More From The PGA Fall Expo – Callaway and Odyssey

I feel bad that the updates haven’t been as frequent as before but I think SirPutts and I are finally over our “car lag” and it’s time to get back at it! Today we’ll look at what Callaway and Odyssey Golf had to offer at the PGA Fall Expo in Las Vegas. I’m trying to …

I feel bad that the updates haven’t been as frequent as before but I think SirPutts and I are finally over our “car lag” and it’s time to get back at it! Today we’ll look at what Callaway and Odyssey Golf had to offer at the PGA Fall Expo in Las Vegas. I’m trying to get some pictures up but I’m having some serious issues. I’ll keep working on them and hopefully we can put some images to the words…

Callaway and Odyssey were a couple of the biggest golf companies at the show. The PGA Fall Expo isn’t nearly as big as it used to be but the two manufacturers used the smaller Las Vegas show to debut some new clubs. Let’s have a look at what Callaway has coming for 2006…

Callaway X460 Driver – This is the replacement of the current Big Bertha 454 driver. The club features a “Consistent Alignment Sole Design”… which basically means it’s got a little dip in the sole that helps the club sit more square every time you set it down. I tried it out and it seems to work fairly well. The club is full titanium and is 460CC in size. There is also a Tour model available for the better player. The face looks just about the same as the current 454 but it has a frosted “X” in the center. The X460 looks exactly like the Japanese X-18 driver.

The X Fairway – I don’t remember the exact name of these fairway woods but they are the stainless steel match to the X460 driver. They are fairly clean looking woods and feature a new modified warbird sole. They will also be available in a Tour version and most lofts offered in the current Big Bertha fairway woods will be carried over to this new line. I really liked the look of these… they should do really well next year.

New Big Bertha Iron – I assume that they will call this the Big Bertha ‘06 but who knows. The new Big Bertha looks almost the same as the current one. The notch weighting has a slightly different look and the medallion is now black and red. My rep told me that the notch weighting is a bit more extreme but it looks about the same to me. A cosmetic change here… don’t bother switching to these if you play the current Big Bertha irons.

New Fusion Iron – These weren’t at the show but I might have seen them somewhere on our trip… and my rep has talked about them too. These should feature the same type of technology as the current Fusion irons but Callaway will be bulking up the sole a bit in hopes of lowering the center of gravity. Watch for Callaway to target the game improvement market with these new Fusion irons.

The new Callaway line is pretty close to the current one and the new cosmetic changes should keep the clubs pretty popular. Now if only they could fill orders on time…

Odyssey also had some new putters at the show. It had been pretty quiet on the Odyssey front and for good reason… they could sell only 2 Ball putters and still be the #1 putter company in the world. There were two new putters that caught my eye here…

Odyssey Tri-Ball SRT – I wish I had the pictures working because this one is tough to explain. Try to picture a Ping Doc 17 putter crossed with an Odyssey 2 Ball and then add one more alignment ball. The putter still features the same White Steel face and has the same finish as the current 2 Ball putter… it’s just a lot bigger. I mean big… I could have probably used the headcover as a hat. There will be a 2 Ball SRT model as well and one would assume that it won’t be as big as the Tri-Ball SRT version.

Odyssey Dual Force 2 – Remember the older Odyssey putters with the black Stronomic insert? Well they are back… and Odyssey is hoping that they can dominate the price point category. The Dual Force 2 putters look just like the old ones and will be priced well below the rest of the Odyssey line. These should do really well at this new low price point.

The Odyssey SRT putters really surprised me. I hadn’t heard anything about them… my rep later told me that he had seen one a while back but was told not to mention anything to anyone. It was really easy to putt with but it could take a bit of getting used to.

That’s all for today… we’ll have more stuff from the show in the coming days. Sorry for the delay in returning emails… it’s been a crazy few days and we’re just starting to get back into the routine. I have a few that I need to respond to and hope to take care of that in the next few days. Thanks for the email! Let’s see… what else… there is a Titleist 735 iron review on the way, we just got a sample of the new Innovex driver that has already gone out to some of the testers, reviews of the Ping G5 line will come soon, we should have a bunch of new info from Wilson in the next week or so and the pictures on golf ball guys are almost done their website too. We are getting lots of email about those… feel free to email us for contact info until their site gets up. Thanks to everyone that has checked out the SirShanksAlot online store too. Congrats to my San Diego Chargers on their HUGE win today! Thanks for dropping by and we will talk to you soon!