Courtesy: Golf Punk Magazine

In his 2005 book, The Search for the Perfect Golf Club, Tom Wishon - the guru of club designing - takes the USGA to task for limiting the COR of drivers and shutting the door on the future of club design.

But rather than cry over spilt milk, Wishon says, club designers began searching through the bag for a new direction. And it appears they've found it.

Wishon says - and remember, this is back in 2005- that better performing fairway woods will be one major direction in which to move club design.

"...there are some face design changes that will allow us to create a marked improvement in the ball speed generated by the 3-, 5-, and 7-woods and actually get their COR up there at the [USGA] limit imposed for the drivers", he says in his book.

Translation: look for fairway woods that are much, much longer.

And the big boys have done just that. Callaway has introduced the FT-i Squarewood, a club with the square-head look of its driver.

The club has a stainless steel face fused to a carbon crown. The clubface is 208 cubic centimeters which, apparently, makes it bigger than the old Big Bertha drivers.

But the bottom line is much more distance with a 3-wood than ever before.

Callaway, of course, is not the only manufacturer doing this. All the corporate club designers know what Tom Wishon knew in 2005 and they've now created the next generation of fairway woods.

The beauty of these new woods is that they will give the amateur as much distance off the tee as many drivers. And they'll be much easier to hit. That's a huge advantage for the golfer who is afraid of his off-the-shelf 460cc driver with the 45 inch shaft (as Wishon says, 45 inches is about an inch longer than the tour players use. Tiger plays with a 43 inch shaft).

For once, we have technology that can and will live up to the advertising and marketing hype.