Gear: Callaway Great Big Bertha woods and irons (2022)
Available: November 11
Who It’s For: Golfers with slow to moderate swing speeds who need more carry distance and forgiveness to hit longer, straighter shots.
The Skinny: The new Great Big Bertha line takes the place of Callaway’s Epic Max Star family and features lightweight clubs designed to be easy to hit and maximize carry distance and forgiveness. They are not for everyone and are pricy, but they utilize materials like unique carbon in the driver and titanium and tungsten in the irons to deliver premium performance for golfers who struggle to generate clubhead speed.
Great Big Bertha irons
Price: $449.99 per club with UST Mamiya Helium Nanocore shaft or Nippon N.S. Pro 850 GH Neo steel shafts and Winn Dri-Tac Lite grip
Specs: Forged titanium face with a titanium body and tungsten weight. Available 4-iron through sand wedge.
Typically, the driver is the star of the show, and the Great Big Bertha driver is loaded with technology, but the irons are the most exciting clubs in this family.
Instead of going with stainless steel, Callaway forged the face of the Great Big Bertha irons using titanium, a lighter and stronger material than steel. That’s why it has been a staple in driver construction for decades. Opting for a titanium face also allowed Callaway to make the face thinner, so it flexes more at impact to create more ball speed. According to Callaway, this is the most powerful iron face the company has ever made.
The body of the Great Big Bertha irons is also made with a very pure titanium, referred to as “commercially pure,” which saves more than 96 grams of weight compared to a stainless steel body.
Those weight savings allowed Callaway designers to add a massive tungsten back to each Great Big Bertha iron’s head. The weight goes up to 145 grams, constituting more than 50 percent of each head’s overall weight. It drives the center of gravity down and back, away from the face, so in addition to more ball speed from the titanium face, the Great Big Bertha irons produce a significantly-higher launch angle for players who struggle to get the ball high in the air and down the fairways.
To improve the sound and feel created at impact, Callaway added urethane microspheres inside the head that soak up excessive vibrations.
Great Big Bertha driver
Price: $699.99 with UST Mamiya Helium Nanocore shaft and Winn Dri-Tac Lite grip
Specs: 460 cubic centimeters with carbon fiber crown and sole and adjustable hosel mechanism. Available in 9, 10.5 and 12-degree versions at 45.75” in length.
Off the tee, elite players like Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm generate clubhead speeds in the neighborhood of 115 to 120 miles per hour, so to maximize distance, they need a lower launch angle and spin rate than most club players. However, slow- and moderate-swinging players with a swing speed of around 65 to 75 miles per hour require significantly higher-flying and higher-spinning shots because carry distance is critical at slower speeds.
The new Great Big Bertha driver has a triaxial carbon fiber crown and a new forged carbon sole. Forged carbon is a new material for Callaway, and it allows engineers to create shapes and details that are not typically achievable using carbon fiber. As a result, the Great Big Bertha driver is 43 percent lighter than the head would be using titanium.
Combined with a 40-gram stock shaft, the Great Big Bertha driver is also 30 grams lighter than the 2022’s Callaway Rogue ST Max driver, so with the same effort, a golfer should be able to swing it faster and generate more clubhead speed.
Callaway gave the Great Big Bertha an A.I.-designed Flash Face to turn that into ball speed. Designed with the assistance of supercomputers, it has a large sweet spot and is reinforced by a new Jailbreak system that stiffens the body at the moment of impact, so energy is transferred to the ball instead of being lost during the deformation of the head.
While the Great Big Bertha is not a slice-killing driver, it has a draw bias thanks to a weight designed into the heel area. The adjustable hosel allows players and fitters to increase or decrease the loft by up to 2 degrees.
Great Big Bertha fairway wood
Price: $499.99 with UST Mamiya Helium Nanocore shaft and Winn Dri-Tac Lite grip
Specs: A titanium body with a carbon fiber crown, carbon fiber sole, internal tungsten weights, steel sole plate and titanium face. Available as a 3 (15 degrees), 5 (18 degrees), 7 (21 degrees) and 9-wood (24 degrees).
The last thing a slow- or moderate-swinging player needs is a mini-driver off the tee, but getting driver-like ball speed in a fairway wood is appealing. To make that happen in the Great Big Bertha fairway woods, Callaway made them larger, making them easier to hit, and used driver-style materials in critical areas.
The crowns are made from triaxial carbon fiber instead of the stainless steel commonly used in fairway woods. That saves weight, helps to lower the center of gravity location and encourages a higher launch angle. The sole also has a large, forged carbon area to save more weight.
Unlike most fairway woods, the Great Big Bertha fairways have a titanium body and a forged titanium cup face that flexes more efficiently to create more ball speed.
Callaway designers re-purposed that discretionary weight (53 percent of the head’s overall weight) into a 15-gram steel sole plate and 50 grams of tungsten inside the head to drive the center of gravity down further.
A Jailbreak system added to the toe area of the club reinforces the chassis at impact, and the adjustable hosel system allows for an increase or decrease in the loft of up to 2 degrees.
Great Big Bertha hybrids
Price: $499.99 with UST Mamiya Helium Nanocore shaft and Winn Dri-Tac Lite grip
Specs: Titanium body and face with internal tungsten weights and adjustable hosel. Available as a 3 (18 degrees), 4 (18 degrees), 5 (23 degrees), 6 (26 degrees), 7 (29 degrees) and 8 (32 degrees).
Rounding out the latest Great Big Bertha family is a hybrid club that is designed to pack a wallop.
Like the fairway woods, the hybrids feature a triaxial carbon fiber crown and forged carbon fiber piece on the sole to create over 100 grams of discretionary weight. The chassis is also made using titanium and the hitting area features a forged titanium face cup that was made using artificial intelligence to create a surface that maximizes ball speed over a larger area.
Callaway designers were able to add 78 grams of tungsten both inside the head and in the chassis to dramatically-lower the center of gravity location, which should encourage higher-flying shots that stop faster, for better distance control.
This fairway wood-style hybrid has Jailbreak technology, like the fairway woods, in the toe area to stiffen the chassis at impact and direct more energy back to the shot.
The adjustable hosel allows the loft to be increased or decreased by up to 2 degrees and
