By now we’ve all heard and seen the first videos and reviews of the new 2020 drivers on the Internet. As usual, they’re all promising us, the consumers, the same thing—more speed, more distance. But is this actually possible?
Most of us have become more than a bid jaded with the marketing pitches of golf’s biggest equipment manufacturers and the speed at which new golf clubs are being released. With each new release, manufacturers promise more clubhead speed and more distance.
In the interest of preserving golf’s heritage golf courses, the R&A and USGA have clamped down hard on the driver. There are constraints on the speed of the clubface, the size of the clubhead and the length of the shaft. They’ve done everything that they can to limit how much distance we can get out of the driver, so how are companies like Callaway and TaylorMade making drivers that keep pushing the limits?
The answer is complex. Both companies have gone about improving their products differently. This helps their marketing efforts immensely as both have always produced great products that have proven themselves in the hands of the consumer. Step out on the first tee of any golf course and chances are pretty good that most of the golfers will have either a Callaway or TaylorMade driver in their bags.
Both manufacturers have plenty of technology at their disposal, but in their rush to get product to market, both could have done a better job at integrating and synergizing the applied tech. This year is one in which Callaway and TaylorMade are working hard to find incremental gains to make their products better. Gone are the days of massive gains just by changing your driver. Today, the name of the game is to make small improvements in a number of places hoping they add up to as substantial gain in distance.
Both Callaway and TaylorMade have brought their faces to the very edge of what the rules allow. TaylorMade claims that their Injected Twist Face actually starts as illegal and is reigned in with the foam that’s injected into the cavity behind the clubface. Callaway’s Flash Face was designed by artificial intelligence and the most sophisticated digital prototyping in the golf industry.
Both companies trade on the extreme amounts of MOI in their drivers to make them as forgiving as possible. But one thing that both manufacturers have discovered is how to decouple spin from MOI. This is where new gains are being made.
Here’s the thing. As the moment of inertia, or the amount of forgiveness increases, the amount of spin generated by the driver increases also. This is also why low spinning drivers have been difficult to hit well and are generally left to the better player or the professional golfer.
The latest drivers from both manufacturers go a great way to close that gap. After all, if you could have both ease of use with low spin, it would be the best of both worlds. This is exactly what they’ve done.
Callaway, like TaylorMade, has worked on more closely synergizing its driver tech in the Mavrik line, learning as its crosstown rival did from its tour staff. For example, the Mavrik Subzero leverages things Callaway learned from the Epic Flash triple black diamond that made such an impact on the PGA Tour last year. It’s now a bit smaller at 450cc and like the Rogue Subzero, has weights that you can flip to alter the launch angle.
The developments in the Flash Face have allowed Callaway to reduce the MOI of the Mavrik without compromising forgiveness. This is the decoupling of MOI and spin we talked about earlier in this piece. Not only does Mavrik boost off-center ball speeds over Epic Flash, but it also improves them to the degree that Callaway doesn’t need to rely on MOI to maintain ball speed. The face does most of the work. That allows Callaway to shift the center of gravity forward, which provides the spin consistency on off-center hits that most manufacturers covet.
TaylorMade’s SIM (Shape In Motion) Driver uses the funky looking Inertial Generator on the sole of the club to position the greatest discretionary mass as low and as far back as possible. This came after they noticed that their tour staff, almost to a man, had their M5 drivers set with weights in that position to maximize forgiveness.
To decrease the spin potential caused by the lower center of gravity, TM’s Speed Slot was employed to decrease the amount of spin generated on hits lower in the clubface. They also repositioned their Inverted Cone behind the clubface to work more in harmony with the Twist Face. Both these improvements not only close the spin window between good and poor hits but do much to make the club more forgiving on off-center hits.
The other area that both manufacturers focused on to help us swing our drivers faster was aerodynamics. TaylorMade’s SIM concept focuses on the aerodynamics of the clubhead in the 3 feet before impact. In that area, the club isn’t coming into the ball with the face square to the ball, the clubhead is coming in at an angle and rotating until the clubhead squares up with the golf ball and target line.
To address the aerodynamic qualities of the driver in this area, The Inertial Generator is positioned at a 20-degree angle toward the toe. This puts the weight in a position that doesn’t disrupt the airflow as the clubhead accelerates toward the golf ball.
Further, the rear skirt of the SIM driver is raised and drops very slightly before coming to an abrupt end above the Inertial Generator. This allows the airflow to stay attached to the clubhead and improves its aerodynamic properties.
The Mavrik counters with its AI-derived Cyclone shape. To increase the potential speed of the driver head, Callaway used AI to overcome the trade-offs of forgiveness, aerodynamics, and ball speed to build a new profile that is much more aerodynamically efficient and forgiving. The Mavrik shares the raised crown/raised skirt design of the SIM (not unusual since both products were tested in wind tunnels).
What we can expect from both driver families is that these clubs are going to be more forgiving on off-center hits. We believe they will probably make you longer on average because they will cost you less on hits away from the center of the clubface. The limitations on the speed off the clubface make it difficult to see large gains in distance on hits here.
Now, the P50,000 question is whether either of these drivers will allow the average Juan to increase his clubhead speed and add yards to his or her drive. We’ll share all of this with you as soon as we get samples of each driver to test.
Watch this space.