Gear: Callaway Big Bertha B-21 irons
Price: $899.99 with KBS CT80 steel shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet Soft grips; $999.99 with Callaway RCH graphite shafts
Specs: A super-game-improvement iron with tungsten weights and a urethane insert
Available: Sept. 10
Golfers who generate lots of power and who have repeatable swings want irons that let them carve up a golf course. They want to hit the high draw, the power fade or the low runner. They demand good looks, feel and control.
But the vast majority of golfers are not tour pros, college golfers or elite amateurs. They’re weekend players who don’t take lessons and struggle to hit the center of the face, and all they want is to hit the ball farther and straighter.
Callaway’s newest super-game-improvement clubs, the Big Bertha B-21 irons, are designed for those high-handicap players. And these clubs are designed much differently than better-player irons.
Staring down at the Big Bertha B-21 in the address position, golfers will see a thick topline, a long blade length and significant offset. Flipping the clubs over reveals a wide sole. All these features can be be visually reassuring to higher-handicap golfers.
From the outside, the hitting area looks like a typical iron. Inside, the face is covered by ripples and bulges. It was designed using artificial intelligence to maximize distance and create varying amounts of spin for each club, so the specific thicknesses and patterns for each iron in the set is different.
Callaway also designed the Big Bertha B-21 irons with a cup face, so the hitting area is attached to the body behind the leading edge, topline and toe. This helps broaden the sweet spot.
To drive down the center of gravity, Callaway designed a Visible Tungsten Energy Core (VTEC) into each head, positioning it behind the face. A second piece of tungsten in the toe shifts the ideal hitting area directly into the middle of the scoring lines. There are more than 40 grams of tungsten in each iron.
To soften the feel of impact and enhance sound, urethane microspheres – tiny glass bubbles in urethane foam – were added around the tungsten. The urethane-microsphere piece is compressible, so while it touches the face, it will not inhibit it from flexing or decrease ball speed.
While the lofts of the Big Bertha B-21 irons are strong, with the 5-iron being 22 degrees and the 9-iron at 38 degrees, Callaway is making every iron between a 4-iron and lob wedge available in the set. It’s also worth noting that with such a low and back center of gravity, stronger-lofted irons can still fly higher into the air for slower-swinging, higher-handicap golfers.