Review: Knuth High Heat TGS 257+ MetalwoodsI’ve been playing golf for a long time and have had many a memorable clubs in my bag over the years. I can fondly recall all of my best shots with each one of the thirteen clubs in my bag. Notice that I said 13 clubs and not 14? It’s because I’ve never owned a 3-wood that I was able to wield with any satisfaction.While my shortcoming may cause some of you to chuckle, I am sure there are many golfers who can sympathize with me. How many times have you had a reachable par 5 in sight with your 3 wood, only to top it or push it out of bounds? For me, too many to count. Long holes should be where we gain strokes, but I struggle not to lose them.To overcome this malady, I have tried many approaches over the years. Lessons, infomercial products, driving irons, crossover clubs… pretty much nothing worked. If my shot got off the ground, it wasn’t long enough. If it was long enough, it is usually nowhere near where I aimed it. 3-wood yips was to be by everlasting torment on the course.Then, back in August 2020 I had reported on discovering a promising new metal wood line up (Knuth High Heat 257+ Metalwoods: Illegal or Magical?) that claimed to be able lift my curse. Long story short, the US-based company claimed to have found a loophole in the USGA rules that permits a CT higher than the legal 257 µs on the heel and toe area. This results in essentially the same distance across the face, even on off-center hits.They also claimed that their novel Turf Glider Sole (“TGS”) technology works better than any other sole technology to deliver the club head to the ball with minimum loss in speed, and hence distance. Co-founders Dean Knuth and Steve Trattner are so confident in their clubs’ ability to help amateur golfers that they even offer a full price money-back guarantee. Again, having tried so many options in the past, I was duly skeptical when I first wrote about it.Since then, I and several of my friends in Korea purchased over a dozen Knuth clubs as a follow up to see if they would indeed help our game. Below are the feedbacks from six average golfers (age 42~59, handicap 8~18) who have been playing with Knuth High Heat 257+ fairway woods and hybrids over the past five months. The TGS sole let the head glide through the rough and even divots easily. The alignment aid on the crown frames the ball well. HIGH HEAT 257+ WOODS DESIGN/LOOKS: The color scheme is a black crown with two blue lines on a raised middle crown with a polished silver bottom. Most users reported that they felt confident over the ball as the shallow faced head nestled flat and square on the ground behind the ball. But for overall looks, it just wasn’t like the typical Japanese brand. AVERAGE SCORE: 7/10 FEEL/ACOUSTICS: The club face made a solid cracking sound that garnered mixed feedbacks. Some thought it sounded powerfully satisfying, while others didn’t see anything special about it. The club head felt light but solid. The users on the whole felt that the club provided decent but less than perfect feedback. That is, even when the shot felt off, the results were pretty good. AVERAGE SCORE: 8/10 Knuth’s Turf Glider Sole technology provides a “convex glider element” away from the face and inside the sole that creates an additional large bounce angle to correct “thin” and “fat” shots. LAUNCH/SPIN: The launch is generally high which would lead us to suspect that the spin numbers are high too. But this was not the case with the Trackman tests done by two of the golfers. The hotter face with higher CT at the toe/heel helped to retain high launch, but the spin remained relatively the same as our current gamers. As a result, the ball carried farther for better distance. Without going into too much number-based data, we collectively agreed that it was much easier to get the ball up and far with decent amount of spin. AVERAGE SCORE: 9/10 FORGIVENESS/ACCURACY: I originally envisioned that the toe/heel strikes with the 257+ clubs would be more disastrous thinking that the higher CT may somehow magnify my mistakes. Knuth’s website explains that its Optimal CG Game Changer Technology (lower and deeper center of gravity with higher MOI) resists twisting on impact for increased accuracy. Whatever it is, even the heel/toe shots flew high and far. It was by far the easier fairway woods any of us have tried. AVERAGE SCORE: 10/10 Even on off-center hits the ball went high and far; something I noticed quite often with my ball striking. DISTANCE: Golf is all about hitting your intended target, so accuracy is crucial. But without ample distance, we would have much less to crow about. All of us were extremely happy with the overall distance that the clubs provided, except for one golfer said that his 5 wood launched too high (he noted that it could be the shaft he chose to play). Since most amateurs miss the center of the face about 50% of the time, the hotter CT on heel/toe area definitely helped to increase our average distance by about 10-20 yards. In particular, two guys now power their 3-wood as far as their drivers. For me, I was happy to get my 3 wood up in the air on a consistent basis. The Turf Glider Sole also allowed me to hit my maximum distance out of all kinds of lies. Overall, these clubs provided better, straighter distance and restored my confidence in my fairway woods. AVERAGE SCORE: 9.5 /10 CONCLUSION: All six golfers agreed that the 257+ provided significantly better performance over their current gamers in terms of forgiveness, accuracy, and distance. My own problem with fairway woods is that I often top the ball with a sweeping stroke and have trouble getting the ball up in the air with enough carry. Even on what felt like solid hits, I often got a screaming hook or a maddening slice that flew limply. Since using the new woods however, I am getting the ball up high on a far more consistent basis with an extra boost in ball speed even on my off-center hits. They also proved to be fantastic out of the rough, fairway bunkers, uneven lies and even divots. As a result, the number of my bogies from falling short of the green dropped significantly. In particular, I now do much better on par 5 holes where I used to lose strokes from a poor second shot. “They don’t quite go with the rest of my clubs and bag, but with performance like these, I don’t mind!” Recently, I have been dubbed “Woo-Dal” by my friends, which roughly translates into ‘Expert in fairway wood usage’. Over the past five months, most of the clubs in my bag have changed many times with the exception of the High Heat 257+ TGS clubs. My friends report similar findings, which is quite amusing since most of us confess the looks are not to our taste. But there is no denying that we are hitting our best woods ever. So there you have it, folks. According to our experience, High Heat 257+ woods and hybrids are absolutely legit and we’ll be playing them for a while. If you have similar troubles as I’ve described, these innovative clubs may just be your answer. Written and submitted to GolfWRX.comby James Chang, Editor at All That Golf Review
