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Golf News & Opinion
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“It’s not just about reducing the weight, but how you save weight in one area that
can be used in another area to get better performance.”
Sounds like maybe a pitch for diet program or fitness facility but in fact this was
said several years ago by one of the best known club designers in the business,
back when titanium heads were being combined with graphite shafts to produce
longer driving distance for the average golfer, not just the touring pros. Since then
every club maker has tried to create clubs producing ball launch conditions closer
to optimum with everything from movable weights to nontraditionally shaped
heads to new materials and so on.
Tour Edge Golf took the route of giving golfers high performance clubs at
affordable prices but also went upscale with their Exotics brand introduced four
years ago. In particular the Exotics fairway woods were an immediate success but
the Exotics driver was gaining a following as well.
For 2009 Tour Edge Tour Edge president David Glod says the company has
expanded the use of lightweight magnesium for the crown of the new XCG-V driver
and is incorporating the same engineering to XCG-V Tour Spec fairways. Yes, you
read correctly Glod and his technical team have found a way to bring the
advantages of a magnesium crown to create better performance in fairways than
even their very good previous model.
As you may have surmised I am impressed with what Tour Edge is doing and their
use of materials combined with unique manufacturing processes has produced
excellent clubs.
Tour Edge has two ideas in particular, weight redistribution and club head
assembly common to the XCG-V driver and Tour Spec fairways. As mentioned
weight redistribution is achieved by use of magnesium for the crown plus making
the titanium portion of the head larger and since titanium is also lighter than steel
the saved weight can be moved to the steel sole plate in the form of a large “V”.
Magnesium is difficult to use and is highly volatile, (read it burns quickly with a very
intense heat) so special techniques had to be found to allow its’ use.
Secondly Tour Edge joins the steel of the sole to the titanium of the body not with
welds as does almost every other manufacturer but with “combo-brazing” or
chemical bonding of precisely machined surfaces at very high temperatures. The
resulting advantage is high strength without gaining the weight inherent in a
welded seam.
The resulting shift of the club head center of gravity in both the driver and the
fairways is high ball speed and lots of forgiveness when ball to club impact is not
exactly in the center of the face.
The Exotics XCG-V driver with a Graphite Design Exotics Tour Ad or Aldila Voodoo
65 gram shaft sells for a suggested retail of $499 and the Exotics XCG-V Tour
Spec fairway woods for $369.99. Should you be in market for new woods both
would be on my short list of recommendations.
