WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Titleist has been teasing weekend golfers with a mini driver since the tour release of a 13-degree TSR 2-wood at the 2024 Players Championship. The club never came to retail, but it hinted at the company’s intent to bring something to the masses.
Enter GT280, Titleist’s first official mini-driver creation in a product category that has enjoyed rapid growth in the past year.
PRICE: $799 ($1,149 Premium); $NZ899 ($NZ1,299 Premium). Available at retail from April 18.
3 Cool Things 
1. Fairway finder. Compared to most of the mini products in the marketplace, GT280 is on the smaller side at 280cc. If you’re keeping track at home, that’s smaller than Callaway’s Paradym Ai Smoke Ti 340 Mini (340cc) and TaylorMade’s BRNR Mini (304cc).
While a majority of the mini products are touted as secondary options off the tee, Titleist wanted to ensure the club performed off the turf as well.
“The design goals for GT280 were multi-faceted,” said Tom Bennett, Titleist’s principal product manager. “GT280 needed to have exceptional distance and speed off the tee, it needed to perform from the turf, and it needed to offer adjustability for fitting purposes. That’s a long list of demands, but we approached the challenge by building off both our GT driver and fairway platforms.”
Due to GT280’s deeper face, engineers worked to improve strike performance low on the face. The forged L-Cup face found on the mini is the same one found on the GT fairway woods. The goal behind the face design is the help retain ball speed and reduce excessive spin on tee shots and second shots from the fairway.
The leading edge was lowered to allow it to sit closer to the turf, and refinements were made to the sole curvature to make it a dual-purpose club.
“We took the leading edge of a typical driver and really dropped it closer to the turf,” Bennett said. “That’s been one of the first things players have noticed when they set it down at address. It looks more inviting to hit off the turf than a club with its face depth typically would.”
2. Weighty options. If the GT280 looks like GT4’s little brother – that’s because it is. The weight port locations on the mini offering are identical to the GT4 driver, with forward and aft centre of gravity (CG) adjustability.
A heavier 11-gram weight comes stock in the rear port, while a lighter 3-gram flat weight is situated closer to the face. More weight in the rear will increase launch and spin; the reverse will occur when the heavier weight is located in the forward port.
“What we saw with our tour players, some were only looking for performance off the tee – this is like a second driver to them,” Bennett said. “Other ones were really interested in performance off the turf. So having these two CG options to adjust is going to be very valuable in both tour and amateur fittings depending on player needs.”
3. Walk the line. Although GT280 possesses the same Seamless Thermoform Crown construction as the GT drivers, the face design is more fairway wood-esque with white scoring lines stretching from heel to toe.
The lines are meant to remind golfers that GT280 can be used off the tee and from the fairway. It was one of the first things players wanted to see at address when the initial TSR 2-wood was released last year.
“Some of the feedback we received from Cameron was that he didn’t want something that could be used off the tee only,” said Titleist tour rep J.J. Van Wezenbeeck. “Putting the scorelines on it with the fairway shaping and having the leading edge sit tighter to the ground with that bigger volume was the mix we were looking for. This isn’t a one-trick pony.”
