There may not be a hotter club in high-level championship golf right now than the mini driver.
As players hit it farther and farther, some would rather have a club after their driver that fits in a particular distance window for tighter and shorter holes that their driver simply can’t find.
U.S. Amateur champ Jose Luis Ballester, who brought Hazeltine to its knees two weeks ago with some his 320-yard-plus drives, is exactly the player who fit might the category.
Ballester employed a mini driver on his way to victory with quite an interesting backstory as he told GOLF Subpar co-hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz on this week’s episode. The driver came from Ballester’s fellow countryman Sergio Garcia and his father Victor.
Garcia, one of the greatest players from Spain in the last 25 years, has been a major influence on Ballester for the past seven or eight years.
The particular mini driver Ballester used at Hazeltine was put together with a head from Victor and a shaft from Sergio that has the scores from his 2017 Masters victory written on it. Ballester said the conversation started when he was beaten in a match by another player using a mini driver.
“And I mentioned that to Victor and he was like, ‘OK, let me let me think about it,'” Ballester said. “And he gave me his head… and then he actually pulled out this [shaft].”
Ballester was initially skeptical because of Garcia’s history of playing counterbalanced clubs. But then he made a swing with the club.
“First two shots I hit, it just came out like this,” he said, making a motion like the ball shot off the face. “And I’m like, look at Victor and I’m like, ‘Damn, this is nice.'”
Ballester even said he thinks having the mini driver helps him hit his regular driver better, just from a confidence standpoint. It also was a way better fit for his bag instead of the 5-wood it replaced, especially considering his length off the tee.
“The way the courses are, designed, they’re not designed for a guy that hits it 350. So I feel like, especially in college, many courses, I had to go straight from the driver to the 3-iron because I didn’t want to hit the 5-wood off the tee,” he said. “I was losing my advantage of the distance compared to the other field. So now I have this club that goes like 20 yards less than my driver, and then I can hit confidence enough, confident enough that I’m going to put it in the fairway farther than my three iron.
You can watch the complete interview with Ballester below.
