The price of most newly released hybrids in 2025 is about $300. For golfers who carry two or even three hybrids, that adds up fast. While true budget options are hard to find, a handful of models under $300 still managed to perform well in our testing. Here are three standouts that prove you don’t always have to pay top dollar for solid hybrid performance.
The Ben Hogan PTX Max quietly turned in one of the most balanced scorecards in our 2025 Hybrid Test. Accuracy, distance and forgiveness all came in at 8.6. It may not dominate in any one category but the consistency is hard to ignore, especially for $199.
Who should buy: Golfers who want a dependable hybrid without glaring weaknesses. Players who prioritize consistency over raw distance.
Who should skip Those chasing maximum forgiveness. Golfers who prefer the latest major OEM releases with multiple fitting options.
Sub 70 has built its reputation on direct-to-consumer value and the 959X is another example of why. With an overall score of 8.6, it performed nearly identically to the Hogan but leaned slightly toward distance over forgiveness. At $229, it offers performance that rivals bigger names at a slightly lower price.
Are you always walking off the course saying something like: “If I just didn’t make that double … or that triple … I would’ve had a great round!”?
Every golfer hits bad shots. Your swing isn’t perfect. It’s not one bad swing that ruins your round. It’s what happens after the bad swing.
Blow-up holes aren’t about mechanics; they’re about response and preparation. If you don’t have a plan for what to do when things go wrong, you’ll start compounding mistakes. That’s when doubles, triples and worse show up on the card.
Here are three things I would recommend doing if you want to stop being “one hole away” from your best round.
1. Control yourself. Don’t chase after mistakes.
There’s a pattern that leads to most blow-up holes. You tug a drive left, end up under a tree and immediately think, “I’ll fix this with one big swing.” Or you miss a short putt and decide to “get it back” on the very next tee.
Around this time of the year, we like to take stock of how YouTube golf channels are performing.
The short summary: these 10 channels are killing it.
We’ve broken down the viewership numbers from the last 365 days—so this includes Q4 from 2024 as well—to find what golfers are watching. Each channel is sorted by percentage viewership increase (compared to the previous year) to show their popularity spike.
I think my main takeaway is that personality matters. Likability matters. Comedy matters.
You used to be able to win just by being active. Not anymore—the competition is too deep.
Xander Schauffele has a good reason why he's not at the Procore Championship with the rest of his Ryder Cup teammates: He's home in Florida with his newborn son.
Introducing Ginnico Fairway Wood by Eon Sports Japan.
For many golfers, the fear of a slice or hook to the left can really get in the way of a good swing. But what if you could forget about that worry and just focus on hitting a solid shot? That’s the idea behind the new Ginnico Fairway Wood. This club is designed to help you play with more confidence and stop thinking so much about where the ball might go wrong.
The Ginnico Fairway Wood is crafted with the same new Ti-HEG titanium face material found in their drivers, which is engineered to provide a soft feel at impact and excellent distance off the tee or from the fairway. The club’s face structure is made to help produce a strong, penetrating ball flight with an emphasis on accuracy. This design works to generate optimal spin, allowing the ball to get up in the air without ballooning. The result is a more stable and controlled trajectory, even on powerful swings.
Ginnico Fairway Wood (4)
The Ginnico Fairway Wood offers extensive customization options, allowing golfers to fine-tune the club to their specific needs. The five-position adjustable weights make it possible to shift the club’s center of gravity, which can influence shot shape. Additionally, the adjustable hosel sleeve lets you fine-tune the loft, lie angle, and face angle to match your swing and preferred ball flight. The loft can be adjusted by up to +/- 1.5 degrees. With these features, golfers can easily dial in their settings to achieve their desired performance on the course.
Ginnico Fairway Wood (11)
With its focus on minimizing left-side misses and its extensive adjustability, the Ginnico Fairway Wood is designed to help golfers find the fairway and play with more freedom.
In a year that’s been filled with some pretty sweet, limited edition gear, Srixon-Cleveland had been, until recently, noticeably quiet.
The company broke that silence in a big way a couple of weeks ago with its jaw-dropping RTZ wedge collaboration with SWAG. Those money wedges were no fluke. Today, Srixon is celebrating the Ryder Cup with a limited edition Captain Keegan Bradley Signature Z-STAR Diamon golf balls.
Oh Captain, my Captain…
Bradley is a longtime Srixon-Cleveland staffer, so his brand is doing him the honor of putting his mug on his golf ball.
“Keegan has always embodied what it means to be a competitor and now, a leader,” says Srixon Communications Director Noelle Zavaleta. “We’re honored to support him with a product that reflects his grit, his pride and his love of team golf.”
It might not make up for Bradley choosing not to name himself as a Ryder Cup player, but hey, no one else on the team has their face on a golf ball.
Do you consider yourself a brand-loyal golfer? The type who sticks with one brand and upgrades to the newest release every time it comes out?
USA Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley is not.
He has a true mixed setup. It’s part PING, part TaylorMade, part Srixon, part Cleveland, and a little Odyssey. (While the same parent company owns Srixon and Cleveland, they are still separate brands.) Bradley is blending across multiple names, not just staying inside one umbrella.
Honestly, that’s what makes his bag so fun. While we expect some players to have all Titleist or all TaylorMade, it’s refreshing to see someone pick clubs from different brands to make the best possible combination.
Here’s a look inside Keegan Bradley’s current bag:
If you’re a TaylorMade fan, 2025 testing gave you a clearer picture of where the brand stands. While no TaylorMade blade models were part of this year’s lineup, the company’s mallets and zero-torque designs made a strong showing. The Spider Tour and Spider Tour X continue TaylorMade’s tradition in mallet innovation but the real standout was the new Spider 5K ZT. In a growing zero-torque category, it emerged as TaylorMade’s biggest winner of 2025, especially for golfers who want added stability and long-range consistency.
TaylorMade putter test results
PuttView Handicap is a Strokes Gained–style metric where a lower (more negative) number is better. Short, medium and long putting performance are measured separately, along with an overall average.
TaylorMade’s 2025 test results told a clear story: this is a brand built on mallets and now making serious waves in the zero-torque category. While no TaylorMade blades were included in this year’s lineup, the Spider Tour and Spider Tour X carried on the company’s strong reputation for forgiveness and stability. Both showed reliable long-range performance, though their consistency on short and mid-range putts was more mixed.
The real breakthrough came from the Spider 5K ZT. This is TaylorMade’s first major step into zero-torque design. It finished as the runner-up overall in the category, highlighted by one of the very best long-putt scores across all models tested (–10.2).
That combination of stability and distance control makes it one of TaylorMade’s strongest 2025 releases and a serious option if you’re considering this new style of putter.
