Callaway officially launched the all-new Opus SP wedges at the first stop of the 2025 FedExCup Playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, a process that has been over a year in the making. The latest addition to the Opus wedge family has undergone an extensive process of TOUR validation, with feedback from PGA TOUR stars including major champion Xander Schauffele, as well as TOUR winners Akshay Bhatia, Thomas Detry, Si Woo Kim, Min Woo Lee and Chris Kirk.

The team at Callaway focused on three areas during the prototyping phase to land on the final design: launch, spin and shape. An emphasis was placed on the scoring zone – shots from 100 yards and in – where TOUR pros are looking specifically for lower launch and higher spin with pitch shots. Aesthetically, the top players were also looking for a design that would blend well into their irons. As a result, the final wedges on-site this week in Memphis, Tennessee, feature an all-new, spin-pocket construction with a distinct shape profile and a redesigned face and groove pattern.

Starting with the build of the 54-degree and higher lofts, Callaway added a gap between the face and trailing edge of the wedge – the spin pocket – saving around 20 to 25 grams in weight. The reasoning for this was to shift the center of gravity (CG) upwards in the club face. The combination of 1025 carbon steel and 8620 high-carbon alloy allowed Callaway to cast the head around the forged face with the air pocket.

“A significant amount of weight was saved from the spin pocket that then we could put in that flange and really drive the CG north and get those balls to stay down with launch and spin a ton,” said Johnny Thompson, Tour content manager for Callaway, on the new Opus lineup.

“It's that 30- or 40-yard shot that pros can hit where they're super shallow, they don't take a big divot, and the ball just comes off head high and it's moving super-fast and then hits the green and just absolutely slams the brakes. That's the shot that a lot of consumers or just fans of golf see, and they're like, 'How do you do this?' That's the hardest shot to hit. Anybody can kind of take a big swing and loft it up, hit a high, soft one now and then, but hitting that low zipper, that super shallow, low zipper is I think the shot that everybody, if you're not a good golfer, they see that and they're just like, 'Oh my gosh, I wish I could do that.'”

With the lowered launch covered due to the shift in CG, a new 17-degree groove angle with a tighter spacing was added to help with more friction between the clubface and the ball.

“The R&D team looked into that just as much as they did as raising the CG,” Thompson said. “You've got to have strong grooves because if you raise the CG and the ball just starts to trap down, but the ball's wanting to slide a little bit because the grooves aren't involved as much, you're just going to get a low launch and low spin, and that’s not good.

The final aspect of the TOUR validation from the Callaway team was working on a progressive shape profile through the wedge lineup.

Players were looking for a revised shape with the gap and pitching wedges to make the transition into their irons easier on the eyes. TOUR stars like Kirk, who qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs after a T5 finish at the Regular Season finale at the Wyndham Championship to jump inside the top 70 of the FedExCup, worked for over a year with the Callaway R&D team to come up with a design for the new Opus SP. Through multiple prototypes, the “shape six” design ultimately was the finish that Callaway landed on.

“The toe is a little bit higher and there's a little bit of a sharper toe and it was all with the intentions of blending with irons a little bit easier,” Thompson said. “It just seems that most players take their sand wedge or lob and that's just what they chip with, and so the 50- and 52-degrees being more shot from the fairway, and so we’re just making it to where if you're in between your pitching wedge and your 50, you're looking down and not seeing such a drastic change to the scoring wedge shape.”

Callaway has seen the quickest conversion of any of its wedge lineups, thanks to the validation on TOUR with elite pros, with 34 Opus SP models in play at the Wyndham in Greensboro, North Carolina, and more set to go in play this week at the first FedExCup Playoffs event.