Should You Ever Adjust Your Driver?

I could make the answer to this question a very short one word article. However, seeing as you’ve come to this page now, let me make it worth your while with an explanation for this potential brevity.

Adjustability in golf clubs was permitted by the governing bodies in 2005 following restrictions that were introduced on the speed of club faces. This brought smiles back to the faces of golf club designers worldwide who now had more options to improve forgiveness, and also ironically the speed of the ball coming off all areas of the face. 

Since then we have had weights you can move manually, weights that slide back to front and side to side, and adjustable hosels that can vary loft and lie. The real benefit of all this was that any golfer could now get the same level of customisation in their local store as a tour player on a tour truck. 

Before adjustability came in, most retail drivers had a choice of one shaft in stiff or regular. Now with adjustable hosels, swapping in a new shaft, or head, is simple and most manufacturers launch a driver with at least three stock shafts, sometimes more. The fitter can work through a range different options with a player looking at things like weight, kick points and shaft length. Specialist fitters now offer over 200 options, all of which can be easily slotted into the same head to easily compare and create the best golf driver possible.

Usually the driver fitting process starts with head type, then head loft, then shaft. Then a fitter will use the adjustable loft and finally any adjustable weights to fine tune the club to your game. This affects parameters on spin, launch, face angle and speed at impact and it is tempting to sometimes adjust these yourself, so if you want to do that then here is a quick guide.

Adjusting Your Driver: Quick Guide