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Callaway Golf Creates a Force to Be Reckoned With in New Driver

Why didn’t I think of that?

Some innovations seem so simple that a person might say that to himself.

Callaway Golf Co.’s new top-of-the-line driver, dubbed Great Big Bertha Epic, comes with a novel set of reinforcing bars that prevent the golf club from deforming as it makes contact with the ball. The Carlsbad-based company says the reinforced face increases ball speed and distance.

Since the two parallel rods resemble a pair of jail bars, Callaway (NYSE: ELY) has dubbed the reinforced design “Jailbreak Technology.” Actually, the golf club’s bars are probably better engineered than any set of bars in any county lockup.

IP Scorecard

Callaway has taken out 40 patents on its Jailbreak Technology. There are probably 100 patents total in the driver head, company officials said.

The driver retails for $500.

A metal driver is hollow, and for a split second, the impact of a ball deforms the edges of the driver face, at the crown and sole. For a while this was viewed as a good thing. Everyone was pushing for increased flexibility, said Alan Hocknell, senior vice president of research and development at Callaway Golf.

“This goes directly counter to that,” Hocknell said of the new design.

The tension of the bars prevents the driver from bulging, directing more energy to the face — and the ball.

Callaway began rethinking its design several years ago when its engineers discovered that an earlier invention called the Gravity Core, which connected crown and sole, changed the way the face behaved. They began investigating what would happen if they connected the crown and sole in other ways.

Once designers came up with a general concept, they tested variations of it. Should the bars be bonded, welded or adhered in some other way? What materials should the company use? Should there be two or three reinforcing bars? How do you make it stand up to real-world conditions?

The engineering staff went through computer simulations and built 30-40 prototypes. “There was a lot of traffic going through R&D,” said Hocknell, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England.

They ended up with two bars.

At the center of the final club head is a titanium casting, perhaps worth $60 to $80, Hocknell said.

Its shape is complicated, with several hollows. In the end, the company decided not to attach the jail bars, but to cast the head — bars and all — as a single piece.

Production Process

With such a complicated shape, it’s no simple process to cast the head. Callaway’s suppliers use what is called the “lost wax” technique to create it. The method involves creating a golf club head out of wax; sending a ceramic slurry around the wax model, which hardens; melting the wax core to create a void; and filling that void with titanium. Hocknell described a “massive titanium hot dog” that the foundry melts with an electric arc to form the castings. Titanium melts at about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

After the titanium cools and hardens, a person chips the ceramic coating away from the finished casting.

That’s the core of the club head. From there, workers apply other components, including pieces made of carbon, which Hocknell collectively calls “jewelry.” No robot can apply jewelry to the piece, so the club heads are finished by hand in southern China.

1,000 Steps

Building the driver involves upward of 1,000 steps, Hocknell said.

Callaway’s business depends on new products. Fifty percent of revenue comes from products less than 1 year old, Hocknell said. Equipment news is “part of the heartbeat” of the business.

Callaway Golf, which had $871 million in total sales last year, has 120 employees in R&D, and spends $30 million annually in product development. It also produces other types of clubs and golf balls.

In many ways, Callaway shares traits with San Diego’s aerospace and defense industry. The golf equipment company uses the same computer software and the same test methods as its aerospace counterparts, and the company attends the same conferences in materials science, Hocknell said.

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