Gear: Callaway CB Wedges
Price: $159.99 each with True Temper Elevate 95 Wedge steel shaft or Project X Catalyst graphite shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet grip
Specs: Cast stainless steel with urethane insert. Even lofts from 48 degrees to 60 degrees
Available: July 7
Who They’re For: Golfers who struggle in greenside sand and from the rough around the green, but who also way some shortgame versatility.
The Skinny: With an ultra-wide sole, perimeter weighting and vibration-dampening technology taken from Callaway’s game-improvement irons, the updated CB wedges should help mid- and higher-handicap golfers gain consistency around the greens.
The Deep Dive: Callaway staff players such as Jon Rahm and Xander Schauffele use the company’s JAWS Raw wedges to maximize spin, control and feel on chip shots, pitches and bunker shots. In the hands of shortgame artists such as those, the wedges can make a golf ball dance like Shakira.
But there are plenty of recreational golfers who struggle to get the ball out of greenside bunkers consistently, who lack touch on pitch shots and who either chunk chips or skull them across the green. These types of players use game-improvement irons for extra forgiveness, and Callaway just released an update to its CB wedges to offer similar forgiveness around the greens.
Replacing the Mack Daddy CB that was released in 2020, the CB wedges have perimeter weighting to increase stability on every shot and the same JAWS grooves found in Callaway’s muscleback wedges to help golfers maximize spin. On the pitching wedge and gap wedges (48, 50 and 52 degrees), the grooves are arranged like iron grooves, but on the sand wedges and lob wedges (54, 56, 58 and 60 degrees), the grooves cover the entire hitting area.
The biggest upgrade, however, is the addition of urethane microspheres to the back of the heads. This is a technology that Callaway has used to absorb vibration in many of its hollow-body irons for years, but it has never been added to a wedge before now. Encased in a black piece behind the club, the urethane microspheres make the impact sound more solid, and the sound itself is shorter in duration.
The soles of the CB wedges are very wide, and the bounce transitions with loft, going from 10 and 12 degrees in the pitching wedge and gap wedges to 14 degrees in the 54- and 56-degree clubs and back to 12 degrees in the 58- and 60-degree models.
While golfers will not have sole grind options in the CB family, Callaway designed each CB wedge with a tri-sole design that has multiple bounce areas. There is a subtle C-Grind behind the leading edge that should help when golfers hit chip shots with a neutral stance and putting stroke, but the more significant bounce is farther back. Combined with the heel and toe relief and an open stance, it should help prevent the leading edge from digging into sand or thick rough.
Below are several close-up images of the new Callaway CB wedges.