Deep Dive: How Titleist Designs Drivers

Save the occasional patentable breakthrough in materials or process, among the biggest brands in golf, performance differences between products aren’t so much the result of capabilities as they are decisions.

Every golf equipment company has a prevailing design philosophy that governs how it approaches things like center of gravity placement, aerodynamics, MOI, shape, sound and feel and even the third-party components like shafts and grips that go into its golf clubs.

Philosophies evolve over time but often they can be distilled down to a single feature or technology. They become part of the brand identity. If I were to mention AI, 10K MOI or carbon faces, there’s a good chance most of you will identify each with a specific brand.

But what about Titleist?

With Titleist, there’s seldom, if ever, one thing you can’t point to and say this (whatever this happens to be) is the single biggest reason why the new one is better than what came before it.

The lack of a defining feature can make tech stories harder to tell. It can make capturing the attention of golfers a bit more challenging, too, but to an extent, that’s the manageable consequence of design philosophy firmly rooted in the belief that every detail matters.

Keep that in the back of your head as we dig a little deeper into how Titleist approaches golf club and, more specifically, metalwood design.

The Titleist golfer

As you would expect, it’s a process, to say the least, but Step 1 of creating any new product is understanding your audience.

So who is the Titleist golfer?

The simple answer is that Titleist designs golf clubs for everybody. Of course, every company that makes golf clubs would say the same thing but when you dig a little bit deeper, you’ll find some distinctions.

The typical Titleist golfer falls within the six million or so who are classified as avid golfers.

Broadly speaking, it’s a group that understands the value and importance of custom fitting. The typical Titleist customer is more likely to take lessons, know their launch monitor numbers and travel to play golf. Golf plays a significant role in their lives, maybe to the point of obsession.

So while the company believes anyone with a handicap of 25 or less can play their best with Titleist clubs, because of their investment in the game, the wheelhouse Titleist demographic inevitably skews towards the better player. It’s an audience that’s more likely to be interested in small details that may seem like minutiae to the less-invested golfer.

Perhaps that’s why Titleist has struggled a bit to completely shed its reputation as a brand almost exclusively for better golfers.

“There’s a lot of people who still look at the brand as if, ‘I’m not good enough’,” says Stephanie Luttrell, Director Titleist Metalwood Development.  “I scratch my head a little bit at that one because I think, for drivers, we try to really address performance needs of players and by doing that, we make a lot of products that meet the broadest spectrum of needs for the golfing public.”

It may be true that better golfers flock to Titleist in higher numbers but that’s not because the company is exclusively designing clubs for the better player. It’s ultimately more about the golfer’s mindset than his index.

Take time to listen

Your audience, whether it’s Tour pros, elite amateurs, average but avid golfers or a mix of the three, should influence nearly every decision but for that to work, you need to make time to listen.

I think every golf company would probably tell you that the R&D process never stops.

“Steve’s on vacation, shut it down and lock the doors,” said nobody in golf, ever.

So while there aren’t any breaks to be taken between releases, Titleist says one of the benefits of its two-year product lifecycle is that it affords it the opportunity to spend a lot of time at the beginning of a design cycle just listening.

“Before innovation and before development, there’s a lot of listening involved,” says Chuck Golden, VP of R&D for Titleist. “If you don’t have a two-year cycle, you can’t listen.”

It’s a painfully obvious observation but if you’re already six months into designing your next next big thing when the current thing hits the market, how much opportunity do you really have to take in and process feedback from your audience?

Sure, there are always ideas in the pipeline but that extra year affords Titleist the opportunity to gather meaningful feedback from the Tour, fitting accounts and consumers. The early stages of the Titleist design cycle are spent listening and learning how it can design something that’s going to help golfers play better.

“The two-year product lifecycle gives us the opportunity to actually be able to actually measure, test, evaluate and improve upon for next generation product,” says Luttrell.

If you’re wondering why, for many brands, it seems like every other release is significant while the one in between feels more like the golf equipment equivalent of an iPhone S, the answer boils to time and insight.

“We have the benefit as engineers to be able to listen and to be able to really define our performance targets ahead of time,” says Golden. “Once you can build a performance plan around that, the trick is now we just have to execute. That’s really easy to say but wrapped up in the execution is that we need new materials, we’re going to need to leverage our innovation team to bring in new material applications to help us do the things we want to do.”

Once Titleist knows what it needs to do, it takes the feedback from outside and translates it into design criteria. From there, the product team engages with the innovation team to find the solutions that can turn those objectives into the next Titleist product.

Explore and adapt

At Titleist, the innovation team is responsible for filling the pipeline with new technologies that can create opportunities for performance. Basically, if you’re going to make better products, you need better materials and processes.

With that in mind, it’s perhaps interesting that the innovation and product teams at Titleist operate cooperatively but independently.

When the R&D team says, “Hey, I could use a material that does x, y or z,” the hope is that there’s already an answer because the innovation team is always looking forward – sometimes years ahead – trying to find the next big thing. At a minimum, the innovation team is trying to find solutions to problems before they exist so that when the time comes, the new materials and processes are ready to go.

Take, for example, the Proprietary Matrix Polymer (PMP) used in the crowns of the Titleist GT metalwoods. PMP is the stuff that makes the GT’s carbon fiber crown sound and feel like Titleist drivers are expected to. The work to develop and integrate the material into Titleist metalwoods started four years ago.

It’s the job of the innovation team to be ahead of the curve.

Of course, bumps in the road are expected and not everything the innovation team comes up with works as hoped, or in some cases, not right away.

“We throw away a lot of stuff,” says Josh Talge, Titleist VP of Marketing. “We have so many ideas that just don’t work but we try them and a lot of times we take them pretty far. It’s pretty good but not doing the thing we need to do.”

You shouldn’t take that to mean everything that doesn’t do the thing Titleist needs it to do goes in the trash. Often, things – ideas, material, processes – are put in a metaphorical drawer in the corner. Just because an idea doesn’t work right now doesn’t mean it won’t work later. Part of the innovative process is occasionally revisiting ideas that didn’t quite make it to the mainstream.

Case in point: In creating TSi, Titleist engineers felt the face insert they were working on would deliver more speed. The challenge was that the existing material (Ti 6-4) wouldn’t hold up to the stresses of the new design.

The innovation team believed the strength and ductility of the ATI-425 material which Titleist had put in that metaphorical corner drawer after it was used in the crown of its C16 (Concept) driver could be adapted to work as a face material.

Two generations later, ATI-425 remains a staple of Titleist driver designs, though R&D continues to develop more aggressive face topologies while pushing the material even further.

To be sure, exploring and adapting new materials and process is not as sexy as shiny moveable weights or the other kinds of in-your-face visual tech that the industry loves but they’re the unsung heroes of innovation in golf club design.

Optimize, don’t maximize

The next and, arguably, most important piece of the Titleist design philosophy can be summarized as Total Driver Performance. Think of it as Zen for your golf club where the objective is to create a balance, perhaps even a harmony, that will deliver optimal performance for a given product specification.

Putting that in slightly more concrete terms, Titleist’s design objective is to maximize the performance for the majority of shots and impacts.

Straightforward? Perhaps.

Most understand that every manufacturer is pulling from the same set of things to optimize. Where differences in design philosophy manifest in real-world results is the order and magnitude in which each variable is prioritized within the overall design.

At Titleist, the design priorities are CG (center of gravity) placement followed by aerodynamics. Those two variables come into play on absolutely every shot you hit and, to an extent, drive a good bit of the decisions around other design criteria.

Simplifying: Titleist takes a “speed first” approach. That applies to the ball speed though center of gravity position and face technology as well as clubhead speed boosts provided by optimized aerodynamics – and in the case of the upcoming GT1 – lightweight design.

Aerodynamics govern how quickly the golfer can move the clubhead through the air. And while no one disputes that faster players benefit more from better aerodynamics than slower swingers, Titleist asserts that there is some benefit to every golfer on every swing.

“Aerodynamics are important on every swing at every speed,” says Alan Hocknell, Vice-President, Advanced Research and Innovation at Titleist. “It’s an ‘all shots’ kind of variable … They’re absolutely worth having.”

To no small extent, prioritizing CG and aerodynamics creates constraints on other aspects of design. That can be particularly challenging for Titleist, given that it has what amounts to a mandate to maintain its semi-traditional shapes that appeal to Tour pros and consumers alike.

Case in point: With GT3, Titleist was tasked with improving performance (better CG and improved aero) while retaining what is widely regarded as the most appealing head shape in the industry. And they had to do it without sacrificing sound and feel, despite the fact that the CG objectives necessitated the transition to carbon crown construction.

Rewinding a bit: it simply wouldn’t have been possible to make the prescribed improvements without PMP so kudos to the innovation team.

But what about MOI? (You may be asking.)

As an increasing number of competitors push combined MOI beyond 10,000 g-cm², should you expect Titleist to follow suit?

The answer is definitively no. Titleist doesn’t believe there’s any significant benefit of designing to those inertia levels.

As we’ve discussed previously, there is a point of diminishing returns for MOI and Titleist is in the camp of golf companies that believe there’s only so much you really need and anything beyond that can be problematic.

“There’s a sweet spot where you want to maximize clubhead speed but still have enough inertia or enough stability that, at impact, people are still getting good off-center ball speed,” says Luttrell.

Said another way: at a certain point, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

The squeeze, in this case, is the drop in clubhead and ball speed that many golfers experience with extreme MOI levels.

“That’s the missing piece of the conversation,” says Golden. “Everyone talks about golf ball impact but not about delivery. When you maximize stability at impact, you inhibit the golf club’s ability to get to the ball quickly. You slow down the clubhead for everybody.

“MOI is no different than all the other performance variables we’re trying to balance. There’s no way we would turn the knob to 11 and sacrifice things like clubhead speed and the way people deliver the club.”

Golden says he isn’t knocking anyone else’s approach but when it comes pushing MOI to the USGA limits, “it’s just not us. We’re about optimization of all performance variables rather than maximizing one.”

“The way I see it play out in players’ hands is that it becomes confidence and suddenly your driver becomes a scoring club,” says Hocknell.

That’s the fundamental idea behind Total Driver Performance.

Hockenell says, “It’s not a catchy 3-word hook. It’s real. It’s about taking a look at every variable and taking the time to study them in more detail.”

The sum of its parts

As part of every development cycle, Titleist engages with shaft companies to convey what it’s looking for and to discuss what shaft companies have in their pipeline that would fit with the next generation of golf clubs.

When it comes to selecting stock components, the objective isn’t to score a sweet deal (cut costs) or run with whatever the shaft companies think will be their next big thing. Titleist wants stock options that will accentuate the performance of their heads across a wide range of golfers.

If everyone thinks there’s a match, the process of testing prototypes begins. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it’s back to the drawing board. It’s another case where the two-year cycle creates more opportunities to dial in performance.

Whether it’s part of the stock lineup or an addition to its custom offerings, everything that goes into the Titleist catalog has to be qualified. For shafts, that means a series of durability tests to ensure that paint stays on and that shafts remain in one piece. I’ve been told by more than one shaft manufacturer that it’s the most rigorous OEM qualification process in the industry and, on more than one occasion, shaft companies have avoided widespread breakage issues because Titleist caught them early.

It’s a similar story with grips where Titleist tests third-party products to ensure they meet standards for durability including the wear and tear that comes from everyday use and exposure to environmental stresses.

The idea is that your grips should last but if you bought blue ones, they shouldn’t turn green in six months.

I’ve witnessed a few tests firsthand and heard stories of failures. My takeaway is that, apart from the most niche shaft and grip products on the market, if Titleist doesn’t offer it, you probably don’t want it.

Ultimately, it’s about taking full responsibility for your product. When the Titleist name is on a club, the company believes everything that goes into it should meet the Titleist standard.

Putting all the pieces together

The Titleist approach boils down to sweating the details and that extends beyond conventional performance metrics.

“There’s this sweating of the details that traditionally don’t have a lot of performance associated with them,” says Talge. “Can we make you one percent better with better face graphics? Can we help you find a face center easier? Can we put a texture on there that will help us impart something in a certain condition? What’s that little thing that nobody else is looking at that we might figure out?”

Again, at Titleist, every detail matters.

The list of requirements for each new development cycle is never short: great CG, outstanding aerodynamics, eye-pleasing shapes and ear-pleasing sound. Every new driver has to be consistent, offer great fitting tools and inspire confidence.

Invariably, that makes it difficult to answer what sounds like a simple question like What’s the key feature? or What’s the most important thing?

“It’s not one thing, says Luttrell. “Everything is the most important thing.”