Callaway’s new Quantum Mini Spinner has my head spinning

I am not a fan of high-lofted fairway woods for a large bucket of players. I think the popularity growth on the PGA Tour created a misunderstanding of what high-lofted fairway woods are supposed to do and mean to a player, and I’ve not been shy about my stance. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but it’s also the club I see more in the garages of my golf buddies than in their bags.

But Callaway may have just completely flipped me to the dark side with their new Quantum Mini Spinner — even though it was by no means designed for a player like me.

I got the chance to test out the Mini Spinner a while ago at the Callaway ambassador shoot with Johnny Thompson and at the time I wasn’t really sold. To be honest, it was mostly because I didn’t want to be sold. It was just a quick demo to see the product and get an understanding for what they were trying to do with it, but it just didn’t seem like something I wanted to care about. Why would I want a fairway wood that spun more? The spin was already the thing I hated most about high-lofted fairway woods. I can’t flight them down, and they are useless into the wind. I play most of my golf outside of Chicago so that’s a major factor in my club choice. I had ignored the club until we arrived at Callaway’s ECPC in Carlsbad, Cali. where a built-to-spec Quantum Mini Spinner 7W was waiting for me on the range.

Safe to say it was tough to pull me off that range. We had other videos on the schedule for our trip to ECPC, but I didn’t want to stop hitting the mini spinner. My desire to hit more balls came from curiosity. There were things about my Mini Spinner testing with PGA Tour Rep Zack Smith that just didn’t seem to add up — in the best of ways.

The biggest thing we noticed was how easy the club was to flight down, something that I absolutely cannot do with a standard 7W, like a Quantum Max. It’s always been one of those boxes I can never check when trying to put a higher-lofted fairway wood into the bag. With the Quantum Mini, though, something about the combination of a higher CG and a more “steep friendly” sole design seemed to allow me to play with shot trajectory more than anything in this category I have tested previously.

The Quantum Mini Spinner sort of flips a typical fairway wood design upside down. They are using carbon on the bottom instead of on the crown which raises the CG up compared to a standard fairway wood. It’s also designed with their step sole which is a great feature that helps to improve turf interaction regardless of attack angle. The head is also a more compact shape with a deeper face — more closely aligned with the special Triple Diamond T fairways that Jon Rahm has had in the bag for quite some time. And they also build these fairways three-quarters of an inch shorter than their typical counterpart. All of this combined results in an extremely reliable platform built to increase spin and consistency in ball flight.

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That’s all fine and good for a player like myself, but I’m not even the target. Spin deficient players at lower speeds are going to see even more benefit in a design like this than I ever could. By being a bit shorter it gives players more control. By adding more spin it gives players more versatility on approaches into greens. The step sole of the more compact shapes provides an extra level of forgiveness that’s nearly impossible to full-on chunk. The reason we’re getting the product in the first place is because of it’s success in high-level female golf overseas. A player on the Asian tours required a design like the Quantum Mini Spinner for her game. As Callaway does, they built this up for her and the improvement she saw with the product started a mini revolution (see what I did there?) and it quickly became the number-one selling product in Japan.

For me, the Mini unlocked a level of versatility that I don’t know that I can find in anything else. I certainly can’t find that in a traditional high-lofted fairway wood, and I’m actually struggling to fight off my beloved hybrids in the bag as well. I still have some on-course decision to make as well as some distance gapping questions for the Quantum Mini Spinner but for now it’s in the bag and the hybrid is taking a turn on the bench for the first time in 5 years.

I refuse to say I am a fan of the high-lofted fairway woods trend. But am I a big fan of the Quantum Mini Spinner? You bet.

Mini Spinner is available now for pre-order in 7W, 9W, and 11W variants.