The worst kept secret in golf is officially official. I wrote about the Stealth driver a couple of weeks ago and today Taylormade gave us all the official juicy details. In addition to the driver we got fairway woods, hybrids, and irons. Enough intro lets jump in

Driver

Look, lets not beat around the bush. Whats the deal with the red face? Simply put Taylormade is buying HEAVILY into carbon fiber and its use in woods and this is the first step. Now, Im not going to wax poetic about how Taylormade is now calling their Metal Woods division the Carbon Woods division like other outlets did today. The red face is 60 layers of Carbon Fiber. Why carbon fiber? Weight savings and ball speed. Using carbon fiber has allowed them to save 44% of the weight of the face while allowing them to increase its size 11% over SIM2. It appears they used those weight saving measures to reintroduce the weight track in this years version. Moveable weights have always been a core technology for Taylormade so it was a surprise to see them disappear from the SIM 2. One of the big concerns with the carbon fiber face is going to be the durability so Taylormade has introduced a urethane covering. It has a little tack and in addition to the protection it helps optimize spin and launch. Will it change the drive rmarket? Time will tell

Fairway Woods

Taylormade has apparently changed all of the employees titles in its Metal Woods division to titles that say Carbon Woods which is fucking hilarious considering the Stealth fairway wood still uses titanium. Do the folks working on the fairway wood still have Metal wood in their title? When I saw that the Fairways were still titanium I think I rolled my eyes so hard they got stuck for a second. It would have impressed an angsty teenager. Im not saying that the fairway wood will be bad. In fact quite the opposite. There really isnt much of a new story with these. The V steel from the SIM has been modified slightly but nothing major. When the big innovation is a laser etched line on the top of the face to help with alignment you know it was a slow year.

Hybrids

Do these count as woods or irons? ARE THE HYBRID ENGINEERS NOW CARBON WOOD ENGINEERS? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS! Also, not much going on tech wise here. Moving some weight around. Im sure if you have a hybrid that is 10 years old youll see some improvement. If you bought one in the last couple of years its probably still fine.

Irons

No carbon face here but carbon fiber is being used to change the weighting of the club. All jokes aside these are some great looking irons. Its nice to see a company FINALLY recognize that a game improvement player likes silver and black irons. Taylormade has created what they call a “CapBack” design. Cap back has essentially take a big chunk of the mass from the high toe and moved it low to produce high launching and soft landing shots. To make it not look a piece of the club was missing they put a cap made of carbon fiber on the back of the club. Get it? yeah, you got it.

Conclusion

The driver looks great. I cant wait to get my hands on it. Taylormade is going full Harry Arnett mode with the marketing on this one. Changing division names and telling people that “our legal team only approved us to tell you that we saw 1.1 MPH increases” is laughable but people are sopping it up. It really is genius. Hat tip to the guys over there.