TierMarks

Best Golf Clubs of 2024

Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.

These are the golf clubs of 2024, ranked by our critic's grade, the top ten of the fourteen reviews the year holds. No club earned an S. Nine of the ten are graded A, across fairway woods, drivers, wedges, a putter and irons. The recurring idea is a crown that is not steel: TaylorMade Qi10 Fairway and TaylorMade Qi10 carry carbon, and Titleist GT2 Fairway swaps steel for a thermoform polymer and spends the saving on a lower, deeper centre of gravity.

TaylorMade Qi10 Fairway leads, graded A, the rare fairway wood that is as good off the deck as off a tee peg. Cobra Darkspeed, graded A, is the best all-round driver Cobra has built, and the sound problem finally goes away. TaylorMade Qi10, graded A, is the sensible middle of its family, without the shoebox footprint. The three wedges all hold A grades: Titleist Vokey SM10 tunes trajectory loft by loft, Ping s159 is a tour wedge with six grinds, and Callaway Opus softens the feel without giving up spin.

The one C on the page is Titleist GT3, the thermoform crown applied to the adjustable players' head, at $649. A C here marks a faithful update rather than a club our critic found reasons to recommend. Between the two A-graded drivers, the reader should weigh TaylorMade Qi10's excellent off-centre retention at $599 against Cobra Darkspeed at $549.

  1. Cobra Darkspeed2024PWR-Bridge weighting frees the sole and the bottom of the face, and the sound problem finally goes away.Read the review
  2. TaylorMade Qi10 FairwayTaylorMade Qi10 Fairway2024The rare fairway wood that is as good off the deck as it is off a tee peg.
  3. Titleist Vokey SM10Titleist Vokey SM102024A refinement rather than a rethink, with the trajectory tuned loft by loft instead of across the set.
  4. Titleist GT2 Fairway2024A proprietary matrix polymer crown frees the mass, and the head finally launches without a perfect strike.
  5. TaylorMade Qi102024The sensible middle of the Qi10 family: most of the Max's stability without the shoebox footprint.
  6. Callaway Apex Ai200Callaway Apex Ai2002024The most complete players distance iron Callaway has built, with a face designed one loft at a time.
  7. Callaway OpusCallaway Opus2024Callaway finally softens the feel without giving up the spin it has always chased.
  8. Ping s1592024Ping stops building forgiving wedges and builds a tour one, with six grinds and a straighter leading edge.
  9. Scotty Cameron Phantom 112024A stainless and aluminum mallet with the calmest face in the Scotty line and a price that still stings.
  10. L.A.B. Golf DF32024The putter that took lie angle balance mainstream, smaller and less strange than the original, and still very hard to twist off line.