TierMarks

Best Golf Clubs of 2019

Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.

The golf clubs of 2019, ranked by critic grade. All five entries are drivers, and each has a face story: Cobra milled its face to the limit, TaylorMade injected resin into faces tuned over the limit in manufacture, and Callaway let a machine learning loop shape a face. Movable weight was the other theme, from Ping's first movable weight to the sliding tracks on the TaylorMade M5 and the Callaway Epic Flash.

The Cobra King F9 Speedback leads as the year's one A. Our critic's verdict is that it proved aerodynamics and a low centre of gravity were not a trade-off: the Speedback sole cut drag while keeping mass low and back, the face was CNC milled to the limit and two weight ports covered most spin problems, for $449 with a tracker included, fifty dollars under the next cheapest driver here.

The other four are graded C: a genuine idea each, and nothing that pulls one clear of the field. The TaylorMade M6 is the forgiveness model, a fixed 46-gram weight and no track at $499. The TaylorMade M5 puts two ten-gram weights on an inverse T-Track at $549. The Callaway Epic Flash adds a sliding sixteen-gram perimeter weight at $529, and the Ping G410 Plus clicks sixteen grams of tungsten between draw, neutral and fade at $499. A reader choosing among them should weigh how much of that adjustability they will use against its price.

  1. Cobra King F9 Speedback2019Proved aerodynamics and a low centre of gravity were not a trade-off, and undercut everyone by fifty dollars doing it.Read the review
  2. TaylorMade M52019Speed Injection arrives: every face tuned over the limit in manufacture, then resin-injected back under it.
  3. TaylorMade M62019Speed Injected face, no track, and a forty-six gram slug of tungsten sitting as low and deep as it can go.
  4. Callaway Epic Flash2019The first face shaped by a machine learning loop rather than an engineer, with a sliding sixteen-gram perimeter weight.
  5. Ping G410 Plus2019Ping's first movable weight: sixteen grams of tungsten that clicks into draw, neutral or fade.