Smoothing out the rough edges

How times change. It's not so long ago that a macho image existed which decreed that nobody in the full of their health would even consider using a utility wood. Such old-fashioned ideas have been well and truly rubbished in recent years, and the proof is that a growing number of tour players - including the likes of Colin Montgomerie and Annika Sorenstam - have put such clubs into their bags, not just for advertising purposes but in actual competition.

Of course, it also helps that the club manufacturers know that most of us need as much help as we can get when it comes to playing golf, so the development of more forgiving woods was always on the cards .

Still, few companies have led the transformation as much as Callaway, who have helped change conceptions with the development of clubs such as the Big Bertha 7-Wood, otherwise known as the Heaven Wood, the 9-Wood (Divine Nine) and the 11-Wood (Ely Would): trend-setters that have proven difficult to emulate.

Certainly, our testers, Aonghus McAnally, a nine-handicap member of St Margaret's, and Paddy Cullen, an 18-handicapper playing out of Hermitage, were converted after spending a summer with the 7-wood in their bags. The expression, "standing in seventh heaven," comes to mind when describing their reactions to some shots which were performed using the club. Utility woods were developed in an attempt to take away some of the unforgiving nature associated with long irons and were designed to give higher trajectories and softer landings. Their beauty is that they can be used off the tee or from the fairway (or even from the semi-rough and rough) and, not surprisingly, handicap players of all levels have sung their praises as a consequence.

"Players will get the ball airborne and consistently hit the green, no matter how intimidating the hazards surrounding it," claim Callaway, and both Aonghus and Paddy are uniform in the respect they have discovered for the club.

Like the Big Bertha War Bird Driver and Fairway Woods, the utility woods feature an advanced internal-weighting system, the S2H2 (Short Straight Hollow Hosel) design, War Bird soleplate and shafts.

Recently, of course, Callaway have introduced the Big Bertha Steelhead range which, it is claimed, will be a further advancement for the utility wood with their innovative Hawk Eye sole which is designed to glide through rough with greater ease and has a lower centre of gravity.

Anyway, our testers found the utility 7-Wood to be very much to their liking and, on their observations, its future in the game is very secure indeed.