Callaway Smoke AI irons Review

Taking a look at the new callaway iron offerings in the SMOKE AI, SMOKE AI HL and SMOKE AI FAST MAX. See how each will work for each type fo the golfer.

Sweeter from every spot on an iron is that even possible let’s check this out Next welcome back to my golf shop Jim M clear here seven time Golf Digest best America’s Club fitter and we’re going to be talking about the Callaway’s new AI smoke line before we do that if you would like subscribe hit all that stuff across the bottom so this information

Gets out to the YouTube Universe also join us for our live streams that are on Monday 5:30 or 17:30 uh Eastern Time on YouTube Facebook X all right you’ll enjoy it’s the same stuff just talking to me live all right so we’ve done a bunch bunch of

Irons right we’ve done the we’ve done the Cleveland that was quite a surprise we’ve done the mauno um it was a very good club and not a surprise and uh and now we’ve got these right and we’re waiting on one more uh we’re waiting on Wilson to come in and

They should be here soon so I’m starting with the irons first get the swing going and then we’re going to get into the hybrids and the woods and that kind of stuff so that you get a better look from a club maker Club fitter perspective instead of just a a swing professional

Perspective all right uh AI smoke AI smoke obviously artificial intelligence everybody’s jumping on this bandwaggon lots of computers thousands of shots and all that stuff okay well far as I know Callaway did this first they got a supercomputer I don’t know how many other ones did but they got a

Supercomputer they got experts looking at it and for the last four or five years they’ve been talking about all the technology wrapped up into it and the fact that there’s this face that the computer’s been working on this year they say quarter of a million shots all over the planet we’re

Going to make a face that is the best most forgiving face on the planet right and and and so this is running around and what this is is kind of a it’s just a uh advertising thing to show you what’s going on and of course in the

Heel and the toe is where the biggest gains are received now that’s the same thing for this guy right here what they’re talking about is on a normal iron it would only go X distance what they’re saying is now with this face it will go X distance plus whatever

Yards they say and the driver it’s plus 12 and plus 11 toe and heel so does that mean that all the other technology has been removed no no it has not they have a still have a big weight down here at the bottom uh they still have the you

Know the AI phase this is a hollow body okay Hollow bodies are going to be very popular all right very popular this year because well they work why do they work well they have number one they have a good cosmetic appearance they have that blade look in the bag you know we all

Want to look cool with the blade look and then it has the perimeter weighted forgiveness that most of us or if not all of us need right so this is a uh the AI smoke has a very little offset to me has a compact look at a dress okay it

Also has in the sole what they call the pre-worn grind and what that is is right in the front of this in the Leading Edge there’s a basically a scallop so that the whole club’s not a digger that it gives it gives you better Turf interaction now the tailin and the the

Leading Edge are both rounded and the middle is a little flatter for better Turf interaction the top line is tapered downward away from the Leading Edge to give it a smaller appearance now if you were to tilt it correctly it would look just like the typical uh Callaway Top

Line but they’re trying to make it look smaller and so that’s what it is the club’s a little stronger so we expect to go a little further I really have uh high hopes for this one the one of the other the two remaining are the uh smoke High launcher

HL and the other one is smoke High launch fast now the difference is is that this is the high launch a traditional look right it’s a traditional look in an iron right it’s a uh big cavity back lots of weight down at the bottom a little longer in the sole a little

Longer in the sole a more offset more offset and wider in the sole now if you look at this one the the trailing Edge is really chamfered off quite a bit it still has kind of a pre-worn look to it but it is wider so

This one has a lot of uses for say the beginning golfer or the golfer that takes a huge divot or the golfer trying to help with uh remove some of that slicing that’s going on this will be that kind of guy now there’s a lot of

Weight down here in the bottom just like in the other one but this is more worked into the club and yet you can see it yes it also has the face so that’ll be more forgiving now what is the fast the fast is basically the same thing only lighter

Right so the idea here here is the idea here is that if it’s lighter you’re going to gain some swing speed you’re going to get some distance back the whole n yards so who is that for well older golfers or even younger golfers right you get into those

Tweeners what I call in the the early teenage years that just haven’t quite got that muscle development going on and this could be a very very good club for them so keep that in mind when we go out there okay so what I’m using in this one

Is an Elevate 95 elevate .95 and I’m putting in an rlex all the other stuff I’ve been trying has been rlex I figured let’s keep it the same way so before we go we go to the shop and I measure length that’s the first thing I look for and when I’m

Going through the the information that the Callaway folks provide in the high launch they and in the Smoke they talk about eeking up eing up the the length a little bit so in the high launch that I got a 37 and A2 in seven iron which is

A/ an inch long in my book uh on the other one I got 37 and A4 now if you read their information that’s correct okay that’s correct by their standard personally I don’t like that idea I don’t like the idea of making clubs longer for just the idea that you’re

Going to hit it further that I believe that couldn’t be anything further from the truth uh the quality of your impact is what’s really going to guide this and if your Club is too long long you have the capability of hitting it fat if it’s too short you have the capability of

Hitting it thin those are the easy ones now uh if you’re a taller person or you swing up and out maybe that’s just the way it goes and we want that kind of thing however uh that’s where we got to that’s where you got to really go get

Fit go get fit for the length the LI angles your set makeup grip size weight of the club the whole nine yards and just so that you enjoy Golf and your scores could go low all right so what else did we measure well we measured frequency the Elevate 95 is a very butt

Soft shaft all right and because of that if you put in a frequency machine it’s going to come out light and it did right it came out light it came out well below the regular range uh so what does that mean smoother golfers could really really like this club I don’t consider

Myself to be very aggressive but my left hand which is the hand that makes me pull uh can get into it a little bit more uh I think I can you know hit this thing without it without it going way right or left on me so we’re going to

Use it I think it’s going to be fun all right so what else did we get well we got these specs and the Loft on the AI smoke was 28 where the high launch was 31 so if everything is right in the world the smoke should go a lot further

Than the HL and then the L angles were within a half of a degree with each other so we’re looking pretty decent even for these are demol irons so for demol irons these aren’t too bad they’re well within the spec we’re doing a lot of good here uh so let’s go hit

Them okay so here we are with the smoke HL and I have got 10 hits a piece I believe yep 10 shots so let’s see how this one went flew out of course I expect it to go to my inside fairly tight pattern even if it is to the

Inside and if you look the distances aren’t really radically bad or you know I’m not like a bunch of seesaws or a saw tooth they’re very very close to one another not too bad not too bad at all okay the smoke HL or the regular smoke this thing uh

This one over here is a little bit tragic but it was a big pull I wanted to leave that in there to show you again if you look here I’m more towards the center not as tight as the HL but we’re going to see what that means here in

Just a little bit all right so if we were to get into a grouping here the smoke HL looks a little tighter but the only reason why is because this guy right here is way out there and I’m just leaving it out there to show you guys

What it’s going to look like when we’re all done so if we look at again the smoke if you look here’s the center line uh quite a few on the center within the 10 yard Mark matter of fact only two of them really if we go to the HL 1 2 3 4

Are in and the five the rest are kind of a Polish nature of which I expect and we’re going to try and keep five so I’m going to keep these five right here because they these are well let’s go back and I’m going to show

You so if we look up in here this is where I was hitting it with a standard length and I was hitting it fat and then I turned around I choke down and I hit these then I went back and I went back to the normal and there it was it came

Right back again so again there is something to be said about length okay I just wanted to show you guys that before we started modifying stuff so here we go let’s take out that one and we’re going to take out that one and we’re going to take out that

One and we’re going to take out that one and there’s 1 2 3 4 5 six and that that one so there we go with that one right now let’s go back to this guy now I want to show you this one just because it it’s a real it’s a bomb is

What it is uh that’s the sixth one or the fourth shot we’re going to go back and we’re going to look at this one uh almost a 180 shot with a seven iron but it’s a tremendous pull so that is a I mean it’s a great shot haha but it’s

It’s uh it’s a pull and I would just much like a false negative I’m going to call one a false positive and I’m going to take that one out all right so we’re going to leave we’re going to go for these guys right here and see what we

Can find with that so we’re going to get that one that one we’re going to keep all right one more that one so there you go not not it doesn’t look nearly as tight but it’s more Center Line so that’s what we’re looking at so if we go back and we look

And again when we did the compar comparison I looked earlier this was more of a 175 178 or this is 164 to 165 taking out a couple of those really bad shots uh and my smash factors were way off as well so what do we now have those

Are what you saw me take them out those are basically the best shots left in the in the bag so we’re looking at uh 172 173 versus 167 uh 170 now this is not unexpected right because because this club is much much stronger than this one

Um this one was much straighter where we knew that this one was going to be to the right we’re talking about about a mile and a half difference so it’s not making up that and I’m uh hitting them about the same a 137 smash factor with a

Seven iron actually is pretty good and my spin rates uh almost 6,000 with as as strong as that is and just at 5,000 I will say they’re it’s average it’s not it’s not outside or it’s not the top end or low end I think that’s right down the middle uh classification

Is straight where the other ones a fade although this thing thinks I’m right-handed instead of left-handed my angles of attack are in pretty decent shape now let’s go back and take another look so there we go little tight pattern but it’s between 10 yards and 20 yards

Where this guy is a little bit more down the middle okay so now let’s take a look at this one one more time we’re going to see this and we got a tail of basically two clubs a polar right down the groove and then we got this one which was a little bit

Tighter a little bit more predictable going down that way okay so we saw what they did they wasn’t unexpected let’s go talk about who they fit and how much we liked it all righty so the the regular smoke AI did exactly what we thought it was going to do it

Was going to go further by about five yards because there’s that much difference in the loft the what’s surprising was the HL was a little bit tighter in its in its Landing however it was to the my inside quite a bit all right and it’s a lot of

Offset and we figured that was going to happen um I did like the feel of the club the club looks really good at a dress both of them actually do none of them there’s nothing that would take your interest or your eye away from trying to hit the

Golf ball that’s really when we look at at at golf clubs at a dress it’s we look down at it but are we looking at the golf club are we looking at the golf ball or both and normally there might be some design criteria that you like that

Maybe gets your attention and takes it away from what you should be doing in that swing in the club in this particular instance it does not the top lines are very muted uh there is a definite notice in the offset in the club where the other one is not and with

My Tendencies to pull a less less offsetted Club will work very very well um I would like to have seen a little bit of Tighter and that could have easily have been because of the shaft that I was using however I know I didn’t

Hit a lot of solid shots and you got to see that one I cleaned out to 180 that was just a crazy shot but uh the ones that I were hitting hard into the turf were finishing in the high 160 so not bad the same thing is true for the high

Launch the high launch was uh not as far but you get you dig into the turf and you weren’t losing a lot uh from a mish hit right from a mish hit so all in all does the face sweeter from all those different spots well number one I’m not

Trying to hit it from everywhere I’m just trying to get it into the middle of the phase obviously as a amateur golfer I’m not going to do that but you know around the center I’m not going to try and hit a toe shot why and but if you’re

Into the toe quite a bit maybe this would be something that you want to look for for so who do I think these are for the AI smoke less offset smaller sole design very strong in its uh Loft angles right so if you’re looking for distance

Certainly this is the club to look for if you got if you can control your swing and you’re not flaring it right and left either way dramatically this could work if you’re a guy that doesn’t take a super heavy divot this one will work if

You like uh a more of a players Club add a dress you’ll very much like this club that’s the AI smoke so the HL or the high launch so the high launch a little longer in its blade length a little more offset a little bit wider sole a little bit

Weaker in its Loft so you can get the club up in the air the idea is that you hit the club higher it travels a little further as opposed to hitting a bullet and falling and you’re relying on Roll okay who’s this for well guys with the

Maybe a little slower swing speeds guys that tend to Hood the ball a little bit with the offset maybe you have a problem with the fade uh guys that take very large divots or actually get in the turf almost chopping like chopping wood kind of stuff uh this club would work very

Very well to the point I think I’ve set a record with this in that we put it in the we put it in my fitting cart and within an hour I’d already sold a set of the high launch and it actually outperformed the smoke because this

Golfer fit into the high launch not into the smoke okay then you got the max fast so the fast is basically a lighter version of that it’s going to try and be longer it’s going to be lighter and in order to get swing speed so if you’re

That type of person uh you’re going to want either have a flattened uh swing plane right a swing plane or you’re going to want to get a proper link so you can get it now again like I said earlier this is for maybe a beginning golfer whose muscles aren’t quite developed just yet

That tweener that person that’s just getting into golf that wants to see Callaway in their bag or the older golfer whose swing speed has declined and they’re trying to find a little bit more speed in their club uh and with lighter equipment okay so hopefully like

You like what you saw put some comments down in show notes and we’ll answer them as best we can don’t forget our live stream on Mondays at 17:30 or 5:30 p.m. or and Eastern Standard Time for the same thing that we’re talking about here and as always let’s see your scores go low