No matter how well you might be striking it from the tee, there’s something alluring about a new driver. Whether it’s the look, the promise of more distance, the new technology or the ever-increasing changeability to suit your swing, today’s ‘big sticks’ carry more appeal than ever before.

We gathered 12 club golfers for a lengthy session of testing, letting them loose to try different models and different shaft and clubhead configurations from a host of golf’s leading brands to see what they liked and what they didn’t. Our testers hit as many balls as they wanted and trialled as many of the drivers as they wished, giving feedback on each one they tried. Testers were asked to evaluate four key elements: appearance, sound, feel at impact and performance; afterwards providing a mark out of ten for each driver. The average of their scores allowed us to split the field into gold-medal and silver-medal winners for 2013.