WHAT IS CARBONWOOD?

We tell the story of TaylorMade’s revolutionary Carbonwood face, which features on the brand’s new Stealth driver

The TaylorMade Stealth driver was launched with much fanfare at the start of the year as the brand heralded the beginning of the Carbonwood age. So, what is meant by this? TaylorMade is renowned for bringing the buzz to its marketing, but this time it’s different as we take you behind the scenes to give you the background to this claim.

To understand the idea of the Carbonwood age, we have to go back in time to when TaylorMade was the pioneer of the metalwoods era with heads made from steel. When the limits of steel were reached, a lighter, stronger material in titanium took over to extend the metal wood era. The goal was always to find materials that were lighter and stronger, and by 2000 TaylorMade decided to look to the next material that would deliver this, namely carbon composite.

Carbon faces are better than titanium because they are lighter and stronger, which means that weight saved from the face can be redistributed elsewhere to improve the performance and forgiveness of the head. Carbon also flexes differently to metal and is therefore more efficient at retaining energy within the ball at impact, increasing ball speed and distance.

Some other brands launched carbonfaced drivers around the turn of the century, but the performance benefits of the technology were easily caught up by advances in titanium drivers as not enough was known about how carbon could be produced effectively. TaylorMade looked, learned and realised it needed to find the right level of face flexibility and durability to withstand the highspeed impacts of a driver with a golf ball. It was the start of a two-decade journey.

Forward thinking