Why Callaway's fully forged clubheads matter | Fully Equipped

In golf equipment, there’s a stigma that forged irons are reserved for only elite ball-strikers who value the workability of a smaller clubhead and forged feel.

But on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Kris McCormack and Wadeh Maroun broke down how Callaway is fighting that stigma with it’s Apex Ai200 and Apex Ai300 irons.

“Callaway is the only company out there that’s doing fully forged components in that hollow-cavity, players-distance kind of iron,” McCormack said. “So a lot of companies out there have a forged face that they’ll put onto a cast chassis or incorporate some different multilateral construction components.”

So what does that really mean? McCormack explained further.

“A lot of it comes down to feel consistency, acoustics, sustainability, ball speed, spin,” McCormack said. “You look at golf essentially when you break it up into different demographics, different player types, right? And there’s always kind of this stigma that better players have forged products in their bags. So, when you’re looking at players-distance iron or something that has some game improvement components to it, more often than not, when you get into those categories and you have a variety of different types of materials coming into the build in your irons, you sacrifice feel, you sacrifice acoustics. And there’s just not a lot of feedback there.

“So being able to maintain some of those forged components still provides the feel, the sound that most players are gonna prefer.”

McCormack points out that while feel and sound preferences are different for each player, most will still prefer the feel of a forged product.

Then the technology benefits that Callaway packs into the head are what really makes the Ai200 and Ai300 stand out, Maroun added.

“It’s gonna give you the forged feel with a club that’s injected with some kind of material to help you keep the same ball speeds, keep you keep the same distances, all of those kinds of things,” he said. “So if you miss hit, instead of being 15, 20 yards short, like you might be with a forged iron, you’re going to keep maybe be five yards short.”

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Golf.com Editor

Jack Hirsh is the associate equipment editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State University, earning degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program to serve as head coach. Jack also still *tries* to remain competitive in local amateurs. Before joining GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but also producing, anchoring and even presenting the weather. He can be reached at [email protected].