Video Transcriptions
Callaway Fusion - What is It
Callaway Fusion - What is It: Fusion technology is about combining multiple materials in club head designs. Each material is chosen for a very specific purpose in the head. So in case of driver design, for example, we have a titanium cup face, which is very strong and lightweight and allows us to incorporate our variable face thickness patent in order to get high ball speed from a number of impact locations on the head. The body is a carbon fiber laminate. This is extremely lightweight again and allows us to hold weight, about a quarter of the total weight of the head, in fact, around the perimeter of head, providing high stability. In the case of irons, we use multiple materials in a different way. In this iron, the FT iron, about 80% of the total weight of the iron is in the perimeter of the head because we used our own proprietary high density alloy. We combine that with a very lightweight titanium face, and those two things together produce very high performance. But we complete the package by introducing a TPU sensor into the back. So we use three materials, each chosen for its own particular purpose, to get the right blend of high performance and great feel. So there are just some ways, as examples, that we combine multiple materials in the design of club heads to provide high performance for golfers of all abilities.
Callaway Fusion Technology - About
Callaway Fusion Technology – About: Our FTi driver is one of the most innovative drivers in our portfolio this year. You see its square shape and about moving weight out to the corners there to really increase forgiveness or resistance to twisting on shots hit all over the center of the face. It’s also coming out in a low-CG version this year in 2008, which is taken after a lot of the tour adjustments we’ve made for players like Ernie Ellis, who’s actually had it in play for the last few months and has been very successful. Even the world’s best players value the straight shots that you get out of a very robust design like the FTi driver.
Callaway Fusion Technology - Nick Arthur
Callaway Fusion Technology - Nick Arthur: So this is the FTi driver. In R & D, we were given the opportunity to start from a blank piece of paper, and thousands of computer simulations later, we produced this shape, which is squarer than a traditional driver head shape. The reason for the squareness is to put this weight that we have inside here, almost a quarter of the total weight of the head, at the corners that wouldn’t normally exist. That produces a ball flight that is longer and much straighter than you would see normally. We found, in 2007, that players of average ability and medium head speeds generated these kinds of drives that were longer and straighter, and they saw all these benefits. But players which had higher head speeds and were of more elite ability, they found that the ball went a little too high, so we produced, in 2008, a low center of gravity version which moves the center of gravity into a position where it takes about 300 rpm of back spin off the drive. For better players, that means that the ball will travel at a lower trajectory and have greater distance, and this is the version of FTi that players such as Ernie Ellis have been using to great effect on the PGA tour already. And we anticipate that further PGA pros will be using this driver in 2008.
Callaway Golf - Club Build Room
Callaway Golf - Club Build Room: Welcome to the Ely Calloway Performance Center. My name is Brandon Joe. I work here at the performance center with our tour pros. This is our club build room. In this room, we essentially take the tour pros to the range, let them try our product, and once we find out what works for them, we’ll bring them in here and build their clubs piece by piece. Over here, what we have is our grinding station and our saws. We’re able to cut different shafts to their lengths specified to their appropriate needs. The grinding station here is where Roger Cleaver will come in and personally grind all their different wedges to meet their suitable conditions and to make it more playable for them. Over here, we have every wedge head that we make. With the players, they have a lot of different specifications that they like, so we are able to bring them here, let them pick out the different types of wedges that they need, and build them to their needs. In this cabinet right here, what we are able to do is pick different shafts. Each manufacturer, we have Mitsubishi, we have Matrix, Fujikura, different shafts for all the different clubs, whether it be woods or irons. Moving over to this station here, we have a lie-loft machine for putters. We are able to customize the lie and the loft for different types of putters. The putter sits in this machine here, and we are able to adjust that. A lie-loft machine for irons and wedges. We have a lie-loft machine for drivers and ferry woods. This machine right here allows us to fine-tune the lie and loft within a tenth of a degree. We also have a stamping station over here. We’re able to personalize wedges or irons. This one right here is actually one of Phil’s wedges. We have a gripping station where we are able to just customize to different types of grips. A lot of tour players have different needs. Some like different wraps and need different types of grips, so we have all types of different grips, colors, and textures. In this station right over here, or this drawer, we have different club heads. We have FTi drivers, FT5 drivers right here, different lofts, different CG locations. We also have irons. We have the X4 irons, X20s, and the fusion irons. In a nutshell, this is a tour toy shop for all our tour players.
Callaway Golf - Club Technology - Jeff Colton
Callaway Golf - Club Technology - Jeff Colton: At callaway golf we're always trying to push the edge of innovation and a big part of that for us is the use of advanced materials. We're always trying to save weight in the clubhead design and put in in places where it'll help the average golfer, or golfers of all skill levels really, achieve better performance. Case in point if you take for instance the x20 iron, it's made out of one material all stainless steel, but we push a lot of material out to the heel and toe with our extreme notch weighting, we also have that 360 degree undercut which separates the face from the rest of the body and drives a great feel. So you get great feel and great forgiveness on mishits. Or in the case of the FTI driver where we use a very strong but lightweight titanium face, combined with a very lightweight composite on the back, same as the materials used in formula 1 race cars, or some of the military's most advanced fighter jets. That allows us to save a ton of weight which we are then able to put in the corners of the driver to really drive the moment of inertia or resistance to twisting, very high, which means longer and straighter shots regardless of where you hit it on the face. Or in the case of our new fusion hybrid irons, where we've combined the very lightweight titanium cradle, an actual urathane or plastic, a material we actually invented that we've named tonnite which is actually denser than stainless steel. It's the combination of these three materials in this iron that make it both very forgiving but also very easy to hit. And so it just shows you, we're always looking for ways to take the weight and move it around the clubhead, to provide golfers of all skill levels an advantage when they go out to play.
Callaway Golf - Customized Clubs - Phil Mickelson
Callaway Golf - Customized Clubs - Phil Mickelson: Working with Callaway engineers has given me a real leg up on the competition because I'm able to get my golf clubs fitting my golf swing, so when I'm playing a competition I don't have to alter my swing when I go from one club to another, We're able to change the weighting in the driver, so that I have a draw bias for my longer driver, so that I have a fade bias with my shorter driver, This allows me to make the same golf swing, and hit shorts for different holes that suit that particular golf hole, but also allows me to take one side of trouble out of play and the other, this club takes the right side out of play this one takes the left out of play, and I know that standing on the tee I only have to deal with half of the trouble. The wedges have been a huge help because I've been able to work with rodger Cleavland and roger cleveland is in my opinion the best wedge designer in the game, and he helped me design the 64 degree wedge with the sole purpose of US open rough,to be able to create a club that digs through the rough and gets the ball up high and soft around the greens. On the 60 degree wedge I wanted to have some versitility and he created a sole that is a little bit concaved, it has 10 degrees of balance but because of the concave sole I'm able to get underneath a lot of shots and get a lot of soft shots out of bunkers and around the greens without having the ball shoot off the face, which happens when we get a little too much bounce. But also being able to get the right degree of balance with say a 56 degree wedge, where we can take some off of the heel so that it cuts through the ground, and goes through smoothly, it allows me to be agressive through impact because it has enough bounce, and because the heel's not digging I'm able to hit little cut shots, when the heel digs the ball hooks and we don't want to hook our wedges we always want the ball cutting just a little bit. I've been able to work with he engineers on the hybrid, this club, again I wanted a club that could take one side of trouble out of play and because I usually hit fades out with the driver, I wanted my hybrids to draw and so we made it a little more upright so that the toe is up in the air and the heel is touching the ground , it turns the ball over beautifully and the sole is always really important on fairway woods, and so I applied the same technology to the three woods, now I hit my fairway woods pretty high, so so I used the Calloway engineers and the technology to create a less lofted three wood, we had to do something kind of special: we actually had to cut the sole plate and re-paste the sole plate or the face on so that it was de-lofted about 2 to 3 degrees. This gave me a 12 degree head, while not having to open up the face, typically when we de-loft a fairway wood the face opens, and then I hit slices so we used a different technology that cut the face and re-welded it on so that it had less loft and I was able to hit my three wood just as straight as my driver.
Callaway Golf - Two Driver System - Phil Mickelson
Callaway Golf - Two Driver System - Phil Mickelson: My 2 driver system this is an important element of my game because it allows me to take advantage of some long distances off some golf courses, specifically Augusta national, but also take advantage of the accuracy technology that we have. The moment of inertia on the fti which is really how stable the head is through impact is so high, in fact its the highest of any club on the market or ever made really and what this does is it allows me to go to a 46 inch driver so I have a little bit longer shaft and I can swing harder at it because the head is not rotating around it's going through impact very stable and I'm able to keep it pretty accurately in play. So as I go to the shorter driver, the 45 inch driver, I have an FT5 and this allows, because the moment of inertia isn't as quite as stable as the FTI, I'm able to hit a wider variety of shots, I'm able to hit the fade off the tee which I like, but I'm also able to hit little knock down drivers as well as draw drivers if I need it. But I like going to the 2 driver system, I don't do it all the time, I will at Augusta national though because I really need to take advantage of the length and that's where the FTI comes into play the longer shaft that I'm able to add because of the more stable head allows me to swing harder, allows me to create a longer shaft again, creating more club head speed while still keeping the ball in play.
Callaway Golf - Virtual Test Center
Callaway Golf - Virtual Test Center: As it's name suggests the virtual test center is a virtual testing environment for golf clubs. It allows you to change the golf club virtually and make those modifications that you would be doing in physical tooling that would take weeks if not months, now you can do that in a matter of minutes. My name is Allen Hocknell and I'm vice president of advanced innovation and design at Callaway golf. Jeff Colton senior vice president research and development at Callaway golf. In virtual test center one of the benefits to the designers in using it is that they can change one variable independent of others, when I'm creating physical objects, when I change one thing inherently I'm going to effect 20 other things in the design. We can simulate a test that would take, if we were to put it on the robot, it would take weeks to hit that many shots. We would have to go out and measure the data, and you would have to deal with all of the wind differences and the temperature differences that existed in real life testing, whereas in the virtual environment it's apples to apples comparison, every time it's a perfect scenario. Well the virtual test center is a very important tool in the exploration of new golf club performance, one thing it allows us to do is explore the performance of drivers that, in particular drivers, that we're not able to create physically. In the case of FTI for example, we were able to simulate the performance of the FTI driver years before we were able to create the physical form. With virtual test center we hit hundreds of golf balls at a time and we we can see them all flying down the range together and that way we get a visual representation of the envelope if you like in the sky that the balls will occupy. The nuts and bolts of the virtual test center is I'll take this club virtually and it;s got properties, it weights a certain amount it's a certain size, so all those variables, there's about 30 or 40 different ways to describe this club head to the computer, then I've also got a golf ball which also has a weight and what I'll do is collide those virtually, that virtual club head and that virtual ball. And out of that I will get ball launch parameters, so speed with which the ball leaves, the angle of the launching at which and then those go into what we call our launch trajectory code, which take those ball launch parameters as inputs and and then based on those inputs and the aerodynamic properties of the golf ball defines how the ball will fly. From data that we have on regular golfers, average golfers, we know the kind of arrival conditions that the golf club has when it comes to the ball, we can feed that into the virtual test center, essentially characterising the swings of average golfers. From there we can start to design golf clubs which counter the swing faults, and we can do this again and again over a matter of only a number of minutes so that we can refine the design to take into account ever last detail about what we know of the player and their interaction with the golf club.
Choosing the Right Club - Phil Mickelson
Choosing the Right Club - Phil Mickelson: I travel with 17, sometimes 18 clubs, and I have to take out three or four each week. What prompts that decision is really based on the course itself, how it plays. At Augusta National, that particular golf course, I don’t ever hit a sand wedge. For whatever reason, the par fours now are so long that I don’t ever have any sand wedges in it. If they are par fives, I usually get it down an L-wedge position, so I take out my sand wedge there. When I won the tour championship at Eastlake, there were no four iron shots, and so I took out a four iron there. There are a couple other courses that I might not have an eight iron shot. I remember Ray Floyd won the US Open in ’86 at Chiticoche and he played with a nine iron, I believe. So each course has little quirks, and I’ll base my decision on each individual golf course as to what clubs I have in the bag and which ones I don’t.
FTi Driver - About
FTi Driver - About: Once in a generation, a truly revolutionary idea is born. In the 1990s, it was the Big Bertha driver. For this generation, it is the science behind Calloway Golf’s newest creation, a landmark product that once again raises the bar on driver performance. Introducing a radical design that takes MOI and CG movement to new places for performance never before thought possible, the revolutionary FTi and FTi drivers. To make the FTi driver, Calloway Golf engineers broke the mold and started quite literally from scratch with a blank sheet of paper. Then they dared ask the question, “If we could make the perfect driver, what would it be?” The FTi driver represents a quantum leap in driver design that exploits proprietary fusion technology and unprecedented fashion and redefines the boundaries of shape and performance. The 460cc complete inertial design positions discretionary weight to the extreme corners of the club head. This give the FTi driver a distinctive look like no other. More importantly, it raises the moment of inertia to unprecedented levels for unparalleled resistance to horizontal and vertical twisting. This equates to more stability, so your shots go where you aim them. A CT/VFT titanium cup face maximizes performance under the USGA’s new characteristic time test, resulting in the largest, most robust face design we’ve ever created for maximum ball speed and increased distance. This means you get unmatched forgiveness on shots hit at any point on the face, and the Optifit System allows for customization with draw, fade, or neutral fading to help correct swing flaws even more. The FTi tour model offers a 9-1/2 degree loft with a slightly open face and address. This provides highly skilled players a more pleasing look and increased workability, and advanced shaft designs by Fujikura add to this ground-breaking club’s exceptional feel and performance. Welcome to the dead center of the fairway. The FTi and FTi Tour Drivers, from the pioneer in driver innovation, Calloway Golf – A Better Game by Design.
FTi Driver - Alan Hocknell
FTi Driver - Alan Hocknell: So this is the FTi driver. In R & D, we were given the opportunity to start from a blank piece of paper, and thousands of computer simulations later, we produced this shape, which is squarer than a traditional driver head shape. And the reason for the squareness is to put this weight that we have inside here, almost a quarter of the total weight of the head, at the corners that wouldn’t normally exist. That produces a ball flight which is longer and much straighter than you would see normally. We found, in 2007, that players of average ability and medium head speed generated these kinds of drives that were longer and straighter, and this always benefits, but players which had higher head speeds and were more of elite ability, they found that the ball went a little too high. So we produced, in 2008, a low center of gravity version, which moves the center of gravity into a position where we take about 300 rpm of back spin off the drive. For better players, that means that the ball will travel on a lower trajectory and have greater distance. And this is the version of FTi that players such as Ernie Ellis have been using to great effect on the PGA Tour already, and we anticipate that further PGA pros will be using this driver in 2008.
FTi Driver - Gary Player
FTi Driver - Gary Player: Now look at this FTi. This looks like a rocket ready to take off, and it hits it like a rocket. Look how streamlined this is. Look at the workmanship in that club. I wish a man like Ben Hogan, who was the best striker of a ball I ever saw in my life and who started technology way back with his clubs the same as Eli started it with these, could see this club today. He wouldn’t believe it. Now this driver, if you look down, I’m going to put it down on the ground, it has a square head, a square face. When you address the ball, you’re standing square, so it makes a lot of sense to have the club face square. And you’ll see, when you pick this driver up, as you can see in that camera, it’s an absolute square face. Now look at this very carefully. Look how far this goes back. The fact that it’s going back further prevents the club from twisting either way when you hit the ball at impact. Now the average club, because it’s shorter here, it’s much easier for it to close or open, or add loft or deloft, but with this coming back, the dynamics of it, that it keeps the club face more square at impact for a longer period of time, very, very important. I’m going to hit a couple of shots with this, and I want you to listen to the sound. I want you to listen to the sound when you hit this ball. That’s the best I can hit it. I haven’t been able to draw the ball consistently, and I won 160 tournaments drawing the ball and three tournaments fading the ball, and Lee Trevino said to me the other day, he said, “You know, you need to see a psychiatrist. You’ve got to go back to drawing the ball.” And I picked up this driver, and immediately, I’ve been able to draw the ball. And really and truly, for the average golfer that’s playing golf, if you hit a fade or a slice, and you hit a draw, a draw will go 20 yards further than that slice.
FTi Driver - Jeff Colton
FTi Driver - Jeff Colton: Our FTi driver is one of the most innovative products in our portfolio this year. You see its square shape and about moving weight out to the corners there to really increase forgiveness or resistance to twisting on shots hit all over the center of the face. It’s also coming out in a low-CG version this year in 2008, which is taken after a lot of the tour adjustments we’ve made for players like Ernie Ellis, who’s actually had it in play for the last few months and he’s been very successful. Even the world’s best players value the straight shots that you get out of a very robust design like the FTi driver.
