[PHOTOS: Cliff Endsley]
What you need to know: It’s been three-and-a-half years since Callaway has introduced a new line of Apex irons, and the wait has been tough for Apex loyalists. After all, this is not only the iron that basically invented the Players-Distance category in 2014, but Golf Digest also referred to the subsequent 2016 model as being on the “Mount Rushmore of golf equipment” with the club earning a spot on our initial Golf Digest Hot List Hall of Fame.
As such, there is a standard that needed to be met for the new Apex Ai200, Ai300 and Ti Fusion irons. “We focused on three areas,” said Scott Manwaring, Callaway’s director of iron design. “The first is an elevated look, sound and feel. These are extremely important aspects because they are the first two experiences consumers have with the product. The second is this idea of premier performance. It has to sound good, feel good, but it also has to have the distance and the forgiveness and that sort of overall performance that you’d expect from a Callaway iron.
“Lastly, we needed to deliver superior consistency, which is more than just consistency of performance, but its consistency of manufacturing, the tightest tolerances in the industry as well as dialling in spin consistency, which can be a problem area for this type of golfer. That’s the Apex standard. We can’t be good at just one or two of those things. We have to be greater on all three.”
Price & Availability: The Apex Ai200 and Ai300 cost $350 per club in steel ($NZ430). The Apex Ti Fusion is $530 per iron ($NZ630) in steel. All are available for pre-order on August 15 and are in stores from August 23.
3 Cool Things
1. Replacing a legend
The replacement for the Apex 21, the Ai200 is a players-distance iron that addresses the discerning player who was probably a good ball-striker at some point but now has a full-time job, kids and isn’t going out to hit balls after work as much as he used to. These golfers need a little bit of help, and they also need something that’s familiar to look at as well as something that has the feel that they’re used to.
The Ai200 delivers on those needs. A forged hollow-body clubhead is married to a forged high-strength 455 face that wraps around the top and sole to create impressive face flex up through the 8-iron. Distance, however, does not come at the sacrifice of consistency. The Ai Smart Face uses real-golfer swing data combined with the power of artificial intelligence to deliver tight dispersion along with added metres.
A hidden hero of the Ai200 is the strategically positioned MIM weights that ensure the ideal centre of gravity to help create optimal launch windows. The sole was altered as well to produce better turf interaction.
To assist feel while getting the CG low in the long and mid irons, tungsten encased in urethane with microscopic air bubbles were used to achieve those desirable traits.
“You don’t want the urethane material to go all the way up to the top of the club because you shut off the COR benefit,” Manwaring said. “We’re managing how we are choosing to use our energy that we’re allowed to have under [R&A and] USGA rules.”
A refined look also was key to the design. “This is a lot more streamlined versus where we’ve been in the past from a shaping perspective,” Manwaring said. “It has been cleaned up a little bit, a little bit smaller profile compared to where we were.”
2. Help is on the way
The audience for the Apex Ai300 is a little different. A game-improvement iron aimed at replacing the Apex DCB, the audience is probably someone earlier in their golf journey, or someone looking to make that next jump into the aspirational category.
What that audience will find is similar technologies to Ai200 (microspheres, tungsten weighting, etc.) but utilised in different ways. The Apex Ai300 also boasts a forged clubhead and forged 455-steel face, however the Ai Smart Face technology means the topology behind the face is different for each iron to optimise the performance for each club. The Smart Face tech is, in essence, variable face thicknesses across the face, thinner where it is needed most and thicker in areas where it needs to be to create consistency in each iron.
The Apex Ai300 also boasts a thicker topline, thicker sole width and longer blade length than the Apex DCB.
“We spent a lot of time on the topline of that head,” Manwaring said. “There a lot of confinement between the face and the body, and we had to beef up the thickness there, making sure there’s going to be a robust, durable topline while providing a nice-looking body with a soft material that’s allowing the face to flex. We then also had to make sure all that energy is putting speed back into the ball but in a controlled manner. No one likes flyers.”
3. A technological tour de force
It’s hard to believe the Callaway Apex line is a decade old and the company sought to produce something special to commemorate the heritage, recognising “something that embodies kind of the spirit of what Apex is – performance innovation, our very best”.
That is the Apex Ti Fusion, a product the company likens to the Mercedes AMG series, where every edge in performance is amplified. Unlike many high-end clubs that are geared towards a wide swath of players, this is targeted more towards the better player.
Key to the performance benefit was the ability to join a steel body with a titanium face – not an easy task.
“The whole idea is we’re taking two materials that don’t like to be together and we’re putting them together,” Manwaring said. “I’d say this is the most advanced iron we’ve ever made – maybe the most advanced iron anyone’s ever made.”
Key was utilising a brazing process proprietary to Callaway to join the two materials together. Brazing is more precise – and more expensive – than laser welding. “The braise joint is adhered in a very microstructure format that allows us to achieve all the face flexure on low shots that the titanium will allow. It’s pretty cool,” Manwaring said.
Because of its strength, the titanium face bolsters ball speed while the forged, steel body (along with the urethane microspheres inside the head) provides a feel typically found in single-piece forged irons.
A premium club deserves an appearance to match. That comes courtesy of a new Diamond-Like Coating (DLC) finish that is more durable than PVD and produces an eye-catching aesthetic that also reduces glare.
