Adams Golf has made its reputation on easy to hit fairway woods, and it promises that the new RPM Low Profile Fairway Wood is it’s best yet. The club landed on the Golf Digest 2006 Host List.

Like all Adams Fairway Woods, the club features the patented “upside down” technology, which lowers the center of gravity and increases the club’s moment of intertia. The club also has a twin rail design on the sole which Adams says reduces ground interference by 54 percent.

Golf Digest complained about the shallow face a bit, but I prefer a more shallow faced fairway wood. I think they inspire more confidence than the taller ones. I’ve also had good luck with the Adams clubs I’ve tried over the years. I never believed that they were the longest clubs around, but they were among the most consistent.

ADAMS RPM LP Draw Fairway Wood w/Exotic Shaft

PineMeadow Golf is primarily known as a “smart follower”, able to produce low priced products because they follow other companies’ technological leads rather than investing in their own R&D. 

But one of the latest products from PineMeadow does branch out into independent research and development: the Double Wall Fairway Woods. These woods have an interior wall that creates a “power chamber” which PineMeadow says stabilizes the entire hitting surface.

Here’s what PineMeadow says about its technology:

Light weight, yet extremely strong and stable, the woods abandon the “trampoline effect” technology recently adopted by most other golf club manufacturers. Instead, it achieves its performance by building the “solid concrete floor” from which the super ball bounces. The design is engineered to achieve the largest, most stable sweet spot in golf at the highest COR allowed by USGA Rules.

The technology sounds interesting, and I like the low-profile heads. If you’re looking for a new fairway wood, they may be worth a try. PineMeadow has a 30 day no risk test drive policy and is now offering free ground shipping.

DoubleWall Fairway Woods

I thought the USGA had rules about clubs having to be of a certain “traditional” shape.  This pac man club from Nassau Golf certainly doesn’t look traditional, but apparently it’s all kosher.

The idea is brilliant. Take a chunk out of the back of the club and redistribute the weight to the perimeter. The only downside that I can see is that it would move the weight forward, rather than back, which is the opposite of what other club designers seem to be trying to do these days.

You should check out their site. They’ve got a lot of other interesting stuff, like a midget putter and a very strangely shaped iron.

I think I’ll write more about them in the future. They look like they’re in a contest to out-mad-scientist Ralph Maltby at the Golfworks.

The Ping G5 Fairway Wood rightfully has a place on the 2006 Golf Digest Hot List. Like all of Ping’s club’s, it’s designed to be easy-to-hit, but still usable by low handicappers.

The G5 is the successor to the G2, which was itself an outstanding fairway wood. A friend of mine has a whole bag full of Pings and I had a chance to hit his G2s last year. I hit some very nice shots with it, and was duly impressed.

This year’s offering from Ping comes in 3, 5, 7 and 9 woods. In each, the internal weight pads are strategically positioned, moving further back as loft increases. Thus, Ping says, you get more distance with the lower lofts, and more accuracy with the higher ones.  The face is made of thin 455 Carpenter steel, and is plasma welded to the body. A ‘rocker sole” design is supplsed to help you get the ball moving, and the face squared through all sorts of lies.

The club has a crescent moon- shaped alignment aid on the top, which seems to be a theme lately with Ping. Their new putters also have the crescent. I think that it looks very nice and is confidence building. Somehow, the curve looks as though its going to sweep through the ball.

Callaway’s X Fairway Wood was an Editor’s Choice in Golf Digest’s 2006 Hot List.

The 3 piece stainless steel heads features an “ X Sole Design”, with two keels in the sole that are supposed to contact the turf to align the face (not nearly as pronounced as the LaJolla Knife, though). The Variable Face Thickness technology is said to allow Callaway Golf designers to adjust the face thickness, which they say maximizes ball speed and perimeter weighting.

And, of course, the club features Callaway Golf’s bore through construction which extends the shaft completely through the clubhead to the sole. (This, by the way, is a complete pain in the rear end for those of us who do club repair.)

X Fairway Woods come in 3-, 4-, 5-, 7- and 9-wood models as well as Tour 13-degree and Tour 15-degree models that have slightly smaller heads and stronger lofts for the lower, more boring ball flight preferred by more skilled players.

The new Callaway Golf X Fairway Woods feature a Fujikura graphite shaft in Light, Regular and Stiff flexes as well as a uniflex True Temper(R) steel shaft. The Tour 13-degree and Tour 15-degree models feature the same Fujikura(R) graphite shafts but with the Light option removed and an Extra Stiff version added. They are also available with the True Temper uniflex shaft. Left-handed models are available in the 3-, 5- and 7-woods.

CALLAWAY X Fairway Wood w/Graphite Shaft