This is the cheap golf club that gave the RocketBallz family its name. According to TaylorMade, the engineers who developed the cluband a small number of Tour pros who were given a chance to hit the earliest prototypesall said that the 3-wood "hit the ball like a rocket."
 
Having a little fun, the engineers etched "RocketBallz" into subsequent refinements of the prototype, more as a code name than anything else. They never expected the name to stick, but it did, although it was shortened to RBZ on the sole.
 
Once you get past the name, the first thing you'll notice about the taylorMade rbz fairway wood

is a cavity carved in the sole. Positioned just behind the face, it is designed to increase the flexibility of both the face and the sole of the club to help increase ball speed.
 
Golfers will notice a weight plug positioned directly behind the cavity. In drivers, weights like this one are often positioned in the back to move the center of gravity lower and farther from the face to encourage a higher ball flight. In the RBZ fairways, TaylorMade has moved the center of gravity in these clubsforward.
 
"Historically, we've always said, let's move the center of gravity back to make the cheap golf clubs

 easier to play" says Tom Olsavsky, TaylorMade's senior direct of product creation. However, Olsavsky notes, most golfers hit their fairway woods and hybrids high in the face. He says the physics that helps you hit longer shots with your 460-cc driver doesn't help you as much with fairway woods because they feature a smaller head and shallower face. In order to get a higher launch angle, more ball speed and more carry distance, TaylorMade says that it moved the center of gravity in to keep it more aligned with where golfers actually hit the ball.
 
Olsavsky says the combination of the cavity and the forward adjustment of the center of gravity increased the RocketBallz ball speed by 3-4 mph over the Burner SuperFast 2.0.
 
"We have never seen a fairway wood that has gone right up to the USGA speed limit," Olsavsky says. "We had some things made from titanium that got close, but no one wanted to pay for taylorMade rbz drivers

 , so we're excited to be able to produce a product in a steel construction that goes right up to the USGA limits for coefficient of restitution [COR] and CT [the face's trampoline effect]."
 
Like the rest of rbz fairway wood

 and rescue offerings, the RocketBallz line features a white matte finish on the crown and a black face to aid in alignment. But unlike the R11 clubs, the RBZ models are not adjustableTaylorMade hasn't been able to incorporate moveable weights into a head that features a channel on the sole. (At least not yet.)
 
The fairway woods will be available in both standard and Tour models. The Tour version has a slightly smaller head, a more open face angle and a fade bias. Similarly, TaylorMade will offer a standard RBZ Rescue club and a Tour Rescue.