Callaway’s head of R&D, Alan Hocknell, is a passionate golfer. A few years ago CEO Chip Brewer instructed him to create his “dream iron” – the iron Alan would design for himself. Chip imposed no limit on time, materials or cost. More than 70 people were enlisted to help determine what was needed and how to create it.
Engineers, metallurgists, industrial designers, Tour Pros, professional club fitters; all took part in conceptualising, developing, refining, and testing. Every element and dimension of an iron was assessed – overall shape, face size, face thickness, cavity shape, sole, top-line, CG location, hosel, shaft. The result is the Epic and Epic Pro Irons, both offering the best performance package in an iron in Callaway history.
Here’s the key tech:
Through the set Callaway have made equally significant improvements to the clubhead’s Exo-Cage construction. Callaway incorporated a high-grade steel structure into the centre of the cavity to add strength and stiffen the body, especially the top-line and sole, so that the face can take on more impact load. The term for this is “energy lensing.” In Epic Irons, energy lensing raises the efficiency level of the face to promote faster ball speed and distance. That, combined with face thicknesses finished to a tolerance of 1/1000th of an inch, helped them elevate the COR right up close to USGA limit of .830 COR in the 3-iron through 7-iron. It’s the first time we’ve had so many irons in a single set bump up against the COR limit.
Fundamental Changes to Internal Standing Wave
Inside the head, fundamental changes were made to Callaway’s Internal Standing Wave (ISW) technology, a weighting method that affects launch, spin and feel. In simple terms, the ISW is a flat, asymmetrically shaped piece of metal that helps pinpoint CG location to promote optimum launch and spin in each head, and helps control vibration to promote unique feel. In this case, ISW consists of a specially shaped piece of MIM’ed tungsten. MIM’ed stands for Metal-Injected Moulding, an injecting-moulding process that uses finely powdered metal to create intricately shaped parts with tremendous precision. MIM’ed tungsten allows a new combination of size, shape and weight for the ISW, allowing Callaway to precisely position the CG location differently in each individual iron. Extremely low in the long-irons to promote easier launch and high, long flight; and progressively higher as loft increases to promote a lower flight in the short-irons for added control; and a balance of easy launch and control in the middle-irons.
The ultra-thin, ultra-fast face is turbocharged by an improved 360 Face Cup architecture that reduces the rim thickness to 1mm at its thinnest point. That increases ball speed for more distance, and gives you more ball speed on impact toward the toe, toward the heel, high up and especially down low – the most common mishit.
Epic Pro Irons share all the same material and technological advancements, but in a more compact head with a thinner top-line and sole and less offset – qualities that make it slightly less forgiving but significantly more workable, a trade many better players are willing to make. That said, Epic Pro boasts our best-ever overall performance package of distance, workability and forgiveness in a players iron.
Price: €1999 (for 7 irons in both Steel and Graphite options)
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