Kiven J. Molina Blogs: 2016 Most Wanted Driver

The largest unbiased, DATACRATIC Driver Test conducted by anyone in the golf media industry is now even better.

Test Results You Can Depend On

We spent the last year looking for ways to refine and improve the Most Wanted Driver Test; already the largest, fully independent driver test conducted on an annual basis by anyone in the golf world.

We opened a new test facility and again enlisted 20 testers to help us put 28 drivers through their paces. As was the case last year, testing took over 100 hours to complete. In total more than 7500 shots were collected and more than 225,000 individual data points recorded.

All testing was conducted with a Foresight GC2 Launch Monitor with HMT. All testers used Bridgestone B330-RX golf balls.

The goal, as always, remains to empower you the consumer with truthful and reliable data and analysis that will help you identify the best driver for your game.

This guide is for you.

How We Consider Performance

To quantify performance and determine Most Wanted Rankings we developed a new scoring system based on Mark Broadie's Strokes Gained methodology.

This new way to look at the numbers considers not only the distance of the drive, the accuracy of the drive, and also the probable resulting lie condition. As all of us know, it's harder to score from the rough, and harder still to score from a gnarly lie. Strokes Gained takes all this into account. The end result is a system that looks beyond distance and accuracy, while considering other factors that we believe help us to better represents real-world performance.

For more details, see our How We Test page.

For those interested in breaking out the individual components that make up total performance, we still provide you with distance (total yards and carry), accuracy (yards from center and truAccuracy), and Shot Area, which provides an excellent measurements of consistency or forgiveness.

All of that data and more can be found at the bottom of this post. New features will be added to the table as we roll out all of our results.

The Top 5 Drivers of 2016

Test Highlights:

Strokes Gained score greater than two standard deviations above the average for the field.
Highest Carry Yards and Total Yards average of any driver in the field
Top 5 for Accuracy (both Yards from Center (accuracy) & truAccuracy)
15 of 20 testers posted Strokes Gained scores above their individual averages; the best in the field

The Final Word:

TaylorMade’s first UNMETAL wood lives up to the hype. It is the standout performer in this year’s test; a clear and decisive winner of the 2016 Most Wanted Driver Title.

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Test Highlights:

#2 for both Yard from Center (accuracy) and truAccuracy
#2 for Shot Area
14 of 20 posted Strokes Gained scores above their individual averages

The Final Word:

This is the 3^rd straight year that Double Black Diamond had shown itself to be the class of the Callaway lineup. While perhaps not as comparatively long as previous generations, the 2016 DBD excels at keeping the ball in the short grass.

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Test Highlights:

Top 10 for both Carry and Total Distance
Top 5 for Yards from Center (accuracy) and truAccuracy
14 of 20 testers posted Strokes Gained scores above their individual averages

The Final Word:

The most versatile driver in the current Cobra lineup, F6+ is yet another in a growing list of top performers from Cobra. The F6+ is an excellent option for golfers looking for a low and forward (ish) CG, a low and back(ish) CG, or nearly anything in-between.

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Test Highlights:

#2 Carry Yards, #3 Total Yards with only slightly more spin than the M1
Top 5 for Yards from Center (accuracy)
13 of 20 testers posted Strokes Gained scores above their individual averages

The Final Word:

The more forgiving alternative to the M1. An outstanding all-around performer in its own right, the M2 completes the most prodigious 1-2 punch TaylorMade has brought to market in several years.

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Test Highlights:

Top 5 for both Yards from Center (accuracy) and truAccuracy
Top 5 for Shot Area
14 of 20 testers posted Strokes Gained scores above their individual averages

The Final Word:

As we’ve come to expect from PING, its flagship G Driver is model of consistency. It’s not the longest driver on the market, but it seldom strays into much trouble, making it ideal for guys looking for consistent results swing after swing.

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The Data

The chart below contains data from this year's test. You can hover over any column title to bring up the sort feature, allowing you to sort by whatever columns you feel are most relevant to you. A dropdown at the bottom give you the ability to show or hide whichever drivers you choose.

Please note, for simplicity's sake, we have revised our truAccuracy (an alternative to Yards from Center) scores to display as an "out of 100" score. Clubs with the highest values are the ones that hit the ball farther down the fairway with less deviation from the center line.

More features will be added in the coming days and if there's something specific you'd like to see, please let us know.

For a limited time, all MyGolfSpy referred customers can get an additional 10% trade-in bonus on the value of their clubs when they use the code SPYTRADE. Valid 06/14/16-06/30/16.

MyGolfSpy is the only major golf media outlet that declines advertising dollars from the biggest names in golf. You won't find their banners here. We truly believe it's the only way to remain above the influence, publish real results based on real data, and continue to provide honest opinion and commentary about what's happening inside the golf equipment industry.