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Dave Neville Podcast #332 – Callaway EPIC Speed

Worldwide Golf Shops INSIDER PODCAST #332! In this installment, we chat with the Senior Director, Brand & Product Management – Callaway Golf, Mr. Dave Neville! Dave talks Callaway’s new EPIC Speed! Please Enjoy this INSIDER Podcast.

Callaway Epic Speed Driver

What happens when the undisputed ball speed leader goes out and creates a NEW formula for speed that doesn’t even seem possible? The answer is…. you get the new Epic Speed, our fastest driver ever. Epic Speed is built on a simple equation that’s going to make a profound impact on the category. A.I. + Jailbreak + our new Speed Frame = more distance for every player. The future of driver technology and performance is here, and it’s about to change the industry forever.

  • Extraordinary Ball Speed From NEW Jailbreak A.I. Speed Frame: Epic ball speeds start with our new A.I. Jailbreak Speed Frame. Previous Jailbreak designs stiffened the body in the vertical direction. By applying Artificial Intelligence, the new design improves stability in the horizontal and torsional direction as well. The result is exceptional ball speeds all across the face.
  • Fast Ball Speed From A.I. Designed Flash Face SS21 : Our advanced A.I.-designed Flash Face promotes fast ball speeds across a more expansive area. Each face and each head geometry are uniquely optimized in Epic, and the super strength titanium promotes optimal speed, forgiveness, and spin robustness. This all results in a greater emphasis on center and off-center ball speeds.
  • Our Fastest Driver Head From A Cyclone Aero Shape: This advanced aerodynamic head construction promotes lower drag for higher head speed and ball speed. The taller ribbon and flatter crown are engineered for a new shape that can help golfers generate more speed from their swing.
  • Increased Forgiveness From Advanced Composite Design: Our proprietary Triaxial carbon covers a larger portion of the crown, leading to weight savings of over 18 grams vs. a titanium crown. Callaway engineers have redistributed that saved weight to enhance forgiveness versus previous Mavrik designs. An additional Triaxial carbon toe patch adds draw bias while saving weight to promote a powerful shot shape.

Shop EPIC Speed Drivers, Fairways, Hybrids and Irons at https://www.worldwidegolfshops.com/

Podcast Transcript:

Welcome to the Worldwide Golf Shops Insider podcast.  Episode 332.  Hello everyone, Tom Brassell here. Thanks so much for joining us.  So glad you did.  Whether you’re a first-time listener, longtime subscriber or somewhere in the middle, it doesn’t matter. You’re here with us today and we appreciate it. Our special guest joins us from out in Carlsbad, CA. He’s a senior director of brand and product management for Callaway Golf.  Mr. Dave Neville and Dave. If there’s anybody that should be earning frequent flyer miles or reward points for being on our show with you man. Thanks for joining us again we.  Love it, love having you man. 

Yeah, thanks for having me on Tom.  I don’t think anybody’s earning frequent flyer awards very much these days, but frequent zoom awards or something like that. 

First of all, Dave, tell us how it’s crazy times how’s your health?  How’s your family everybody good? 

Yeah, I mean it has been challenging.  We’ve been had a huge lockdown out here in California and we’ve been very fortunate to be healthy.  But there’s a lot of people who are struggling so you know our hearts go out to them.  Callaway has bounced back.  We had a really challenging year last year, but as you know, golf has been a sport that’s been arrested for a lot of people to be able to get outside be with their family socially distance.  And so we’ve been really supporting that and we’ve got some really nice momentum coming into this year. 

Yeah.  Yeah, golf has been the silver lining in this cloud that we’re in and getting outside playing distancing outdoors.  But when we talk to you Dave, it’s always something new and that’s what’s fun.  And now it’s the new epic speed we’re talking about the future of speed.  Tell us what went into this.  This is pretty cool stuff. 

Yeah, so there’s been a lot of work behind it is, you know, time.  We’ve been a leader in artificial intelligence for a number of years now.  So with the epic Flash driver that was the first driver that we brought AI to the to the flash face to the actual face.  Now we’re bringing A-I to the jailbreak system and this is really, really huge for us.  We’re calling it the jailbreak A I.  Speed frame so it just to let your listeners know about jailbreak.  Again, we’ve talked about it before but it basically stiffens the body of the driver.  It connects the Crown and soul together to make the body stiffer, which allows us to put more energy back into the face.  Now we’re combining that with the AI design. New Jail brake system that not just helps you in that vertical direction, but also horizontally and torsionally, meaning twisting on off center impacts as well. 

So you’re getting all that ball speed, but you’re getting forgiveness and really spin robustness when you when you miss off center as well. 

Yeah, this is like jailbreak 4.0 for you guys and it’s not even 2.0 ’cause you just really just maximized it since the beginning and I think it was about five years ago. I think the first one. 

Yeah, so 2017 with the GBB epic is when we first brought jailbreak and really that was the technology that got us to number one and drivers we had been kind of in 3rd and 4th place and drivers up till epic and it was such a leap forward in performance and ball speed for players and it was number one on tour. It was number one in wins it was number one.  In global sales.  You know the perfect score from the hotlist. I mean incredible in an incredible performance of that TV epic. And then we’ve continued to evolve the jailbreak system. But now this is a totally new system and you could see it out online if you go out to callawaygolf.com you go out to any of the worldwide sites there as well. You can see that.  In that frame there are more contact points with the soul and the Crown.  The bars are spread out there thinner.  There are different shapes, and with the AI we were able to test a number of different systems to find the one that was the best performing for each of the heads. 

And you have three different offerings in the driver line, correct? 

Yeah, so we can go through those.  So the first one is the epic speed.  This is going to be our fastest epic ever. It has that Cyclone Arrow shape so it’s very very fast through the air. It’s got the AI in there.  It’s got a composite Crown and also a composite to Patch and what that does Tom is it allows us to take some of the weight out of the toe which gives us some more draw bias but allows us to put that weight.  In the center back with.  As MY so it’s going to be a lot more forgiving than the Maverick standard model, so that’s the epic speed we feel like that’s going to be right for a lot of golfers. You know, 50% plus of golfers would be into the epic speed. Then we have the epic Max and if you go back to the maverick Max we first introduced last year that was a runaway hit for us. So I really forgiving. Kind of traditional MY driver, this one we’re taking it to another level. We’re talking 9000 MOI is the measure of forgiveness really, really high forgiveness?  On this, the adjustable parameter weight or the sliding weight tracking back, so that’s going to let people tune their shot shape.  Very forgiving.  Of course, it has the jailbreak AI speed frame in there as well, so if you struggle if you kind of hit it all over the face or you’re fighting a slice or you struggle with the driver, the Max is the one to be in.  And then we have a third model and this one is all-new, totally different from anything we’ve done before.  We’ve had the sub-zero model for several years now.  Really low spin option.  This is a little bit different.  We’re calling it the Max LS so it’s a lower spinning model of the Max. 

Really, for your better player, so it’s in neutral shot shape versus the draw. But you still have the adjustable weight in the back as well. It’s going to be lower spinning than the Max, but it’s not as low spin as the sub zero because one of the things we found out on tour is the tour players actually like a little more spin than you would expect. Most people think. Oh there, you know they’re hitting with 1800 RPM spin.  Not the case the the average spin rate on the PGA Tour is 24 to 2600 RPM, so we wanted a driver that’s really playable very for.  I think 8500 + M Y, but it’s going to be a little bit lower spin and really for that better player. So three really distinct models. I think that’s one of the things I’m most proud about of this line. We have a different model and something that’s going to fit everyone. 

Dave, just out of curiosity, what was the feedback like when you put these out in front of your tour staff? 

It’s been absolutely incredible, obviously.  We’ve got two wins already in back-to-back weeks out on tour.  Si Woo Kim with a new epic speed.  Last week we signed Jon Rahm in the offseason and he’s part of Callaway now.  The number two player in the world, so we’re really excited about that.  He immediately went into an epic speed driver.  Xander Schlauffele is in the epic speed driver.  Phil Mickelson and we’ve had it just an incredible response to these.  So you’re going to see him out on tour and hopefully more wins.  I mean, we’ve got our local hometown event this week at Torrey Pines.  The Farmers Insurance Open and we got a lot of Callaway guys on the leaderboard there so very excited about that.  That’s pretty interesting.  Yes. 

Out of the ones you mentioned, you mentioned epic speed, so not necessarily epic maxl for them, right? 

Oh well, we’ve got.  We’ve got a lot of guys in Max LS. 

It just happened to be the guys that I mentioned were in epic speed, but the Max LS is doing extremely well for us also.  And then we even getting some of the commercial Max models and I thought to myself, well, there’s no short parts they’re going to play the Max model then we have Bryson Brice Garnett in the first week. He puts it in. We have several on the European Tour. You know, we’ve been number one on the European Tour the last couple of. For weeks, #1 driver model number one irons #1 fairway. So we’ve been on a huge roll out in Abu Dhabi and Dubai as well, so this is really a global launch for us. 

Well, you want to make sure to take the time and invest the time to get fit for the right one for you because there’s so many options with the three different clubs, but you have a driver selector tool that will kind of give you an idea.  It’s on your website.  I think we’ll be incorporating it into ours talk a little bit about that day. 

Yeah, so obviously right now with everybody being home, you know not everybody wants to go into the stores, but we know the E Commerce business whether.  That be with.  With Roger Dunn or Golf Mart has just been off the charts, but we have this selector tool that can give you a head start.  I mean it has some really interesting questions about how far you drive it or your missions right or left. What are you looking for? You want a higher launch? 

You want to lower launch?  She and it incorporates all that and it kind of gives you a couple options to go with.  Now we encourage everyone to go out and get fit and you can do that in a really safe manner at all of your stores as well.  That’s really the best way to unlock it, but this can give you a head start so that when you’re going into that store, you kind of can figure out what you want now.  There are some golfers out there who know.  Exactly what they want they’ve been.  They’ve been playing Callaway from number of years.  They know what shaft they know, kind of what head works for them.  And so this this can help them and they can order online at that.  Mine as well. 

Yeah exactly, it’s not meant to replace a fitting, but it’s there to kind of give you a little start if you’re not sure which one might be right for you answering, I think it’s about five or six questions you can find out which way you might want to go. 

Yeah, we also have out online we have a number of videos we have family videos actually one that’s called which Epic is right for you. It’s a family video. I think it’s 45 seconds long. 

Yeah.  We kind of talked about the difference.  I host our Callaway talks where we go deep. 

If you really want to go deep.  We got about 15 minutes with our Senior VP of RND, Doctor Alan Hocknell.  Doc Hock is everyone knows him.  The guys unbelievable Fountain of knowledge. 

So I sat down with him and with the Callaway talks show and then we have our fitting room podcast.  Where we actually go about 30 minutes into trying all the different drivers.  What we saw when we test.  To them and and.  What would be right for you as well?  So there’s just a ton of resources out there, then obviously you having me on your show time is great as well. 

Dave, before we let you go, it’s a whole family.  It’s not just the drivers, it’s the fairways. 

Hybrids, irons talk a little bit more before we let you go on the family that you have out there now. 

Yeah, so we have the epic fairway Woods as well and those have a different jailbreak system still designed by AI.  It’s called the AI jailbreak AI velocity blade so there instead of jailbreak bars their blades they’re spread out.  They’re angled out as well and that’s really to give you more forgiveness across the face.  We’ve got two models.  Instead of three in the Fairway Wood lineup, we have that speed model that’s going to be our longest fairway ever.  The thing is, just an absolute cannon has kind of a forward CG flat trajectory mid to lower spin just goes forever. 

I mean, it’s like having a driver in a fairway fairway Woods type of shape.  Then we have the Max and so we know there’s a lot of players who struggle getting Fairway Woods out the ground.  Three would five would they struggle with?  So we have this over size?  Max shape with a really shallow face really helps you get under the ball. It’s got adjustable waiting. We can go all the way up to 11 would, so I mean you can go 3 plus you can go 345 at 7 heavenwood nine would 11 would. So we have a fairly wood out there for everybody but once again that talks about going into get fit and figuring out the right ones for you. 

Dave, thanks so much man.  We always love catching up with you.  Like we said, it’s when we do it because there’s something new out there.  But thanks so much for your time.  We appreciate it so much.  How about some final words for our listeners?  Yeah, well, we really appreciate all of your support you guys have been a great partner for us so this isn’t an exciting year and we’ve got the pre sale going on right now.  It’s our fitting and pre sale period.  It started just this week and goes all the way up through our part date.  And I mean these these clubs has been incredible eight in the apex line of irons.  Also it’s worth looking at.  And I would encourage people go out and get fit because I’m worried we’re going to sell out of these.  I, I’m not just saying that I honestly these pre sale period has been incredible.  Go out, get fit now. 

Be the first ones to order it so when the party comes around you get these before anybody. 

Dave Neville, thanks so much and let’s do it down the road again. 

Thanks Tom, thanks for having me on. 

Dave Neville, senior director, brand and product management for a Callaway golf we kid with him about being a frequent guest on the show, and I tell you we appreciate it.  Dave brings a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for that Callaway brand.  Again, epic speed.  It’s the fastest line ever.  From Callaway golf.  Take the time.  Go get fit.  Go get dialed in for that right combination of clubs for your game.  Special thanks again to Dave Neville for joining us and to your listeners, and we’ll do it again next time.  We have another episode of the worldwide golf Shops Insider podcast.  Here at worldwidegolfshops.com.  So long everyone.