TaylorMade Stealth drivers

For decades, TaylorMade and other brands have made driver faces using titanium alloys that are light and flex without breaking. The USGA and R&A limit how much the faces are allowed to bend, and TaylorMade and several other brands have been at that limit for a few years. To produce more speed, they have tried to improve aerodynamics and enlarged the sweet spot. But TaylorMade designers believed they had pushed titanium to its limits. To get better performance, they have been researching the viability and use of carbon fiber instead of titanium.

Carbon fiber is significantly lighter than titanium, but it can be brittle and is typically not used on items that absorb impacts. For example, if you accidentally hit a ball with the graphite shaft of your driver, the shaft can easily break. To get around that, TaylorMade created a 60-layer carbon-fiber face and arranged the layers at different angles to increase their strength. A sophisticated manufacturing process ensures there are no air pockets or bubbles between each layer that could cause weakness and lead to breakage.

While the carbon fiber does not inherently increase ball speed or improve performance, TaylorMade’s carbon-fiber face weighs only 26 grams, making it 40 percent lighter than a titanium face of the same size. In an industry where designers scratch and claw for a gram or two, the 17-grams of weight savings are enormous.

The circular pattern in the center of the Stealth driver’s hitting area helps golfers align the ball with the sweet spot. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

That saved weight unlocks something interesting. When a golf ball is hit with a driver, the face flexes while the ball deforms and springs off the face to fly, hopefully down the fairway. At impact, the part of the head that bends back, the face, is not transferring momentum to the ball. The rest of the head is while it swings through the impact area. The more designers can shift mass out of the face and move it to the rest of the head, the more momentum and force a driver can apply to the ball at impact.

So while the Stealth’s overall weight has not increased, using an ultra-light carbon-fiber face means the club can transfer more energy to the ball. That’s why the Stealth creates more ball sped and distance. 

TaylorMade said the Stealth Plus+ generated 1.1 mph more ball speed in robot testing than the SIM2, and human testers saw more significant increases. Typically, a 1-mph increase in ball speed results in 3 or 4 yards of distance. When Sergio Garcia visited TaylorMade’s test facility in July 2021, he hit the Stealth Plus+ 9 yards farther than his SIM2.

Carbon fiber is very smooth, and the spin characteristics of shots hit in wet or dry conditions vary greatly, so TaylorMade engineers worked on ways to manage spin. First they added a thin polymer layer on top of the last layer of carbon fiber. Score lines were added, and finally a nano-texture that is just 14 microns thick was included over the entire hitting area – the polymer and textured surface help hold the ball on the face and improve launch conditions.

Despite the change in materials, the sound at impact is not dramatically different than would be expected with a titanium face. If the face was painted silver or chrome, most players would be unlikely to detect any difference in sound