Why are this brand’s golf drivers shorter than all the rest?

We found the shortest-hitting driver of 2024 – but there's more to it than meets the eye.

Our driver test pitted every 2024 model head-to-head and found that one brand was left behind when it came to distance – but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

If you were looking to find the best golf irons, anyone who knows their onions would tell you that you can’t do much better than Mizuno. And yet, if you were on the hunt for a new driver, Mizuno probably wouldn’t be the first brand that came to mind. For a long time now, Mizuno big dogs have not been seen as a particularly strong option compared to the best golf drivers from the likes of TaylorMade, Callaway, Titleist, Ping, and more.

But why is that? Surely the Mizuno R&D team, designers, and engineers who create such fantastic irons are fully capable of turning their hands to drivers?

To answer this conundrum, let’s look at the results of the Today’s Golfer Drivers Test to see if Mizuno simply don’t make good drivers, or whether golfers might be missing a trick by not giving them a fair shot…

Distance is king

Distance isn’t everything when it comes to choosing the best golf driver, but let’s face it: it is the main thing most people will look for when buying one.

Sure, being able to keep your ball on the planet is nice, and forgiveness on off-center strikes can be a real benefit when you miss the middle, but most people buy a driver based primarily on distance.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s endless data to show that longer drives equal better scores and lower handicaps, and there are few better feelings than bombing a drive miles past your mates’.

So, as part of our annual drivers test, we measure the distance generated by every driver and rank them longest-to-shortest.

That ranking alone pretty much explains why Mizuno aren’t a frontrunner when it comes to driver sales.

The Mizuno ST-G ranked bottom for distance in the low-spin drivers category, while the Mizuno ST X and ST Z took the bottom two spots in the most forgiving drivers category.

The Mizuno ST-G was nine yards behind the longest low-spin driver and four yards off the average in that category, while the Mizuno ST X and ST Z were 5.8 yards behind the average forgiving driver and 13 yards off the longest in that sector.

The loss in distance would mean hitting one or two extra clubs for your approach shots, which would have a direct impact on your scoring.

Low-spin drivers

Forgiving drivers

Size does matter

But why are Mizuno drivers so short?

There are two parts to this answer.

The first is the science bit. The Mizuno drivers produced some of the slowest ball speeds, lowest spin, lowest launch, and lowest height of all the drivers we tested. While low spin can equal big distance, that only works if the ball speed and height are there to produce the arcing, rainbow-shaped ball flight that helps you get the most out of your ball speed. Without those, you get a ball that drops out of the air sooner than you’d want, as we saw with the Mizuno drivers.

But the second part is why… Why did the Mizuno drivers produce the low ball speed, spin, and launch combo that culminated in comparatively poor distance?

The answer is – at least to a large extent – the shaft length.

Mizuno drivers have a stock shaft length of 45”, which is shorter than any other manufacturer. Callaway and TaylorMade drivers have 45.75” stock shafts, Titleist 45.5”, while all other brands measure between 45.25-45.75” as standard.

“Longer driver shafts can create more clubhead speed, resulting in additional ball speed and overall distance gains,” explains Custom Lab Golf founder and custom fitting expert Gavin Hay. “That’s why manufacturers have continually increased their standard spec driver shaft lengths over the years. They want their drivers to outperform other brands on raw distance.”

So why are Mizuno persisting with shorter shafts than every other brand?

I’d wager it’s because longer shafts are harder to control. They can make it harder to hit the middle of the face, see shots go further offline, and generate bigger distance drop-offs on your off-center hits.

So, if you want all-out distance on your best drives, a Mizuno driver with a 45” shaft is unlikely to be the answer. But don’t take our distance data as a sign that Mizuno are making bad drivers.

Our test pro is a highly skilled golfer capable of finding the middle of the clubface with a 45.75” shaft more often than not. But golfers less capable with a driver may find better results from a shorter shaft, such as those you get as standard in a Mizuno.

“I’d say 90 per cent of the drivers sold in the shops today are too long for most players,” says esteemed clubmaker Tom Wishon, of Wishon Golf. “The standard driver length of 45.5-46.5 inches offered by the majority of companies is too long for most golfers and will prevent them from achieving their maximum potential for distance and accuracy.”

“The golf industry will generally go with whatever has worked well in testing,” adds club fitter and club builder Derek Murray of ForeGolf. “Under robot testing, you may find that if you take a longer shaft and hit it out of the screws, it could go five or eight yards further. So hit one right out of the middle with a long shaft and it will go far. But hit one out of the toe and you’ll lose eight or nine miles per hour in ball speed, which will end up costing you distance.”

Is it possible, then, that a shorter shaft may actually help you hit the ball further?

“We’ve seen a good number of players lose zero clubhead speed when testing a shaft that is an inch shorter than their current driver shaft, and they have found the center of the clubface more consistently,” says Hay. “This improvement in strike generates higher ball speed, which is what creates distance.”

If you’re not as good with a driver in your hands as the best players on the planet, why would you expect to be able to hit a driver with a longer shaft than they can?

“I very rarely build drivers that are 46 inches long,” says Murray, a former tour fitter who finds the vast majority of his clients are better off with a shaft that’s shorter than the manufacturer standard. “On tour, I very rarely built drivers that were over 45 inches long.”

And Wishon agrees. “There’s a very good reason the average driver length on the PGA Tour is 44.5 inches and not 45.5 or 46.5,” he says.

All credit to Mizuno

It’s rare that I’ll praise a product for ranking bottom in a key performance metric, or applaud the brand that made it, but I respect Mizuno for sticking to their guns when it comes to stock shaft lengths.

Of course, their drivers are available with longer shafts, but keeping the shorter standard length shows Mizuno are doing what they think is best for golfers, rather than chasing extra sales by following the herd towards longer stock shafts.

Next time you go for a driver fitting or testing session, it might be worth testing a shorter shaft and seeing what impact it has on your strike, distance, and dispersion.

How we tested the golf drivers

To produce the most accurate and reliable test data available, we created a controlled environment with an indoor test lab at Keele Golf Centre. We used premium Titleist Pro V1x golf balls and collected data points from the ball and club for every shot hit using a Foresight GQ Quad launch monitor.

We chose Foresight as their launch monitors are recognized as industry-leading and they replicate the technology employed by top brands when testing their own clubs and balls. They’re also used by many of the best players in the world.

We believe it’s imperative to have a consistent and accurate striker when testing golf clubs and balls in order to ensure a fair test and create useful data. Anything else just leads to comparing apples to pears, which can produce data that’s at best useless and at worst misleading.

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About the author

Rob McGarr – Contributing Editor

Rob has been a writer and editor for over 15 years, covering all manner of subjects for leading magazines and websites.

He has previously been Features Editor of Today’s Golfer magazine and Digital Editor of todays-golfer.com, and held roles at FHM, Men’s Running, Golf World, and MAN Magazine.

You can follow him on YouTube where – depending on what day of the week it is – he’ll either be trying his best to get his handicap down to scratch or shoving his clubs in a cupboard, never to be seen again.

Rob is a member at Royal North Devon, England’s oldest golf course, where he plays off a three-handicap.