Gear: Callaway X Forged CB irons
Price: $200 each with Project X IO steel shafts and Golf Pride Z grips
Specs: Forged 1025 carbon steel body with 17-4 stainless steel face and tungsten weights
Available: Oct. 29
Many elite golfers are happy to switch irons as long as designers don’t make major changes and the new clubs perform better. It’s a paradox that traps clubmakers and engineers. Pros, college players and potential club champions want their irons to look and sound a certain way, and when designers stray too far from what players have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing, many players won’t even give the new gear a chance.
With the new X Forged CB irons’ release, Callaway has tried to overcome that challenge by designing a better-player’s cavity-back iron differently.
Looking down in the address position, good players should like what they see: a compact blade length, only a touch of offset, some pre-wear on the leading edge and a relatively narrow sole.
The body is made from soft 1025 mild-carbon steel for a soft feel. But instead of creating the X Forged CB as a one-piece forging, Callaway designed the clubs to be hollow. That allowed designers to add a piece of tungsten inside the head in the toe area that offsets the hosel’s weight. As a result, the ideal hitting area is pulled more into the center of the face.
Callaway also gave the X Forged CB a tungsten backplate that is attached by two screws. Golfers will not be able to remove it, but custom fitters can swap in different plates to adjust the swing weight based on a club’s length and player preferences.
For extra ball speed, Callaway gave the X Forged CB a 17-4 stainless steel faceplate. While the hollow-bodied construction allows it to flex more efficiently, it does not produce a ball flight as high as Callaway’s cup-face designs, so accomplished players should be able to shape their shots more easily.
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