With golf more popular than ever, and one of the largest-growing segments being women, it should be no surprise that equipment companies are expanding their offerings to fit this group of historically underserved players. The new Kalea Premier line of clubs from TaylorMade offers their most forgiving and comprehensive line of women’s clubs to date. We spoke with principal engineer Michelle Penney about the set and why they are a big step forward for women golfers.
How have women’s clubs changed since you’ve been in the industry?
I think the biggest change in club design for women in the 14 years I have been in this industry is the intention behind it. Women today will not accept a halfhearted approach to product design in any industry. The “shrink it and pink it” strategy will not resonate with today’s discerning female golfer.
Every step of the design and development process for Kalea Premier was examined to make sure each decision we made would truly resonate with this golfer. We utilized our extensive market research, collaborated with our Women’s Advisory Board in Europe, developed women’s player test panels in the U.S. and even ran perception tests with our own employees. The resulting product is one that not only performs to our own rigorous standards but also looks truly stunning.
What characteristics get taken into consideration when designing clubs specifically for women?
Our key design goals for Kalea Premier are lightweight speed, easy launch, max forgiveness. Every single club in the line has this DNA. Making a club lighter means you can achieve higher swing speeds and more distance. Key features in the driver, such as the carbon crown and sole panels with our forged aluminum ring, the addition of a carbon crown to the fairway woods and using a graphite shaft in the putter helped us reach this goal.
Easy launch means lowering the center of gravity in each head for a higher launch angle with less backspin. We achieve this with the dropped crown in the Kalea Premier Rescues and by optimizing internally positioned mass, as is the case with the low perimeter weighting in the irons set.
How have manufacturing advancements allowed you to push performance to new levels with Kalea and golf equipment in general?
Carbon fiber has given us the ability to take massive leaps in performance.
Making components with large surface area—like a crown and sole—lighter, allows us to reposition that saved mass to maximize performance. In the Kalea Premier fairways alone, with the addition of a carbon crown, we were able to save 10 grams high up in the head, making it lighter and lowering the center of gravity to reach our performance targets.
As a whole, we’re able to take carbon fiber to a new level in 2022 with the introduction of our Stealth line of drivers. Utilizing this lighter material on the impact surface of the golf club improves the efficiency of the energy transfer from the clubhead to the ball, which gives the golfer more ball speed.
