The hypothetical bag! – GolfWRX

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from an article written by our Andrew Tursky for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Read the full article Here.

While this is the world’s first official look at the final versions of the Opus wedge line, Callaway employees have been involved in the prototyping and design process for about two years, according to Callaway Tour Manager Joe Toulon.

“The tour launch is basically when we officially introduce it to tour players for the first time,” Toulon said Tuesday at the 2024 Travelers Championship. “We put a lot of work into this wedge in the prototype phase. It’s a project we really started 2 years ago when we started really digging into this category and finding out what the best players in the world want from a wedge.”

Of course, Callaway’s research and design team has studied the wedge category for decades, but this time – in designing the new Opus wedges – Callaway has put more power in the hands of PGA TOUR players than ever before. Toulon and his team paid close attention to what Tour players want from a wedge, including how it looks at address, the shape of the leading edge, how the club lies on the ground with the face open, the shape of the sole, the sound, the feel and how the wedge interacts with the turf at impact in different conditions.

Although all factors have been taken into account, the biggest barrier to entry for tour players is their first impression of the shape of the wedge at address.

“We really spent a lot of time on the shape and tried to make it look good for the majority of players – it’s something that might not be immediately obvious to everyone, but we got countless hours of feedback and testing from tour players and this is pretty much the final product,” Toulon said. “…I think one of the things that players really focus on when they first put a wedge on is how it looks at address and how it looks when you open the face, and we’ve worked a lot on that; on the shaping and the rounding of this wedge.”

Toulon calls it the “final” product because there have been several versions of the Opus Wedges before. In fact, these final versions of the Opus Wedges are based specifically on the sixth prototype.

“(The Opus wedge) was codenamed ‘S6’ during the process,” Toulon said. “We stamped S6 on every wedge here (on the PGA TOUR) in this shape, and that basically just represents some of the molding designs that we went through. That was the sixth molding design that we decided on based on player feedback. That’s really the whole story behind this wedge; tour-inspired, tour-driven. These guys here designed this wedge. This is just the final cosmetic and final design that we decided on.”

Read the full article Here.