The beginning of 2007 has seen the introduction of the new ‘square driver’ to the fairways of Britain, and similar to when the new large headed titanium drivers came out, there seems to be lots of excitement as well as scepticism. But what’s all the fuss about? Well this is the first time the actual shape of the driver head has dramatically changed; it’s got bigger, then much bigger, but never really changed shape until now. So let’s answer the question on everyone’s mind; “why square”.

The answer is, the shape was a result of fulfilling the design brief, which was to create a more forgiving driver no matter what it looks like, and the key was to stop the club from twisting when the ball is struck off-centre. The trouble with the large headed titanium drivers is, while they offer more space to hit the ball, the head of the club is so light that when the ball is struck off-centre, the club twists more, causing errant shots.

To decrease the twisting, they needed to increase and spread the weight as far from the centre as possible, as well as move it further back from the face of the club. If you look at putters, anyone who has played with a bladed putter will know that if the ball is struck towards the heel or the toe, the blade twists, sending the ball off-line. But the new heel-toe weighted putters which have most of their weights moved equally towards the heel and the toe, and have very little in the middle, twist much less when the ball is not struck in the centre of the club face. So the ideal place for the weights are right at the edges of either side of the face, but the traditional shape of the driver means that if the weight were to be put right at the edges of the face, it could only be located close to the front of the club, where as what they actually wanted was the weights to be further back.

So the new square driver is, is basically a large version of a heel-toe weighted putter, and it’s square because this shape enables the weight to be pushed right to the outside edge’s, and back from the clubface. The other aspect is the mix of materials used for the square driver. A driver has an optimum weight for it’s best performance, any heavier or lighter, it losses distance. So the lighter they could make the club-head, the heavier the weights could be, giving the club better performance. So what they have done is to make the main body of the club out of light carbon fibre, and the face out of titanium which is harder but still light, which means that the weights can be made from heavy tungsten.

To sum it all up, the new square driver offers a much more stable head when the ball is struck off-centre because of the heavy weights in the back corners of the club, which means a much more forgiving club, and straighter shots.