Editor’s note: Looking ahead to where we take our golf equipment coverage in the future, we want to look behind us more frequently. What does that mean, exactly? We want to both place new releases in their historical context and highlight past coverage, as we have done from time to time, by opening the GolfWRX archives.

For this installment, we’re returning to 2022 and the beginning of TaylorMade’s “Carbonwood Era,” which persists through this year’s Qi35 drivers. In debuting its Stealth family of drivers, the Carlsbad-based company made a major pivot from traditional titanium faces, opting instead for a layered carbon design. 

We pick up the piece with an overview of the original Carbonwood design. 

The new TaylorMade Stealth driver began as a code-named project, the origins of which go back 20 years. The successor to the SIM line, TaylorMade’s family of Carbonwood drivers includes the Stealth, Stealth Plus, and Stealth HD.

The show-stopping feature of the new 2022 TaylorMade Stealth driver is its centerpiece technology, and it’s likely one you’ve already seen in our in-hand shots of Tiger Woods’ Stealth Plus: a carbon fiber face. For TaylorMade engineers, the conversion to carbon was aimed at one thing: more ball speed.

A close-up look at the new 60X Carbon Fiber Twist Face

The why and how of TaylorMade’s “60X Carbon Twist Face”

In a surprising departure from industry-standard titanium, TaylorMade engineers turned to another material to construct the face of the Stealth for better energy transfer: carbon. More specifically, 60 layers of strategically arranged carbon fiber sheets.

Interestingly, what TaylorMade is calling the “Carbonwood Age” began decades ago.

“In the mid-2000’s, our research team developed an understanding that the weight of the face can affect impact efficiency, more specifically, the lighter the face, the more efficient the impact and the better the ball speed,” says Brian Bazzel, TaylorMade’s Vice President Product Creation.

“We realized titanium faces could only take us so far and carbon would be the face material of the future. This breakthrough design of a lightweight carbon face in Stealth, has created a whole new starting line, a new era of drivers, a new threshold of performance and a new platform for more innovation.”

With the 60 layers of carbon, TaylorMade touts a thinner, lighter, larger face that features a higher COR (coefficient of restitution) and improved face geometry.

As a result of using a lighter material (carbon), the Stealth’s face is, not surprisingly, substantially lighter than the SIM2. 40 percent lighter than a titanium face of the same size, the carbon face is just 26 grams.

TaylorMade Stealth: A 20-year project

TaylorMade engineers first developed a prototype titanium-covered carbon face in 2003. R&D efforts go back as far as 2000 (TaylorMade 360 days). Engineers then turned their attention to a polymer cover for the carbon fiber — which eventually became the Stealth’s nanotexture face.

In 2012, for the production of the Japan-only Gloire Reserve driver, TaylorMade developed a small-scale composite face production facility.

Following years of continued prototyping, in 2016 TaylorMade engineers developed new manufacturing techniques, which resulted in the first 60-layer carbon face and the beginning of the Stealth project (2018).

Innovation and new manufacturing processes are one thing, but mass production is quite another. And while this is a launch story about a family of products, the process of developing multiple plants for high-volume composite part production is another significant element of the Stealth saga.

• Check out in-hand photos of Tiger Woods’ Stealth Plus driver.

Editor’s note: We had to include this video featuring 2022 BK!