Let’s talk about Taylormade Golf - it’s absolutely wonderful that they’re moving their metal wood releases to a two year cycle.
- Sim 2 – a fan favourite these days, but this is based on price point NOT
performance, Ian Fraser debunked that myth beautifully. - Stealth – a show stopping move to a carbon face.
- Stealth 2 – manufacturing issues plagued the driver and nearly destroyed the brand’s reputation.
- Qi10 – legendary.
- Qi35 – doesn’t deserve the hate, but forgettable.
- Qi4D – maybe the best driver they’ve ever made.
It seems that Taylormade is batting about .500 over the past decade, which gets you into Cooperstown, but it’s not a good enough batting average when you’re asking consumers to pay over $900 CAD for a driver.
To add some perspective to the cost golfers are facing these days. If you work a full-time job in Ontario, Canada, making minimum wage, after the government takes their cut from your pay and your purchase, you’re going to give up two weeks salary to get your hands on a stock driver off the shelf.
Beyond that up front price, Taylormade has changed their fitting story, no longer is the stock shaft sold without consideration. Instead they’ll look at your swing speed, rate of closure, and a handful of other metrics to make sure you’re getting the correct Reax shaft, all at no extra cost if you go to the right shop for the fitting.
The catch? If that configuration isn’t on the shelf, you may be waiting anywhere from 2-6 weeks for your new driver.
So there’s a big price point, a potentially long wait, and in years past there would be a brand new model coming just a couple months later making your massive purchase feel out of date far too soon. Thank God for the move to the two-year release cycle.
Now that we’ve addressed the reality of acquiring the Qi4D, let’s be clear about something - this may just be the best driver Taylormade has ever built.
To quickly dive into the why of that statement, lets speed run through some of the tech upgrades:
- 8” radius on the face allows for better spin control across the face
- Improved aerodynamics
- REAX shafts
- More adjustable weights
- Build quality
Last one first, since the days of the carbon face on the Stealth 2 drivers shattering left, right and center, Taylormade has completely changed the manufacturing process of the carbon face. They’re now built in clean rooms, white lab coats, hair nets, high powered fans as you enter the room, all of it. The area is completely controlled so that Taylormade can guarantee the build quality of the carbon face, not a single spec of dust gets into the room to compromise the integrity of the carbon face. Kudos to Taylormade for righting that wrong so fervently.
The REAX shafts are no joke either. If you haven’t heard the story elsewhere, the industry has typically marketed shafts as High, Mid or Low launch, red, blue and white/black typically being the respective colour codes for each. Taylormade’s head of fitting realized that, as he fit players, each of those shaft profiles really just spoke to how active the tip was, and that players who had a very high rate of closure typically found an active tip to be a great match.
So they built off of that theory, developed the REAX shafts, and sent them over to Mitsubishi to have the shafts manufactured to their specs. The lovely thing about these shafts are that, at the same weight and flex, they play the same through the handle and mid-section, only the tip is different. Creating a true one to one feel, from there if you have a High Rotation player, they can get fit into Red, Mid Rotation goes to Blue and Low into White.
After going through the process myself, I have to say that I think this is the biggest improvement Taylormade has added to the lineup. To most golfers the shaft won’t feel like the biggest difference maker, but by getting into the correct high rotation REAX shaft I added 13mph ball speed and tightened up my dispersion by about 35 yards. That alone could be worth the price of admission into the Qi4D club. The aerodynamics speak for themselves and you’ll see it if you get fit, the club head is fast, full stop.
The other thing you’ll see when you get fit is the spin, not that it’s the lowest or highest spinning driver on the market, just the most consistent. Put it up against five or six other drivers from this year in a fitting, look at the standard deviation of the spin for each of them, and I guarantee that the Qi4D wins that metric every time.
What does that mean for you? More forgiveness on mishits, it’s as simple as that and it’s all down to the change from a 10” radius on the roll of the driver face down to an 8” radius.
Across the board, Qi4D is likely the driver of the year. Yes, Callaway’s Quantum Triple Diamond is a little bit hotter off the face, the ball speed available from that driver on the absolute perfect drive is unmatched, but how often do you hit a perfect drive? One in ten? One in twenty?
On the other 19 shots, Qi4D is going to be the better driver for the majority of players. The forgiveness is real, the distance is fantastic, and the ability to fit this driver and dial it in uniquely for any and every golfer is legitimately unmatched. There is no other driver that released in 2026 as good as Qi4D.
Though there may be a driver released in 2024 that you should consider.
Qi10 is right there with Qi4D in almost every way. It’s not quite as fittable, it’s not as forgiving, but if Qi4D is the best driver Taylormade has ever released, Qi10 might just be second and it’s currently available in Canada for $500. True enough, you can’t get fit into the Qi10 in the same way you can the Qi4D, but you can very easily pull the shaft out and retrofit it – and if you’re moving into a premium shaft option in the Qi4D, well you’re going to end up paying the same for that upgraded shaft in either option.
A properly fitted Qi4D is going to be marginally better than a properly fitted Qi10. Maybe 4-7 yards longer on a good hit with a slightly tighter dispersion pattern. Mishits will be more noticeably different, but again, marginally. If you don’t take the time to get fit, there’s not likely going to be any difference between the two unless you accidentally fit into the stock configuration perfectly.
So the question you have to ask as a consumer becomes this. How much is a yard really worth?
At the end of the day, I’m glad I won’t have to answer that question again until 2028.
XO Go Low,
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