Gear: Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max driver
Price: $599.99 with Project X Denali Blue shaft and Golf Pride Tour Velvet 360 grip
Specs: 460-cubic-centimeter head with carbon fiber crown and sole panel, adjustable hosel and movable weights. Only available in right-hand with 9- and 10-degree lofts.
Available: June 7
Who It’s For: Fast-swinging, low-handicap golfers who want more forgiveness and spin than Callaway’s low-spin Triple Diamond driver.
The Skinny: The Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max is designed to blend the previously released Triple Diamond and Max drivers, allowing low-handicap players to gain more spin and shot-shaping with a boost in forgiveness.
The Deep Dive: With four Paradym Ai Smoke drivers already on the market, you might wonder why Callaway is compelled to release a fifth model, but the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max has become popular enough with players to be the second most-played Callaway driver on the PGA Tour, so Callaway decided to make it available to the masses.
In many ways, the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max is a ‘tweener, because it was designed to fit between two drivers that are already in the line-up. The standard Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond is a 450-cubic-centimeter head that is the lowest-spinning, lowest-launching driver in the Callaway stable, and the Ai Smoke Max is a 460-cubic-centimeter driver that offers a higher moment of inertia and more stability. With the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max, Callaway designers tried to bring the best of both clubs together in one offering.
The look in the address position retains the Triple Diamond’s pear shape, which many advanced golfers favor. But while the standard Triple Diamond comes with a 14-gram weight in the back and a 2-gram weight in the front, the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max comes with a 10-gram weight and a 4-gram weight. Yes, the overall mass of the moveable weights has decreased, but the driver head’s shape helps that weight create slightly more spin and a slightly higher launch angle than the standard Triple Diamond achieves. In Callaway’s tests with accomplished golfers, that extra spin and higher moment of inertia translated into more control. As players realized their tee shots flew straighter, Callaway observed that many players’ confidence increased, and they started to swing faster, leading to more ball speed and distance.
That blend of playing characteristics sounds great, but it is likely not ideal for everyone, and Callaway knows it. However, making the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max available gives players – and more importantly, fitters – another versatile option that can help golfers create the ideal launch conditions to maximize distance and accuracy.
Like the other Ai Smoke drivers, the Paradym Ai Smoke Triple Diamond Max has a face that was designed using artificial intelligence. Callaway captured swing data on more than 250,000 real players’ swings and directed powerful computers to use that data to design driver faces that are optimized based on how players (instead of robots) swing the club. The result is a face that has thick and thin areas on the inner-facing side that flex in different ways to blend forgiveness and ball speed.
Like the other Paradym Ai Smoke drivers, the Triple Diamond Max has a 360-degree carbon fiber chassis, lightweight carbon on the crown and a carbon fiber sole panel that wraps directly into it.
An adjustable hosel allows players and fitters to increase or decrease the loft by as many as 1.5 degrees while also making the lie angle flatter or more upright. Combined with the moveable weights in the sole, the adjustable hosel can help fitters tweak and refine the spin rate and launch angle of drives for better performance.
