TaylorMade changed the driver game back in 1979 by releasing the Original One, the first metalwood on the market. Forty-three years later and they’ve done it again, introducing a revolutionary new product to their driver line-up – the TaylorMade Stealth – a carbonwood.
So what is it? And why has it been introduced?
What is a carbonwood?
A carbonwood is a driver that has a club face made up entirely of carbon. The TaylorMade Stealth drivers are the first carbonwoods to be released to the mass market.
In fact the club face of these drivers are made up of a staggering 60 layers of overlapping carbon.
Why carbon?
The goal of any new technology is ultimately to improve performance.
Carbon is a seriously lightweight material compared to the titanium which has typically been used in driver heads for the past two decades.
To put this in perspective, the Stealth‘s face is 44% lighter compared to a titanium face of the same size.
Weight savings from swapping materials allows TaylorMade to put weight in other areas of the clubhead for – you guessed it – improved performance.
But that’s not the only advantage. It is also less dense which leads to less resistance and more efficient face flexing at impact.
This gives you a better energy transfer from club face to the ball at impact ultimately giving you more ball speed and distance.
“In the mid-2000s, our research team developed an understanding that the weight of the face can affect impact efficiency. More specifically, the lighter the face, the more efficient the impact and the better the ball speed. We realized titanium faces could only take us so far and carbon would be the face material of the future.”
- Brian Bazzel, Vice President of Product Creation
