William L. Coney Blog: First Look – Titleist TS Fairway Woods

If you’ve read our piece on the Titleist TS Drivers, you already know plenty about the TS platform and how it came to be. We can save quite a bit of time here because a good bit of what’s true for the TS Driver is also true for the TS Fairway Wood. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of overlap in the technologies.

Like the driver, the fairway woods feature Speed Chassis construction. That gets you faster face and an updated titanium crown that’s 27% thinner than the 917’s. That weight savings and the requisite reallocation of mass gets you an 11% boost in MOI.

Frankly, I’m not a huge proponent of sweating MOI in fairway woods. I’m not suggesting you should look for a low MOI option, but there’s one school of thought that says that if you’re a competent fairway wood player, forward CG (and the comparatively lower MOI that goes with it), often works better. Our testing hasn’t found a significant correlation between MOI and playability. The best advice we can give based on our testing is that once you find a fairway way that works, stick with it until you find something you’re certain outperforms it. I digress…

ARC Lives On

The noteworthy departure in construction from the driver is that with the fairway wood, not only does Active Recoil Channel carry on, it’s been improved. ARC 3.0 is taller and that improves its ability to preserve ball speed, most notably on the low face hits that are common with fairway woods.

As with the driver, TS fairways are available in two models.

TS2 Fairway

Titleist is billing the TS2 as the default bomber, while emphasizing that it’s significantly different from any fairway wood it has created made previously. It’s the higher launching distance machine in the lineup that Titleist says is its easiest to hit fairway ever.

Hedging just a bit, Titleist isn’t calling the TS2 mid-spin. While golfers have been conditioned to crave low spin, Titleist says the spin level as appropriate for a fairway wood to produce the desired performance. Super-low spin in a fairway isn’t always desirable. Playability should come first.

As with the TS2 driver, Titleist is describing the shape as modern as opposed to the traditional shape of the TS3.

The TS2 is available in lofts of 13.5°, 15°, 16.5°, 18°, and 21°. The 21° is available in RH only.

TS3 Fairway

The TS3 is the replacement for the 917F2. It offers a taller face, which makes it a bit better suited for golfers who like to hit 3-wood off the tee. Compared to the TS2, It offers a lower spin, flatter ball flight. Like the TS3 driver, it offers SureFit CG weighting, which when properly fit, can align the CG with your typical impact position and created a bit more ball speed.

The previous F2 proved popular enough with golfers that Titleist decided to expand the number of available lofts. The TS3 is available in 13.5°, 15°, 16.5°, and 18°. The 13.5° model is available in right-hand only.

Both TS Fairway models are 175cc and both feature SureFit Hosel adjustability which allows for independent loft and lie adjustments.

Stock Shafts

The stock shaft lineup is essentially the same as it is for the driver, though most are 10g heavier on average.

Kuro Kage Black Dual Core 55 (High Launch/Mid spin)
Tensei AV Blue 65 (Mid Launch/Mid Spin)
HZRDUS Smoke Black 70 (Low Launch/Mid Spin)
EvenFlow 75 (Low Launch/Low Spin)

Which TS Fairway is Right For You?

When choosing a TS fairway wood, Titleist suggests that you don’t make any assumptions based on the driver you fit into. “We don’t want people to approach them as if they’re Garanmials,” says Stephanie Luttrell, Director of Metalwoods Development at Titleist. “Don’t assume that if you fit into a TS2 driver, you’ll fit into a TS2 fairway. In early testing there’s been a lot of mixing and matching…what you need out of a driver might not what you need out of a fairway wood.”

There are plenty of us, for example, that need spin reduction with the driver, and a bit of help getting the ball in the air with the fairway. The latter has never been among my long list of issues, but I proved to be a mix and match guy. I was fit into a TS3 driver and a 13.5° TS2 fairway.

As with any other piece of golf equipment, the recommendation is to get fit. Failing that, try both and see which one gives you what you need from your fairway wood.