Callaway launches Opus, Opus Platinum wedges to TOUR players at Travelers Championship

This week at the 2024 Travelers Championship, Callaway has officially launched its new Opus and Opus Platinum wedges to PGA TOUR players.

While this is the world’s first official look at the final versions of the Opus line of wedges, Callaway staffers have actually been involved In the prototyping and design process for around two years, according to Callaway Tour Manager Joe Toulon.

“We’ve done a lot of work with this wedge in the prototyping stages," Toulon said on Tuesday at the Travelers Championship. "We really started digging into this category and understanding what the best players in the world look for in a wedge.”

Toulon and team paid close attention to the look at address, the shape of the leading edge, how the club sits on the ground with the face open, the shaping of the sole, the sound, the feel, and how the wedge interacts with the turf at impact under various conditions. Of course, Callaway’s research and design team has been studying the wedge category for decades, but this time around the power was in the hand of the TOUR pros.

The most significant barrier to entry for TOUR players is their first impression of the shape of the wedge at address.

“The shape is really something we spent a lot of time with, and getting it to look good to the majority of players – it’s something that you may not hit everybody’s eye exactly right, but this is something where we got countless hours of feedback and testing from TOUR players, and this is kind of the final product,” Toulon said. “I think one of the things that players really focus on when they set a wedge down for the first time is what it looks like at address, and what it looks like when you open the face, and we did a lot around that; the shaping and the roundness of this wedge.”

Toulon calls it the “final” product, because there were various iterations of the Opus wedges before this. Actually, these final versions of the Opus wedges are based on the sixth prototype, specifically.

"(The Opus wedge) was code named ‘S6’ during the process,” Toulon said. “We stamped every wedge out here (on the PGA TOUR) in this shape with S6, and that basically just stands for some of the shaping designs we went through. That was the sixth shape design that we settled on based on what the player feedback was. That’s really the whole story behind this wedge; TOUR-inspired, TOUR-driven. These guys out here designed this wedge. This is just the final cosmetic and final design that we went with.”

While all Callaway staffers were involved in the design in some way, there were a few notable achievements for the wedge along the way.

Chris Kirk, for example, was one of the first players to put an “S6” prototype wedge into play. It was at the 2024 Sentry, where he emerged victorious.

Not a bad start for the new wedge shape.

Then, Xander Schauffele won the PGA Championship with an Opus wedge protoptype in the bag, according to Toulon.

Then, Akshay Bhatia finished third in Strokes Gained: Around the Greens at the 2024 U.S. Open last week with an Opus wedge in the bag.

Now, the Opus wedges have reached the final stage: the official TOUR launch at the 2024 Travelers Championship.

On Tuesday at TPC River Highlands, Callaway unveiled a lineup of Opus wedges with four different grinds (C, W, S and T), as well as an Opus Platinum wedge with a C grind and “Tungsten” weighting inside the heads.

Unfortunately, the retail audience will still need to await further design and release information from the company, but for now, the Opus and Opus Platinum wedges are officially TOUR-player-approved.