Callaway Drivers by Year: From 1988 to 2024

From Short Straight Hollow Hosel (S2H2) in the 1980s to AI Smart Face in 2024, Callaway has never stopped innovating its driver technology. The timeline for some of those innovations, however, may surprise you. For instance, Variable Face Thickness is something we hear about all the time from manufacturers in the 2020s, but Callaway has incorporated variable face thickness (VFT) into its drivers for almost a quarter century, dating back to the Big Bertha Steelhead Plus in 2000.

Here’s a glimpse at the history of Callaway drivers and some of their breakthrough innovations.

The Original Big Bertha was released in 1991, and props to Callaway for keeping the stalwart driver in its lineup for 30-plus years. The most recent edition of Big Bertha was released in 2023, and it’s safe to assume there will be more in the future.

Big Bertha is known as a game-improvement line, providing distance and forgiveness to players of all abilities.

After incremental iterations of Big Bertha every other year throughout the 1990s, Callaway made a modest but notable change to the 1999 edition, the Big Bertha Hawk Eye. This driver included a tungsten weight in the heel side of the sole, lowering the center of gravity and creating a draw bias, something Big Bertha leans heavily into to this day.

The Big Bertha Hawk Eye featured a 250cc head.

Y2K rang in the introduction of Variable Face Thickness (VFT) for Callaway with the Big Bertha Steelhead Plus driver. They didn’t call it AI back then, but the process Callaway used to design the face sounds similar – though presumable a stripped-down version – to what nearly every manufacturer boasts as AI-designed today.

“Through computer modeling and extensive player testing - we developed our exclusive Variable Face Thickness Technology,” Richard Helmstetter, Callaway’s Chief of New Golf Club Products, said when the Steelhead Plus was released.

Callaway launched its largest-headed driver to date, the 360cc Big Bertha C4, which still weighed less than most other drivers, thanks to the composite face and head. Callaway saved weight from the build of the driver and re-distributed it around the perimeter to boost MOI and create the most forgiving driving possible.

Callaway took advantage of the opportunity to add even more distance by lengthening the shaft to 45.5 inches, an opportunity it said was created by the lightweight head. Using a longer shaft gives players the ability to create more clubhead speed, and assuming strike quality is maintained (data suggests it often is not), more distance.

Callaway confidently claimed its 2005 release of the Big Bertha Titanium was the longest legal driver ever to hit the market. It was undeniably Callaway’s largest, with a 454cc head, but what Callaway said was its differentiator was its design to reach the USGA’s newly-established CT limit for springlike effect off the club face.

David Mobley only added to Callaway’s confidence when he won the 2004 World Long Drive Championship using the Big Bertha Titanium 454 just ahead of the Jan. 1, 2005, retail release of the new driver.

Several benchmarks were set in 2008 when Callaway released the FT-iQ driver. On one hand. Callaway built up the driver as the world’s smartest. On the other hand, it checked in at $625, a greedy ask by today’s standards, to say nothing of the driver market in 2008.

Callaway noted its multi-million dollar research and development investment and styling inspired by stealth jets and futuristic concept cars played a role in producing a driver that received Complete Internal Design. That’s Callaway’s way of saying the driver is optimized for Moment of Inertia, CG, CG bias, face efficiency, loft and lie.

The 2010 release of Callaway’s FT-iZ driver incorporated another new Callaway technology: Polar Weighting. According to Callaway’s release, the feature “optimizes stability at impact and yields incredible ball speeds.”

Polar Weighting essentially boiled down to strategically-placed weights at the front and rear of the club head to maximize distance and stability.

Callaway boasted its lightest and strongest material ever when it release its Diablo Octane drivers in November of 2010. The Forged Composite material enabled engineers to build a clubhead that put more energy into the ball at impact than all-titanium drivers.

Again, Callaway used the weight savings in the club head to add a longer shaft that would theoretically give players even more distance.

Today nearly every driver has an adjustable hosel, movable weights, or both. Callaway first released both of these technologies in its RAZR Fit driver in 2011. The RAZR Fit offered players three hosel settings – square, open or closed – along with neutral or draw shot shape options, allowing players to dial in the driver to their specific needs.

2017 marked the beginning of Callaway’s Jailbreak era, which first came to market in the Great Big Bertha (GBB) Epic driver. Jailbreak technology is basically prison bars for the head of your driver. Except instead of keeping inmates behind bars, Jailbreak connects the crown and the sole of the driver, just behind the face, to improve the way the club head behaves at impact. The result, according to Callaway’s release, is more ball speed across a larger portion of the face, which we often refer to as forgiveness.

The days of Callaway boasting titanium in its drivers, with the Big Bertha Titanium releases in 2004 and 2005, are long gone. Now, Callaway is bragging about its lack of titanium with the release of Paradym in 2023.

Paradym’s innovation is a 360-degree carbon chassis, an industry first, which eliminates titanium from the body of the driver. That saves weight from the head, which gives engineers more weight to redistribute where it can optimize the driver’s performance.