On a related, but non-junior golf topic, I’ve been looking at how to fix the distance loss I seem to be experiencing as I get older. While I’ve been working on my swing, after playing with my Callaway X-Tour’s for the past 16+ years (wow), I thought it might be worth also examining my equipment. Enter Sub 70.

When it comes to brands, Sub 70 is right in my wheelhouse: they build customized high-performance clubs, offer excellent customer service, have a cool logo/brand persona, and do everything at reasonable prices. I’m no stranger to their database either, their sister company is Diamond Tour Golf, which is what I made Henry’s junior set with. If you haven’t heard of them, I strongly suggest you check them out.

They also were super nice on the phone and even sent the demo clubs with some goodies inside. Check out their Twitter to see how much their customers really love this company.

The Callaway X-Tour’s are a forged cavity back, so I wanted to try out the clubs that had would be closest in terms of forgiveness and might offer more distance. For that, I tested out Sub 70’s 639 CB, 699 Pro, and 699.

First Impressions

This might be my only critique here, but I was positively drooling over the black finish they offer in their CB and 699 Pro, but the demo clubs had a lot of wear on the face and bottom where the black finish is no longer visible. Granted, these are demo clubs and subject to a whole host of wear issues that aren’t normal, but it did confirm one fear that I had about the black clubs – that they wouldn’t wear as nicely over time. If I do decide to move forward, I will definitely choose the satin finish where the wear would be less conspicuous.

Other than that, all of the clubs (699 included) had a pleasing top line and looked similar to my X-Tours. The 639 CB which does not sport a large cavity back had the thinnest topline.

Feeling

All of the clubs felt pretty good, but the forged 639 CB definitely felt the best – when you hit it pure, it sure let you know. On the basis of feel alone, these were by far my favorite of the bunch. The 699 series definitely didn’t have the same feel – they felt a bit “clicky” to me (if that’s a thing). The feeling between the 699 Pro and 699 were virtually the same, with the exception that I was able to find the sweet spot a little more often on the 699 and the distance gains from that (and possibly the offset) made me favor it quite a bit more. On the 9 iron, they performed virtually the same.

Performance

I took the irons down to my local range which have Foresight hitting bays to test the perfomance of the irons. Because modern irons have stronger lofts than my older X-Tours, I expected them to fly about 10 yards further on average; however, they were also an inch shorter than my clubs, so I expect the total distance to be about +5 yards.

I didn’t have a lot of time on the launch monitor (I shared the time with Henry to distance gap his irons), so I can’t say these results wouldn’t change with a lot larger sample size (I’m sure they would), but I don’t disagree with the summarized results:

I found that the 699 tended to outperform the others based on my most important metric: distance. That makes sense because that is what the 699 was designed to do. I didn’t see an appreciable difference between the 699 Pro and the 639 CB. If I had to choose between them I would skew toward the 639 CB for the enhanced feel.

Final Thoughts

Based on my objective of distance, the 699 is clearly the way to go for me, but I’m still working my way through the feelings of giving up the buttery feeling that my X Tours currently provide – for something that feels a bit more like a “click”. That said, I really did enjoy the results of hitting the 699’s and will probably order at least a utility version of the 699’s to replace the hybrid that I typically struggle to hit.