TaylorMade

What it does: Saving weight wherever you can in a fairway wood is crucial to achieving performance goals. This line uses a lightweight carbon-composite section that wraps around the edges of the crown to save more than 20 grams compared to the steel it replaces. The shallow face height is integral to helping golfers launch the ball, but the idea isn’t as simple as it seems. Less face height means a smaller trampoline for maximum ball speed, so TaylorMade engineers redesigned these faces to feature multiple thicknesses to maximise ball speed for on-center and off-centre hits.

Why we like it: The Stealth 2 is a plenty spicy fairway wood that works for a lot of golfers, but the surprise here is the Stealth 2 HD, which does its best to turn the most mediocre fairway-wood players into modern-day Gene Sarazens. This is accomplished with a shallower face than the standard model, yet the Stealth 2 HD still possesses an overall face area and size that exudes forgiveness thanks to a centre of gravity that is low and deep. Also, rather than use the typical face insert, this model has a cast face with even more varied thickness zones to ensure ball speed on strikes that aren’t so pure.

Lofts 15, 16.5, 18, 21, 24 (stealth 2); 16, 19, 22 (stealth 2 HD)