There’s a subset of golfers who get overly excited by a new Mizuno release. If golf manufacturers were football (soccer) teams, Mizuno are Arsenal: Perennially among the best but always the slight underdog, with a rabid fanbase who, while hoping for a bright future, fondly reminisce about former glories.  

But at The Open this week at Royal Liverpool, not only have Mizuno unveiled some wedges that will appeal to the Mizuno fanboys, they’ve unveiled a driver that will get a whole different subset of golfers’ hearts pounding fast. 

ST-G Driver 

Driver head shapes have generally gotten flatter with shallower faces. Giant pancakes, if you will.  And because nearly everyone is trying to put the centre of gravity low and rear, drivers are starting to share a similar shape at address.  

But there’s a bunch of internet golf gearheads who obsess over deep-faced drivers. And I mean DEEP. From the fabled TaylorMade R7 SuperQuad 282 and R9 SuperDeep, the COBRA Speed Pro D and the Bridgestone J33, they were built to be teed high and let fly.  

Nothing in recent times has appealed to the low-spin obsessed, other than maybe a couple of obscure Japanese models from J-Beam and Baldo.  

Enter the Mizuno ST-G. We don’t know too much about it. But look how deep that face is. We know it has a 440-cc head. We know it has a forged Ti-LFS face. We don’t know what “LFS” means and, looking online, there is nothing obvious that matches up. If we were to guess, it would be a faster material/more elastic material outside of the sweet spot. At first glance, it doesn’t appear to have any carbon in the crown and none in the sole.  

The Mizuno ST-G driver has two weight tracks that go from the front to the back of the sole. Having both weights behind the face will decrease launch and spin, while having them at the back of the head will increase the clubheads MOI, helping to increase launch and spin. Countless other weight location combinations can be utilized to influence the players shot shape. 

We can see the Mizuno ST-G has the same CORTECH Chamber as the ST-X 230 and ST-Z 230. This hasn’t been designed to replace those drivers, but to complement them. In my driver testing this year, the ST-Z 230 was the best-feeling driver, bar none. But I couldn’t get the correct combo of launch and spin. I’m really excited to give this a whack.  

There are other smaller-headed, lower-spin drivers out there like the Callaway Paradym Triple Diamond, PING G430 LST and the Titleist TSR4. But none of them captures the testosterone fuelled, low-spin essence of 2000’s online golf quite like this driver appears to.  

ST-G Fairways 

Titanium fairway woods have become popular since TaylorMade started producing cannons. From the original TaylorMade SIM Ti, through to the latest TaylorMade Stealth 2 Plus, these titanium fairway woods are designed to be fast off the face, and low-spin. And they aren’t the only ones either, with PING following the same formula for their new G430 LST three wood as well. 

But Mizuno were one of the first to bring titanium to a player’s fairway wood with the beautiful MP Titanium from 2010. So anyone saying this just looks like a TaylorMade SIM Ti should check their golf club history. We’ve not been told much, other than it’s an all-titanium low-spin design. While there are no adjustable weights, there is an adjustable hosel. And it’s going to be available in at least a 3- and 5-wood option. 

Marco Penge, a big hitting Mizuno Staff player from the European Challenge Tour qualified for the Open Championship, and was the first player to take one out on course. The former child prodigy absolutely hammers it, with Mizuno stating he has the highest swing speed of any player on their tour staff. That makes it a fair guess to expect the ST-G to be a low-spin, rocket launching fairway wood.  

T24 Wedges 

Mizuno have said there aren’t going to be any new irons this year so this will be the most highly anticipated release for their fans. 

The T-22 was a great success for the Japanese brand. It felt soft with its forged head and copper underlay and it performed admirably in wet conditions, plus it came in a bunch of grinds and finishes. It was right in the mix in our 2021 Most Wanted Wedge test. But it had some foibles. While they offered wedges in a variety of lofts and lies, they were using a base wedge design and then bending them to spec. But this could lead to some discrepancies in a set of wedges with some being offset and others appearing onset.   

From what we can see, these wedges have fixed that, with lofts stamped into the head. They are grain flow forged from 1025 boron steel. They retain the Spin Weighted Blade Design, putting more weight at the top of the clubhead to raise the centre of gravity for lower launch and higher spin.  

We know there is a new V sole grind which looks to have heavily cambered relief on the back edge. The USGA conforming list suggests this is in addition to the current T-22 grind options. And we know they are available in Tour Raw, White Satin Chrome, and a returning Denim Copper finish which has proven more popular than they could have ever imagined. 

These woods and wedges, scheduled to release this October, are the appetizer for 2024’s Mizuno Pro entrée. We will share more details as soon as we get them.  

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