Best Drivers for Beginners of 2023: Low Cost & Easy to Bomb

If you’re relatively new to golf, watching a commercial for one of the latest drivers is like watching a foreign film. Terms like Jailbreak, Flash Face, Carbonwood and MOI are thrown around like you’re actually supposed to know what they mean. 

We took it upon ourselves to test, poke, prod and sift through all that marketing jargon to decipher what features actually make the best drivers for beginners and high-handicap golfers. These are the 11 best drivers for beginners of 2023.

The Cleveland Launcher XL earned our nod as the best driver for beginners and high-handicap golfers because frankly, it checks all the boxes we listed above: great price, adjustability and forgiveness.

The Launcher XL has an adjustable hosel that allows you to tune the loft in half-degree increments from 9 degrees all the way up to 12 degrees. That’s some serious control over your launch, and once you find the ideal loft for your swing speed and optimize your launch, you’re well on your way to getting the maximum distance from your swing speed. 

The Launcher XL does not have adjustable weights, but it includes the option of either a “distance mode” or “accuracy mode” shaft. The distance shaft is 45.75-inches, one inch longer than the accuracy shaft, and can create higher ball speeds and more distance. 

At 44.75-inches, the accuracy shaft is easier to control to emphasize finding the fairway, and will likely produce a greater average distance – because you’ll find the sweet spot more consistently – at the expense of the greater top-end distance.

Regardless of which shaft is in the Launcher XL, it’s a very forgiving driver. In fact, the Launcher XL boasts the highest MOI ever in a Cleveland driver, at 5,200 g/cm2. Whether you hit it on the heel or toe, or high or low on the face, you’ve still got a good chance of finding the fairway with some serious distance with the Launcher XL, which is just what beginners and high-handicappers need to shoot lower scores and enjoy the game more.

The Cleveland Launcher XL is down to $249 for 2023. Golfers who have checked out the TaylorMade Stealth lineup or the XXIO 12 driver, for example, realize today’s drivers easily span into the $600 and $700 range, so the Launcher XL’s price tag is a clear win.

Pros:

• Highest MOI of any Cleveland driver (5,200 g-cm2)
• 8g counterbalance (CB) weight promotes sound swing mechanics
• Easy to launch
• Various shaft length options to favor distance or accuracy

Cons:

• The large footprint of the head can be a turnoff for some players

There are so many elements of the Tommy Armour 845-Max Driver that make it a great choice for beginners. For starters, the price tag won’t have you reconsidering your decision to take up golf. At just $199, you can put a top-end driver in your bag and have some cash left for a few lessons.

Next, the 845-MAX is designed to produce great ball speed across the entire club face. The variable thickness face actually has 11 different thicknesses, so you get ideal ball speed no matter where you strike it. That means you don’t have to worry about hitting it directly in the center to hit bombs. That’s a huge relief, because let’s face it, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced player, hitting the sweet spot is an accomplishment.

Lastly, the 845-MAX gives you all the adjustability you need to optimize your launch and shot shape. It offers six different settings that allow you to choose low, high or neutral launch, with draw, fade, or neutral shot shape bias. Find your optimal setting and let ‘er rip!

Pros:

• Fast ball speeds across the face
• Great value at $200
• Launch and shot shape adjustability
• Mitsubishi Tensei CK stock shaft

Cons:

• Not as draw-biased (slice-fighting) as other options on this list
• 9.0 degree option is available for right-handers only (10.5 degrees available to RH and LH golfers)

One of the first breakthroughs golfers make as they transition from beginners to high-handicappers is that they can consistently hit the ball in the air. However, this milestone is often accompanied by the most notorious miss in the game of golf: the slice. 

The joyous feeling of seeing the golf ball launch high off the tee box is short-lived when you begin to see it curve uncontrollably to the right. While improving your swing mechanics will eventually steer you back into the fairway, a draw-biased driver such as the Cobra AIR-X OS can be a great co-pilot.

The AIR-X OS is not only designed to fight the right miss (for right-handed players), but it’s created with seniors and women in mind with design elements to help players who don’t have top-end swing speeds. A lighter head, shaft and grip helps you swing the AIR-X faster with normal effort.

The head features a fixed draw-biased weight towards the heel to help you avoid that pesky slice. The second slice-fighting technology in the AIR-X OS is the offset head, which is where the “OS” in the name comes from. The offset head helps you square the club face through impact and hit straighter shots. However, if you don’t need that extra draw-bias, the AIR-X is also available in a straight-neck version. 

At $199, the Cobra AIR-X checks in at less than half the price of today’s premium drivers. For golfers who want to upgrade their entire bag, the AIR-X is also available in a complete set for men and women.

Pros:

• Offset to help reduce slice and promote a draw
• Great value
• Lightweight materials promote faster swing speeds and more distance

Cons:

• No adjustability
• Offset head is not for all players
• No ideal for players who already swing 95+ mph

Beginners who are hooked on golf and want to invest in a driver that will help them now, and when their skills improve should take a good hard look at the Callaway Epic MAX driver. 

This big dog checks all the boxes. The head includes Callaway’s “Jailbreak” technology, which gets its name from the prison-bar-looking rails inside the face to provide stability and ultimately, more ball speed. 

The Epic MAX also features Callaway’s AI-designed flash face, which without context is just another catchy, but confusing, name. The fact is, Callaway uses Artificial Intelligence to evaluate golfers’ strike locations and design a face that provides the highest ball speeds possible across the most important areas of the face. 

On the inside, the result resembles various ripples, peaks, and valleys behind the face (not that you’d ever see the inside of your driver’s face). On the outside, it looks like more distance and more fairways.

Two more reasons beginners should consider the Epic MAX are its adjustability and the price. We already mentioned that we love adjustability because it allows a single club to fit an evolving game for a much longer period of time than a fixed club, and the Epic MAX features adjustable weight and an adjustable hosel. Callaway claims the rear weight allows for up to 20 yards of shot shape correction. 

The $249 price tag is also a pro. If you can’t get enough golf and know you’re going to be playing for years to come, the Epic MAX could easily suit your game for a decade or more, and hitting longer, straighter drives makes golf more fun. You can’t put a price tag on that.

Pros:

• Through adjustable loft, 17g sliding weight, and shaft variations, it fits almost anyone
• Better value than most premium tour-brand drivers
• Minimal dropoff on mishits

Cons:

• Availability is becoming scarce

If you haven’t heard of Stix golf clubs, that’s because you won’t find them in most retailers, or see their commercials during a weekend golf broadcast. Stix is a direct-to-consumer club maker that produces sleek-looking and high-performing clubs at a nice price.

Stix is known for its complete set of clubs, but you can also purchase individual clubs, including the Stix Golf Driver. The driver features an eye-catching all-black design from the head to the grip. The only pop of color is a subtle orange dot on the crown, which serves as an alignment aid. 

For $250, you can get the Stix driver in left or right-handed, with a regular, stiff or senior “active” shaft, and five length options, standard and up to one inch in either direction in half-inch increments. Those shaft length and flex options are enough to accommodate all swing speeds, age-ranges and genders.

On the flip side, those are the only spec options. Once your driver is built, there’s no adjustability, and you don’t have the multiple stock shaft options that many other manufacturers offer.

If you’re just beginning, there’s nothing wrong with keeping it simple. Especially given the fact that from a performance standpoint, the Stix driver is no joke. It churns out legitimate distance to rival brands that charge more than double for a driver.

Pros:

• Great value
• Sleek look
• Useful club-length selector tool
• Top-end distance

Cons:

• Limited spec options
• Hard to find in retail to test before purchasing
• No adjustability

If you want the most budget-friendly, high-performance driver, check out the Tour Edge Bazooka 470 driver. Golfers who need to purchase more than just a driver will love the $149 price tag, and the easy launch and forgiveness on strikes away from the sweet spot make it a great compliment to most golfers’ games, especially beginners.

The Bazooka 470 is available in 9.5, 10.5 and 12-degree lofts, and doesn’t offer any adjustability. 

The lack of adjustability means this club may not be your forever driver. If you’re a beginner, you’ll likely grow out of the need for a made-to-launch-high driver as your swing speed increases. Sooner or later, you’ll benefit more from a driver with a penetrating flight. However, with the minimal $149 investment, you won’t have to stress so much in a few years when it’s time to find a great driver for a mid-handicap golfer.

The weight is fixed in the rear sole for a deep CG, which is what helps the Bazooka 470 launch high. For players who have seen worm-burner tee shots swallowed up by the rough before they even reach the fairway, high-launch is a welcomed feature. It also helps the ball stay in the air longer, resulting in more distance.

One nit-picky complaint we have about the Bazooka 470 is the name. Specifically, the 470 part. Given the legal limit of clubhead size is 460cc, and many brands used to put 460 in the name of their drivers to indicate it featured the largest legal head, the Bazooka 470 may lead golfers to believe the club is illegal with a head larger than the legal limit. Rest assured, the Bazooka 470 features a perfectly legal 460cc club head.

Pros:

• Easy to launch high
• Great value
• Forgiving design results in great distance even on off-center strikes

Cons:

• Not available in left-handed
• No adjustability
• Confusing name

When you consider performance, price, and adjustability, the Sub 70 849D driver just may be the best value driver of 2023.

A few of the standout features beginners and high handicappers should consider are the fact that it’s one of the best drivers for distance, so you never need to worry about giving up important yardage. It’s draw-biased, so you get some extra help fighting a slice and staying in the fairway, and it’s fully adjustable, from the hosel to adjustable weights. Use that adjustability to dial in your launch angle, spin, trajectory, and shot shape as your skill improve. 

Finally, at just $279, you can add a driver to your bag that can stay there for a decade. Because of those factors we just mentioned, the 849D is also one of our favorite drivers for mid-handicap golfers, so you won’t need to replace it when your skills improve.

Pros:

• Value
• Soft draw
• Complete adjustability
• Suitable until you reach a low handicap

Cons:

• Not intended for low-handicap players

You’ve probably heard, or know from experience, that the driver is the most difficult club in your bag to hit. That’s mostly because it’s the longest club in your bag, making it the most difficult to control and strike consistently. 

That loss of control diminishes the efficiency of your strike (affectionately known as smash factor), which is why your best drives seem to fly for miles, while your others come up significantly shorter.

The Tour Edge Hot Launch E522 addresses efficiency through what it calls a Control Length Shaft, which is golf marketing speak for a shorter shaft. 

The idea is that you can control the club head better with a shorter shaft, and transfer more of your club head speed into the ball, resulting in even more distance than you would get from a faster swing with a less efficient strike. That concept is actually becoming more popular, and is one we believe more golfers should subscribe to, especially beginners.

The fixed weight in the heel and slight offset on the Hot Launch E522 provide a draw bias. Even though it’s designed for you to find the sweet spot with ease, with Tour Edge founder David Glod calling it “the easiest driver you will ever hit,” the E522 has a variable face thickness with 42 different thick and thin diamond-shaped impressions behind the face to provide maximum ball speed on off-center strikes just in case you miss the sweet spot.

At $219, the E522 is undoubtedly one of the best dollar-for-dollar drivers available in 2023.

Pros:

• Control Length (shorter) shaft improves accuracy and efficiency
• Great value
• Draw bias

Cons:

•  No adjustability

The Wilson Launch Pad 2 is another draw-biased driver to help you eliminate the right miss (for right-handed players) and find more fairways, something beginners can always use more of. Wilson achieves this through heel-weighting and a slight offset. 

The Launch Pad 2 also boasts a forgiving face designed to produce peak ball speeds no matter where on the face you hit the ball. 

To help boost distance, Wilson made the Launch Pad 2 driver lightweight, and paired it with a lightweight Evenflow shaft, so you can easily improve your swing speed, and get more distance. Given that the Launch Pad 2 is so lightweight and easy to swing fast, we also think it’s one of the best drivers for senior golfers.

The Launch Pad 2 is a fixed driver, there’s no adjustability with weighting or loft. However, it is available in 9, 10.5 or 13 degree heads, so you can determine which head gives you the best launch conditions through a quick fitting, and head to the tee box with confidence.

At $199, the Launch Pad 2 is one of the most affordable drivers that we’d recommend for beginners.

Pros:

• Draw bias
• Lightweight and easy to swing fast
• High launching

Cons:

• No adjustability

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most of these drivers – our expert recommendations for the best drivers for beginners – don’t show up in the hands of PGA Tour players. Obviously, those players have outgrown many of the features that beginners seek.

The Cobra King RADSPEED driver, however, is one of the few exceptions. The infinity face on the RADSPEED driver features an enlarged sweet spot, which is good for both beginners and tour players. The weight savings from the carbon crown and t-bar chassis allow Cobra to reposition weight to ports that will optimize launch, spin, and forgiveness. Again, that’s great for beginners and pros.

That’s where the paths diverge. The XD edition of the RADSPEED driver is the X-Treme Draw version, which is what we recommend for beginners. It features a 10g weight port in the heel to fight a slice with another 14g in the back to boost forgiveness.

The RADSPEED drivers were part of Cobra’s 2021 release cycle, which is great news if you’re looking to save $200 off the original retail price in 2023 and put a tour-level driver in your bag. It’s not great news, however, if you want to wait around a while before you make your decision, because once the few RADSPEED XD drivers that remain in retail are gone, they won’t be restocked.

Pros:

• Slice-fighting draw bias is very pronounced
• Very forgiving
• Low-spin, high-launch profile for max distance

Cons:

• Gloss crown and highlighter-green accents may be distracting

Everything about the Callaway Rogue ST MAX D driver is designed for you to hit bombs, and keep them in play.

The impact zone includes Callaway’s Jailbreak technology and Flash Face, which are both in place to maximize ball speed all over the face - a great benefit for beginners and experienced golfers alike.

Callaway packs extra forgiveness into the Rogue ST MAX D with up to 20g of weight positioned low and back in the head.

Last but not least, Callaway helps you avoid that frustrating slice with weight low in the heel for a pleasing draw bias.

The adjustable hosel allows you to dial in your desired trajectory, even as your tendencies and priorities change.

Pros:

• Premium performance
• Max distance and forgiveness without compromise
• Will perform well into the single-digit handicap stage

Cons:

• Wrench not included
• Higher price for entry-level driver