What you can learn from Tommy Fleetwood’s mini-driver setup
At the PGA Championship, we got a chance to hop in the TaylorMade truck and chat with tour attorney Sam Day about designing Tommy Fleetwood’s bag. Johnny Wunder and Day spent a lot of time talking about how Fleetwood sets up their small driver, and I saw that as a good excuse to talk about why I think the small driver trend is here, and the two buckets of players the small driver works well for.
It’s no secret Fleetwood is a fan of the small driver. He’s had one in the bag for several years now going back to the TaylorMade BRNR from 2023. He even tried to get Tiger Woods to convert during the TaylorMade shoot last year. TaylorMade also produced an episode last year at the RBC Heritage when attorney Adrian Rietveld featured Tommy in his new R7 offering. In that video, which you can watch at the bottom of this article, you can really see the versatility of the little driver, both in performance but also in its proper ability. The R7 has four weighted boats that open up the flight, launch and rotation bias for the players.
Fleetwood likes to use his little driver from the deck and off the tee. For him it is a true 3-wood replacement, and that bucket No. 1 players may fall into it. I struggle to hit the mini off the deck, but there are a large number of players who have a lot of confidence in that delivery and see incredible launch and ball speed from the mini’s big, forgiving profile over the fairway wood.
Most important to Fleetwood however is the way the mini stops. You want it to look like one of the addresses behind the ball, which is something younger drivers can struggle with. Most of the small drivers are closed in nature, and for many players it just rings to the left. Adrian ended up putting Tommy’s mini on the correct 1º lower loft setting and moving some weight to the heel so Tommy could get the draw he prefers without changing the face angle.
“Tommy, he was the first guy to put this in,” Day told Wunder. “As soon as he starts playing well with it, he starts hitting it off the deck, and the players are watching it. It made my truck in Europe very busy. I think we built like 50 of these in five weeks. Everyone was checking them out … It turns a little slower than his driver and is 10-15 yards shorter. I think it just gives him a lot of confidence when he’s not afraid of his driver.”
TaylorMade has a little driver Q&A on its website, and Fleetwood gets into it a little bit and there.
“Everyone lumps me in as a golf ball drawer, but I actually hit the driver with a very straight ball,” Fleetwood said. “So, if I need to make one swing from right to left, the mini for me is to push it up to the right and let it swing. Off the deck, the head is not as deep as a 3-wood so I’ll hold it a little bit from the bottom, but the smaller driver still holds his spin and he’s pushed it high enough. The fairway is too big for me.”
What I think is a very active bucket of players
My little driver isn’t for 3-wood replacements, because I’ll never have 3-woods in the bag to begin with. For me, and many others I know who play small driver, it’s about having a reliable second option. I don’t plan on hitting my mini off the deck. I have one, but it’s not a shot I should hit with commitment, and I rarely find myself on the golf course needing a 270-yard off-the-deck carry. And, at that point, I probably shouldn’t have fired that shot, or done something really bad to end up in that situation in the first place.
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What I love about the mini is that it can be a very purpose built tool. Here in the Chicago area, we play short, hard golf courses. Many times a 265 yard tee shot is all you need. So there are a lot of times where I keep the driver in the bag for most of the round, and the mini comes out to hit some nice high shots that fall a bit down the fairway. To me, this is the real best use of a small driver. My bag goes to the driver, the little driver, 5 wood. The 5-wood is built like a little bomb to hit the long par-5s most of the time, and it works as a great tee option when I need to really control the flight or dial it back on a short par-4. For me, it’s a great bag strategy that gives me a lot of flexibility on top.
Who doesn’t it work for?
I strongly believe that a mini should not replace your real driver. I’ve written about it, made videos about it, and still keep my thoughts on it. If you don’t have a good driver, you should get a better driver. If you find success with the mini and it gives you that extra confidence in the driver, then there’s something in that build that you might want to try to replicate in a longer, bigger, faster, more forgiving driver. Too many times I’ve seen players give up on a driver, hit a really good mini driver, and then after a few rounds realize how much money they actually lost and end up going back to looking for a new driver and the mini ends up sitting in the garage. While you completely it can be use a mini driver instead of a driver – even the guys on Tour do it – I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have a really good reason to do so.
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