TaylorMade Kalea Premier Women’s Driver Review
TaylorMade’s goal with the new Kalea range was to produce the absolute best clubs for ladies across a broad spectrum of playing styles. It ran focus groups across four countries, asking over 15,000 lady golfers of varying abilities what they wanted in a driver and even built an advisory panel made up of female PGA professionals. The result, in our opinion, is one of the best golfer drivers for women TaylorMade has ever built.
(Image credit: Carly Frost)
The Kalea Premier women’s driver has 12.5 degrees of loft as standard and is constructed in pieces, with a super lightweight carbon crown and sole, a 22-gram steel back weight to help you launch the ball higher and TaylorMade’s corrective ‘Twist Face’ to help straighten out your heel and toe mis-hits. There’s also a flexible ‘Speed Pocket’ channel behind the face that expands the sweet spot, giving you an added boost of ball speed and forgiveness on low face strikes. The overall club weight is 10g lighter than its predecessor, the Kalea 3 driver, which should make it even easier for the slower swinging lady to gain yards off the tee.
(Image credit: Carly Frost)
Aesthetically, this driver shares many design and visual elements of the SIM2 drivers, which is no bad thing. I first tested the Kalea Premier driver on the challenging Marco Simone 2023 Ryder Cup course in Rome. This tour-standard course demands long and accurate tee shots with some substantial carry distances off the red tees to avoid punishing fairway bunkers and well-placed penalty areas. From the moment I picked it up I loved it. The light feel and balance of weight is perfect. It’s effortlessly easy to swing. The huge head sits boldly behind the ball, looking impossible to miss, making it one of the best women’s golf clubs for boosting confidence over the ball.
I found the launch to be high with a noticeable draw-bias to the flight, allowing me to gently shape shots with added distance. The pleasing impact sound, resulting from the clever design elements inside the head, makes you want to hit this club again and again. My mis-hits off all corners of the face still flew a decent distance and, most importantly, when I made a bad swing I kept the ball in play, avoiding the brutal long rough. The lovely tacky grip is the perfect size for smaller ladies’ hands, too.
(Image credit: Carly Frost)
It’s hard not to love the color of this club, the intense dark blue head with a subtle shimmer finish is accented by bold white edging lines that really focus your eye on accurately aiming the club.
Another appealing element to the Kalea Premier driver is that it is fully customizable, including a variety of shaft and grip options as well as the ability to tweak loft and lie. As Michelle Penney, the Principle Product Development Engineer for TaylorMade, rightly says: “The shrink it and pink it formula no longer works for women golfers,” and she’s absolutely right. We’re as diverse and discerning as the men and a one-size-suits-all ladies club just doesn’t do all of our games’ justice. So while this driver does come in at a premium price this is certainly an investment worth making and I applaud TaylorMade for going that extra mile for us lady golfers.