Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of an article our Andrew Tursky filed for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Read the full piece here.

While this is the world’s first official look at the final versions of the Opus line of wedges, Callaway staffers have actually been involved In the prototyping and design process for around two years, according to Callaway Tour Manager Joe Toulon.

“The Tour launch is basically when we’re introducing it to the Tour players officially for the first time,” Toulon said on Tuesday at the 2024 Travelers Championship. “We’ve done a lot of work with this wedge in the prototyping stages. It’s a project that we’ve really kicked off 2 years ago, when we really started digging into this category and understanding what the best players in the world look for in a wedge.”

Of course, Callaway’s research and design team has been studying the wedge category for decades, but this time around – during the design of the new Opus wedges – Callaway put more power than ever into the hands of PGA TOUR players. Toulon and team paid close attention to everything Tour players wanted from a wedge, including the look at address, the shape of the leading edge, how the club sits on the ground with the face open, the shaping of the sole, the sound, the feel, and how the wedge interacts with the turf at impact under various conditions.

Although all factors were considered, the most significant barrier to entry for Tour players is their first impression of the shape of the wedge at address.

“The shape is really something we spent a lot of time with, and getting it to look good to the majority of players – it’s something that you may not hit everybody’s eye exactly right, but this is something where we got countless hours of feedback and testing from Tour players, and this is kind of the final product,” Toulon said. “…I think one of the things that players really focus on when they set a wedge down for the first time is what it looks like at address, and what it looks like when you open the face, and we did a lot around that; the shaping and the roundness of this wedge.”

Toulon calls it the “final” product, because there were various iterations of the Opus wedges before this. Actually, these final versions of the Opus wedges are based on the sixth prototype, specifically.

“[The Opus wedge] was code named ‘S6’ during the process,” Toulon said. “We stamped every wedge out here (on the PGA TOUR) in this shape with S6, and that basically just stands for some of the shaping designs we went through. That was the sixth shape design that we settled on based on what the player feedback was. That’s really the whole story behind this wedge; tour-inspired, tour-driven. These guys out here designed this wedge. This is just the final cosmetic and final design that we went with.”

Read the full piece here.