First, a disclaimer. I am not, nor have I ever been an employee of Callaway Golf. In fact, over the decades that I have played golf I have only owned a handful of Callaway clubs. Never a set of irons. That said, my interest was piqued a few days ago when I happened to check the head weight of a Callaway Black Series Tour Design putter and it weighed exactly 350 grams. On a digital laboratory scale that is accurate to 1/10 gram. So, I was curious whether this was a fluke, or representative of perhaps very good quality control.
Yesterday I received a set of X-Prototype irons that I had ordered standard lie, loft and length. If you don't know what they look like, here's a picture - suffice it to say that Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els play these.
Anyway, before taking them out to the course, I wanted to check their basic parameters. According to Callaway's published specs, the loft and lie angles should be as follows:
Loft Lie
4i 24* 60.5*
5i 27* 61*
6i 31* 61.5*
7i 35* 62*
8i 39* 62.5*
9i 43* 63*
P 47* 63.5*
All measurements used a Golf Instruments C-510 Gauge (the USGA uses a Golf Instruments gauge) that uses inclinometers to measure loft and lie to 1/10 of a degree.
In pictures, here are the results (sorry, but I only had time to measure the 4-8):
4-iron 24*/60.5*
5-iron 27*/61* 6-iron 31*/61.5*
7-iron 35*/62* 8-iron 39*/62.5*
I checked 5 of the 7 clubs for swingweight and they were all +/- 3/10 of a swingweight point from D2.
All in all, pretty impressive. I think we've all read horror stories on the Internet forums about OEM build quality being inconsistent, at best. This 'test' says alot about the build quality from Callaway - and yes, I understand that this is merely a single set out of many. But, on a purely random basis I was able to purchase a practically perfect set of clubs, without having to be a tour player.
Next test, another OEM. Any suggestions?
