With Europe looking to retain the Solheim Cup for the fourth consecutive contest, Team USA will be doing everything they can to ensure that does not happen. Both teams are priming up and preparing in every way possible, including their golf equipment. Here we're taking a look at which of the best drivers is the most played at this year's Solheim Cup…
What is the most played Driver model on Team Europe?
Team Europe actually have a pretty wide spread of both brand and model representation in terms of their driver usage this week. With five brands in total represented over the twelve team members and eight different models in there too.
Unsurprisingly then, there is a four-way tie at the top for the most used driver model on Team Europe. The TaylorMade Qi10 LS, Ping G430 LST, Callaway Paradym Triple Diamond (original), and the Titleist GT3 model are all in two European player's bags.
The other models represented on Team Europe are the PXG 0311 Gen 5, Ping G430 Max 10K, Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond, and the Titleist TSR3.
Full breakdown of Team Europe’s drivers:
What is the most played Driver model on Team USA?
Unlike Team Europe, Team USA has a clear winner in terms of their most-played driver model. The Ping G430 LST is in a quarter of the bags of the American players, leading the count with three. Callaway comes in second place with the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond, which is in the bags of both Rose Zhang and Sarah Schmelzel.
Once again five different brands are represented, but this time there are even more models on show, with nine different models represented in total out of the twelve players.
One interesting point to note is that despite three Titleist drivers being used on Team Europe, not a single one is in the bag of an American player. Lexi Thompson is flying the flag for Cobra Golf with her trusty Radspeed driver and Megan Khang evens up the score at one driver on either side for PXG with her 0311 Gen 6 driver.
Full breakdown of Team USA’s drivers:
What is the most played Driver model overall?
Fittingly, with Karsten Solheim being the founder of the trophy that both teams are competing for, Ping has the most played driver at the event with the G430 LST in the bag of no less than five competitors across both teams. It is an extremely strong model with great stability for a ‘low-spin’ driver and it is as competitive on ball speed as any other driver on the market today.
The next two most played models were both from Callaway, with the 23’ Paradym Triple Diamond, and the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond in the bags of three players each. This led to a tie between Ping and Callaway as the most-played driver brand at the event with seven drivers each. The other two Ping models in play are Maja Stark’s G430 Max 10K, and Jennifer Kupcho’s G425 LST.
TaylorMade was the next most represented brand with four drivers in play, and Titleist came in third with three.