. And, according to the numbers, it’ll help you play better.”

Oh, one more thing. I’m signing up for Medicare soon and I’m gaming an extra-stiff shaft. Don’t care if it’s a “made-for,” the sunuvabitch says “XS.” You bet your ass I’m going to strut a little.

To borrow the punchline from a very old and very dirty joke, “Father, I’m telling everybody!“