Callaway drivers have always been a source of fascination to me. Every one that I’ve owned was, at the time, the longest most forgiving driver that I had in the arsenal. Callaway drivers seem to have that home-run ball in them. When you hit it just so, the ball goes further than you believed you could ever hit a golf ball.
I was sold on the story of the Epic drivers but was subsequently disappointed by my inability to hit my Epic Sub Zero consistently. It was long. It had that home-run ball I lusted after, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. Even after adding a degree of loft, success with it continued to elude me. Meanwhile, I was tearing up the links with my M2 so the Epic sat and eventually departed.
I was similarly intrigued when Callaway announced the Rogue series of drivers and fairway metals. Hope continued to build as the product brief was announced—the Rogue was engineered to have higher MOI than its green older brother. But did it gain ease of use in exchange for distance? That would be unacceptable given the success of their counterparts from TaylorMade.
Callaway was deplorably late to the party; at least in our market. The product hit global shelves in March, but it arrived on our shores almost five months later. Transview Philippines recognizes the problem and has taken it up with Callaway Japan. Hopefully, we’ll get Callaway’s best in a timelier fashion in the future.
To make the Rogue, Callaway took the Epic geometry and tweaked it. Gone is the Epic’s sliding weight track and the weight it freed up went to finding more MOI and thus more forgiveness. It was a good trade-off.
Similar gains in MOI were slightly more difficult with the Rogue Sub Zero. Some came from the crown, some from the new cup face and still more came from the Jailbreak 2.0 bars, which are now shaped like hourglasses to save weight. Callaway claims a weight savings of 25 percent for the new Jailbreak bars.
All in all, Callaway claims an MOI number of 8600 for the Epic Sub Zero vs. just 8000 for the standard Epic. What this does is preserve ball speed over the clubface. The higher the number, the less ball speed is lost on off-center strikes. It’s the holy grail—to make a driver both long and forgiving.
Testing both drivers on Transview Philippines’s Foresight GC Quad launch monitor was telling. I was 15 yards longer with the Sub Zero than I was with the standard Rogue driver. I tried all five of the shafts on offer and ultimately selected the Graphite Design Tour AD IZ. I already had a Tour AD TP in stock and was looking forward to deciding on the final configuration for the Rogue Sub Zero.
After a lot of range time swapping back and forth between the two shafts, I settled on the TP with the 9-degree head set to 10 degrees of loft. The driver didn’t have long to wait for its baptism of fire; BRAFE Golf XIII was the very next day.
The Rogue Sub Zero performed flawlessly. I found every fairway that I played it on and it seemed every bit as long as my M4. It was remarkably easy to hit. I wasn’t playing my best, but it seemed that I couldn’t miss. There was some drop-off in distance on patently off-center hits, but it was very manageable and at no point did I ever feel that I would have been better off with my other driver in the bag.
So, the Callaway Rogue Sub Zero and I are off to a great start. It’s long and forgiving and I quite like the soft, slightly muffled feel. The face doesn’t feel as hard as the Epic Sub Zero but that’s subjective and your mileage will most likely vary. There’s a third Rogue driver available: the Rogue draw. It wasn’t right for me but it might be exactly what you need.
Callaway did what they set out to do; they took their Jailbreak technology to the next level by making the Rogue series noticeably easier to use than its predecessor without losing any of the Epic’s vaunted distance. It’s a great match for the Epic Sub Zero fairways that made it to the bag earlier in the year. The consistency of feel across the long clubs is exactly what many are looking for.