Golfers love talking about swing speed. It’s the number everyone remembers, the one that feels like it should explain everything. But if you’ve ever watched a player with average speed outdrive someone faster, you’ve already seen the truth.
Driver loft is often the bigger performance lever. Not because loft magically adds yards, but because loft decides whether your speed turns into usable launch and carry, or a flat bullet that falls out of the air.
Speed only matters if you can launch it
Think of swing speed as your engine. Loft is the gearing. If the gearing is wrong, you can rev the engine all you want and still go nowhere.
The goal with a driver isn’t “hit it low” or “hit it high.” The goal is to get your launch and spin into a window that produces consistent carry and a controllable peak height. Loft is one of the simplest ways to move you into that window.
Loft changes two things that decide distance
Launch angle. More loft generally helps the ball start higher. That sounds obvious, but it matters most for golfers whose strikes tend to be low on the face or whose delivery keeps launch down. If the ball can’t climb, it can’t carry.
Spin. Loft influences spin, but not in a neat, predictable way for every golfer. Two players can both increase loft by one degree and see completely different outcomes depending on where they strike the face and how the club is delivered. That’s why guessing loft from a chart rarely works.
The biggest distance mistake: choosing loft based on gut feel
A common trap is assuming lower loft equals longer drives. For some golfers with high speed, upward attack and consistent centre-face contact, that can be true. For most golfers, it’s the opposite. Too little loft often creates a drive that looks “powerful” but bleeds distance because it never reaches a good peak height, or it spins in the wrong way and falls out of the sky.
If you feel like you have to absolutely flush one to get a good drive, loft is often the first thing to question. The right loft should make your decent strikes travel well, not just your perfect ones.
More loft can also tighten dispersion
This is the part golfers don’t expect. When loft and launch are too low, the ball tends to come out hot and flat. That can exaggerate misses, especially if your strike pattern moves around the face from swing to swing. A slightly higher loft can give you a more playable flight and a more predictable carry number, which often makes the whole tee shot feel easier.
Distance is useful. Predictable distance is what lowers scores.
Loft isn’t a number. It’s a fit.
There’s no universal best loft for a 12 handicap, or for someone swinging 95 mph. Loft only makes sense once you know what your ball flight is doing and why. The same loft can be perfect on one head, wrong on another, and completely different again once the shaft and strike pattern come into play.
If you want to make driver gains quickly, start here: stop chasing swing speed as the answer, and start treating loft as the tool that turns your speed into performance.
If you want to see it properly, the simplest test is hitting two or three lofts back to back on a launch monitor and letting the numbers decide; which you can do for free here at The Golf Venue.