TROY, MI—A golf club is deceptively simple. It has no moving parts. Its sole purpose is to strike the ball and propel it forward.

And yet, a lot of science goes into making golf clubs. Manufacturers invest significant sums in designing new lines of clubs. Modern clubs can be made from steel, stainless steel, graphite, aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber composite. The latest “sticks” offer high-tech features, including adjustable hosels, high-speed face inserts, and even sensors, such as accelerometers, that record and analyze a player’s performance. 

Small wonder that the global market for golf clubs was valued at $4.05 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a cumulative annual rate of 3 percent over the next five years.

One of those makers is Cleveland Golf. Based in Huntington Beach, CA, the company began in 1979 producing replicas of classic golf clubs. Today, Cleveland makes a variety of high-tech clubs for players of all skill levels.

The company’s latest product is the HiBore XL Driver. The clubhead has been designed for enhanced forgiveness and sound. With one of the largest ball-striking faces in the industry, the club helps amateur golfers gain distance while keeping more tee shots in play.

The face pattern maximizes flex at impact to enlarge and reshape the sweet spot, improving energy transfer across the face for added forgiveness, consistency and ball speed. The clubhead has been aerodynamically designed to achieve more consistent delivery at impact.

In the rear of the club is a 12-gram adjustable weight, offering the ability to change the club’s swing weight. In addition, the driver features a 1.5-degree adjustable hosel sleeve, enabling golfers to fine-tune their loft, face and lie angles.

An 8-gram weight tucked into the end of the shaft counterbalances the club for more control without extra effort. This helps the club feel lighter on takeaway and stay stable through impact.

None of these features came about by accident. Cleveland engineers got a lot of help from simulation and design software created by Altair Engineering Inc.

“Altair’s technology and expertise is helping Cleveland Golf shape the future of golf,” said Sam Mahalingam, chief technology officer at Altair. “Technologies like simulation, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and digital twin are opening a new world of possibilities for sports equipment manufacturers. Altair is excited to see how leading manufacturers like Cleveland Golf can use these tools to transform the way professionals and nonprofessionals alike play their favorite sports.”

Cleveland Golf utilized an array of products within the Altair HyperWorks platform to craft the HiBore XL, allowing the team to perform concept evaluation, rapid design exploration, physics-based simulation and optimization, and design for manufacturing. The flexibility of the Altair HyperWorks platform allowed Cleveland Golf to explore a multitude of feasible designs—an exploration that would have been impossible with physical testing alone.

“With the HiBore XL, we sought to equip players with a driver unbound by the traditional limits of shaping, delivering exciting new performance accomplishments. Altair empowered us with the technology to do just that,” said Jacob Lambeth, research engineering supervisor at Cleveland Golf.

With the HiBore XL, Cleveland’s objective was to break free from traditional geometry, while still meeting club requirements set forth by the United States Golf Association. Altair HyperWorks provided the team with the advanced design and simulation tools needed to rapidly iterate new designs. In addition, Cleveland and Altair co-created a custom ribbing optimization process that helped club maker to find rib configurations that increased the driver’s stiffness while saving weight. The process helped the Cleveland Golf team enhance the club’s sound and improve its center of gravity and moment of inertia.