This is a question I was curious about but found no recent data on. In short, drivers have slightly outpaced inflation, thanks to the last decade’s significant price increases. We enjoyed a long period of $399 drivers from 2007 to about 2013 which makes the overall trend better.
I took an indexed average of Taylormade and Titleist driver releases each year and compared it to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since 2007 – both indexed to 100 in 2007. The CPI will be our proxy for inflation.
For driver prices, this is an average of Taylormade and Titleist’s flagship releases by year since 2007. There has always been a sort of bifurcation for players’ heads vs. game improvement heads, which as of the last few years means 3 heads per brand per year (a ‘max’ head, a stock head, and a low-spin head). Whenever possible I am using the most vanilla version of a driver (e.g if 2025 were included this would be the Qi35 at $599 rather than the LS head which starts at $649). In the 2000’s and 2010’s when this was less of the case but there were multiple brandings per year (e.g., Taylormade Burner ’09 and R9 both being 2009), I took the stock version of the players’ club. Titleist moved to an every-two-year release cycle during this window but it doesn’t change things significantly.
There was an odd phenomenon in 2005 – 2006 where Taylormade’s flagship releases (r7, r7 460) started at $499, before they backed down to $399 for the next several years. This was not included in the data but if it were would make the drivers look much cheaper in present day.
Other reading:
In 2018 MyGolfSpy wrote on a similar topic.
I will add to this as I find more articles.
Raw data:
| Year | Taylormade Flagship Model | Taylormade Launch MSRP (USD) | Titleist Flagship Model | Titleist Launch MSRP (USD) | CPI (Avg) | CPI indexed to 2007 | Average driver cost indexed to 2007 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | r7 Quad | 499 | 188.9 | ||||
| 2005 | r7 425 | 499 | 195.3 | ||||
| 2006 | r7 460 | 499 | Titleist 905 (R, T, S) | 399 | 201.6 | ||
| 2007 | r7 SuperQuad | 399 | Titleist 907 (D1, D2) | 399 | 207.3 | 100 | 100 |
| 2008 | r7 Limited | 399 | 215.3 | 103.8591413 | 100 | ||
| 2009 | R9 | 399 | Titleist 909 (D2, D3, DComp) | 399 | 214.5 | 103.4732272 | 100 |
| 2010 | R9 SuperTri | 399 | Titleist 910 (D2, D3) | 399 | 218.1 | 105.2098408 | 100 |
| 2011 | R11 | 399 | 224.9 | 108.490111 | 100 | ||
| 2012 | R11S | 399 | Titleist 913 (D2, D3) | 399 | 229.6 | 110.7573565 | 100 |
| 2013 | R1 | 399 | 233 | 112.3974916 | 100 | ||
| 2014 | SLDR | 399 | Titleist 915 (D2, D3) | 449 | 236.7 | 114.1823444 | 106.2656642 |
| 2015 | R15 | 429 | 237 | 114.3270622 | 107.518797 | ||
| 2016 | M1 | 499 | Titleist 917 (D2, D3) | 550 | 240 | 115.7742402 | 131.4536341 |
| 2017 | M1 (2017) | 499 | 245.1 | 118.2344428 | 125.0626566 | ||
| 2018 | M3 | 499 | Titleist TS (TS1, TS2, TS3, TS4) | 499 | 251.1 | 121.1287988 | 125.0626566 |
| 2019 | M5 | 549 | 255.7 | 123.3478051 | 137.593985 | ||
| 2020 | SIM | 549 | Titleist TSi (TSi1, TSi2, TSi3, TSi4) | 549 | 258.8 | 124.8432224 | 137.593985 |
| 2021 | SIM2 | 529 | 271 | 130.7284129 | 132.5814536 | ||
| 2022 | Stealth | 579 | Titleist TSR (TSR1, TSR2, TSR3, TSR4) | 599 | 292.7 | 141.1963338 | 147.6190476 |
| 2023 | Stealth 2 | 599 | 304.7 | 146.9850458 | 150.1253133 | ||
| 2024 | Qi10 | 599 | Titleist GT (GT1, GT2, GT3, GT4) | 649 | 314.4 | 151.6642547 | 156.3909774 |
| 2025 | Qi35 | 599 |