50 Words or Less
The TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge is immediately recognizable for its distinctive look. Now fully forged, it’s a complete short game tool available in a wide range of configurations.
Introduction
While many wedges keep to a traditional look, the TaylorMade Hi-Toe franchise goes its own way. Now in its fifth iteration, the innovative choices made by TaylorMade have shown that this line has staying power and that golfers are interested in continuing to game these wedges cycle after cycle. The Hi-Toe series has been defined by its distinctive shaping, with a pronounced “high toe” teardrop face shape, grooves milled across the entirety of the face, and a signature aged copper finish. The TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedges are the first of the series to feature fully forged construction.
Looks
Not all wedges shout their identity so loudly. In the bag, even the more casual gear heads among us are likely to be able to identify the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge. The hallmarks are clear: a medium to large sized clubface with an unusually pronounced high toe portion, grooves milled all the way across the face on the higher lofted wedges, and an aged copper finish that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.
For the Hi-Toe 5, TaylorMade is also offering a PVD black and a satin chrome finish, but it’s hard to imagine the aged copper not being the most popular by a wide margin. It’s a color that, unlike the others, promises to age beautifully.
Taking a closer look at the details, you can see that the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge features some beautiful precision milling, particularly on the sole and out near the toe where there’s a touch of extra mass to aid shots struck on the toe. There’s also a system of impressive-looking laser-etched diagonal lines between the grooves which TaylorMade calls Spin Tread Technology. It’s designed to displace moisture at impact. At address, the club again makes itself known very clearly. The face looks big and inspires confidence in the player.
Players who want to customize the look of their wedges may want to take advantage of TaylorMade’s MyHi-Toe 5 program. This is available on TaylorMade’s website that allows players one extra grind option and a bunch of stamping options. There are also a variety of custom ferrules and paint fills for an additional $50 per club. [See Price / Buy]
Sound & Feel
When you know a club is fully forged, you expect a certain level of softness and responsiveness in the sound and feel. The TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge delivers on that front. Chipping with a premium golf ball felt very good, with a subtle and precise resonance through the hands at impact. On a spectrum between a high-pitched ‘click’ and a low-pitched ‘tock’, I found it to be closer to the low end of things. While one of the benefits of the Hi-Toe wedges is that you can utilize all of the face, the sound and feel definitely takes a hit the further you stray from the center.
On fuller swings, the volume and resonance of the sound and feel is pumped up a bit in a way that is very pleasant. It’s not quite the softest feeling wedge I’ve ever hit and part of me wonders if that’s due in part to all of the technology applied to the clubface itself, but I don’t want to split hairs too much. It’s a good feeling forged wedge and I think that players who have gamed previous iterations of the club (check out Matt’s review of the Hi-Toe 4 wedge HERE) will be pleased with it.
Performance
In past wedge reviews, I’ve commented on the fact that wedges contain comparatively few places to add differentiating technology. While that’s still true compared to drivers and putters, the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge shows that wedges can utilize unique technology in search of performance gains, too.
Let’s begin with the most obvious differentiators, the high toe shape and full face grooves. These have stayed consistent since the introduction of the Hi-Toe line and it’s easy to understand why. Besides the fact that Hi-Toe would cease to be Hi-Toe without a “high toe,” there’s the function that this shape and the full face grooves are serving. Namely, to increase the functional size of the hitting area and improve results on shots that end up struck elsewhere on the face. This is one of the biggest strengths of the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge.
One interesting aspect of this performance feature is the fact that it’s combined with a relatively compact, player-preferred shape rather than a chunky, oversized game improvement shape. It aims to increase forgiveness without sacrificing playability. This gives the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge a unique positioning and provides something different in a market that typically pushes playability or forgiveness. During my testing, I found that I was able to manipulate the face and play different kinds of short game shots using both higher lofted wedges.
While the high-toe shape and full-face grooves are easy to see, there’s something interesting going on with the grooves themselves. The saw-milled grooves featured in the Milled Grind series now show up here. If saw milling doesn’t conjure a specific image for you, I was in the same boat. According to TaylorMade, it produces grooves with “steeper sidewalls and sharper internal radii” than conventional milled grooves, generating more spin.
While that sounds suspiciously similar to how one might describe a square or U-shaped groove, those were banned in 2010, and the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge is fully conforming. As always though, OEMs work hard to develop products that approach the legal limit without crossing the line, and that seems to be what’s happening here as well.
The clubface on the TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge features a RAW finish and the laser-etched micro-channels mentioned earlier. Both of these technologies are designed to minimize the impact of water on the face. During my testing, I took them out early for a dew sweeping round with no shortage of water on the ball and club face. I thought the performance was very impressive, especially on 40-70 yard pitches from fairway or rough. I found that these wedges produced enough spin to get the ball to stop quickly, even in suboptimal conditions.
The TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge is available in 5 sole grind shapes, with the ATC lob wedge grind only available through the custom MyHi-Toe 5 program. I tested the 52 and 56 degree in the ATS grind and the 60 degree in the ATV. The ATS is the versatile, do-it-all kind of grind, and I found it was a good fit for me, playing a variety of shots in different turf conditions.
I also appreciate that the gap wedge is presented without the full face grooves as typically it’s a club utilized from the rough or fairway on full swings. Around the green shots that tend to use more of the face take place with the more lofted wedges. [See Price / Buy]
Conclusion
The TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 wedge provides an impressive array of technologies in a relatively compact, player-preferred package. Its appearance is an acquired taste, but you can’t argue with results. These wedges would be a great fit for anyone who has enjoyed playing full face wedges before or someone who thinks they could use a bit more forgiveness around the greens but doesn’t want to move into a heftier “game improvement” style wedge. [See Price / Buy]
Hi-Toe 5 wedges are fully forged from soft carbon steel and designed with precision geometry to deliver world-class feel and feedback out of all lies and conditions.
TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 Wedge Price & Specs
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