I'll confess that I started writing this before the rumored announcement of a major golf ball rollback from the game's governing bodies surfaced on social media. With that huge news potentially breaking as early as this week, looking ahead to 2024's equipment trends seems like a secondary concern. However, the proposed rules don't look to be coming into effect until 2028 at the earliest, leaving us with a whole Olympic cycle before we need to start worrying about it (unless you're a golf ball manufacturer that is!) But let's forget that for now and consider what your golf equipment might look like in 2024.
It's no secret that new equipment comes around thick and fast, and there are a few trends I’ve already spotted that we should see next year. It’s no secret that the likes of TaylorMade, Callaway, and Cobra all work in one-year product cycles so brace yourselves for fresh golf club franchises come the first few weeks of January. Those with a keen eye will have already spotted TaylorMade staffers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy with its new driver on the course. Typically, fairways and hybrids follow at the same time and it will be interesting to see if these also feature carbon fiber faces like the driver this time around.
Expect to see new equipment in different areas of the bag from Ping too, based on new irons and a driver we've spotted in tour pros' bags recently. If the G430 Max 10k driver used by Cameron Champ recently is truly a more forgiving driver that can provide low enough spin for tour players, there's lots to be excited about for the better player when you also factor in the two new Ping Blueprint irons spotted.
It's not all about drivers either, and one look at the traditional life cycles of Titleist Vokey Design wedges, Wilson irons, Scotty Cameron Phantom putters and the FootJoy Pro SL shoe are enough hints to suggest we'll be getting new editions across all these incredibly popular product franchises.
If I’m going to go all Anna Wintour about my predictions, which I am, it looks like blue will be the color that will dominate equipment next year. We’ve already seen the beautiful navy finish on the new Odyssey Ai-One and Ai-One Milled putters and we've even seen navy creep onto the sole of the latest TaylorMade Spider Tour putters. I fully expect to see more shades of blue bleed their way onto other new hardware that will be introduced in 2024.
Away from hardware, I’ve always got a keen eye on what new golf shoes to expect in 2024. We’ve seen some new brands join the golf shoe space this year in the UK with the likes of True Linkswear, J. Lindeberg and Cole Haan all launching an impressive range of shoes this side of the pond. The Payntr X 004 RS was the stand-out spiked shoe of 2023, and I’m expecting some more performance-driven spiked shoes to launch next year from a wide range of shoe manufacturers. Adidas’ Tour360 shoe is due an update this January when the 2022 version hits the end of its two-year cycle and I’m excited to see where the brand goes with its flagship spiked golf shoe.
While the best remote golf trolleys dominated the space in 2023 with their premium feature suites, I’m expecting something of a lurch back to the other side of the market in 2024, with some new entry-level trolleys opening up electric golf trolleys to budgets that can’t quite stretch as far. We saw Motocaddy launch the 2022 S1 model at a competitive price, but might we see an even lower-priced model arrive from the brand in 2024? It would make sense given the squeeze on the consumer purse strings. From what we’ve been lucky enough to see and hit already, it's going to be another exciting year for the leading brands in equipment.
