The ability to hit a fairway wood easily off the deck can be a big challenge for alot of golfers. So having something perfectly designed for those struggles could really help. The Callaway Elyte fairway wood is the perfect mixture of forgiveness and high towering distance.
Callaway is renowned for the dependability of their metalwoods, and Henrik Stenson’s long-time use of them is a perfect example. He trusted their fairway woods so much that he rarely used his driver throughout his career.
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Who is it aimed at?
There are three models of fairway woods in the Elyte lineup: the Elyte, the Elyte X and the Triple Diamond.
The Elyte fairway is designed for golfers looking to launch the ball much higher with moderate spin rates.
The new step-sole design combined with the Ai 10x face helps launch the ball much higher without spinning too much, and is much more forgiving on off centre strikes.
The Tech
This year Callaway have added a new step sole for more efficient turf interaction & improved centre face contact. They claim that this helps minimise drag and skidding in different weather conditions for more solid contact.
They have also added a tungsten speed wave to ensure faster ball speeds off the bottom of the face. This is a suspended 35g tungsten weight that’s positioned low and forward to promote faster ball speeds. This is important as lots of golfers tend to struggle with strikes low on the face, especially off the ground.
The new Ai 10X face claims to help optimise launch and tighten players dispersion on mis-hits. So lets hope this lives up to its claims.
Callaway Elyte Fairway Wood Review
Looks and Feel
After testing the Triple Diamond first, the standard Elyte was quite different in design at address. Compared to the Triple diamonds shiny finish, this had a matte carbon fibre finish that wasn’t too distracting at all.
The head features a secondary cut out to help frame the ball in a matte-black colour. Alongside the brands trademark logo to help with alignment. Both of these really help frame the ball and fill you with confidence at address.
The head itself does feature a bit of offset but nothing too off putting. Usually when a club is off-set I would avoid them completely with a fear of missing left. However the standard Elyte didn’t give me any of those thoughts.
I found that the sound at impact was quite hollow and loud compared to the Triple Diamond. The face definitely felt different too with more of a trampoline effect as the ball made contact. This definitely gave me the confidence that the club is very responsive and forgiving.
Personally I don’t read too much into the sound or feel of golf clubs too much but these could probably be a little quieter if anything.
From picking the club out the bag, I honestly thought is this the old Callaway Epic Flash with the green and black colourways.
Personally I preferred the sole design of last years Paradym Ai Smoke but not noticable at address.
Performance
Having tested a lot of fairway woods from different brands, Callaway usually fill me with hope that they’re offerings will always focus on maximum distance.
I took all three models up to Hukd Golf to test them out on the latest Trackman Ai technology. After collecting the data I took them onto the course a few days later at Denton golf club.
After struggling to control the Triple Diamond, I was really looking forward to hitting something a bit more forgiving.
Straight away from the first shot it was a sense of relief, instantly nailing it with a much higher flight carrying 257.7 yards.
The higher flight was achieved from a moderate spin rate, I typically like to see 2600-3000 RPM from a fairway wood, so this was spot on.
Shot two, three and four were both middled again with really high towering flights and similar spin rates. Shot three in particular did spin a little more but only lost me no more than 5 yards of carry.
As far as the first four shots could go this was pretty much the best results I’ve seen in a long time.
Giving me a minimum of 252 yards carry and maximum of 261 is incredibly consistent from that kind of distance.
The reason why these shots were so consistent was the launch angle was always within half a degree of deviation. Proving that the step-sole design really does work nicely.
The spin spin rates really impressed me with three of the four shots all within 100RPM of each other. This shows that straight away the Ai 10x face is much more prominent in this new Elyte model.
On shot five i decided to purposely hit a shot out the heel to really how forgiving this club was. To say I almost hit the ball off the shaft the result was pretty outstanding. I lost 5mph in ball speed and still achieved 234 yards of carry, pretty impressive for such a poor strike.
On Course Performance
After such a good performance on the trackman I took the Elyte Fairway out onto the golf course to see what it was like.
The first few shots were really nice, however I did feel like they weren’t going quite as straight as I would’ve liked with a lot of draw shape on mishits.
I compared the shots against hitting my own driver and the difference wasn’t massive compared to my driver. In fact some of my mis-strikes with driver weren’t going as far as a flush fairway wood off the tee.
Off the tee, this club definitely launched a bit higher with less spin making it almost a mini driver in length. So bare in mind when selecting an Elyte fairway wood to maybe consider going for a 4-wood or 5-wood, in case you want something very similar to your driver in carry distance.
I tested the final few shots from some tight lies and out the semi rough, and had no difficulty in getting the ball in the air. Out the rough the spin rates were a little inconsistent with the old shot coming out very low spin and veering offline more often.
Callaway Elyte Fairway Wood Verdict
This year’s standard Elyte model is definitely a hot prospect in 2025, I couldn’t really fault the performance on both the Trackman or the golf course.
My only fault would be that the 3-wood for me was far too close to my driver in terms of distance, so definitely try out the 4-wood and 5-wood options if you’re looking for something to fill the gap in your bag.
Would I Use It?
Yes absolutely! Although with the amount of practice I put in with my Ping driver, it’s making me consider trying the Elyte driver to see if the distance could be added into my game further up the bag.
I’ll definitely be testing out the different loft options before purchasing, however with a hefty price tag of £349.00 it may be something outside my budget.
