“A compact 175cc 3-wood with a 455 maraging cupped face and ultralight carbon crown - a low, workable player's fairway with real ball speed. Matches the TW757 drivers for the ballstriker's bag.”
A compact, deliberately traditional 175cc fairway wood built to look and sound like a tour club rather than a distance gadget — reviewers called its shape a 'traditionalist's dream,' compact and free of visual frills. Under that classic look sits real multi-material engineering: a 455 maraging-steel cup face paired with a lightweight carbon crown to drop the center of gravity, a sole slot parallel to the face to preserve ball speed on off-center hits, and a 9-gram tungsten weight at the back for a low-and-deep CG. In testing, a 15° head averaged 259 yards total with 242 yards of carry and 149.6 mph ball speed with tight dispersion, and reviewers singled out its dense, old-school persimmon-like sound as a standout feature in a category dominated by louder, more metallic-sounding heads.
Strong reviews and a distinctive sound signature, but no tour storyline, no scarcity, and no lasting enthusiast following beyond its review cycle — a well-built, well-liked players' fairway wood that came and went on Honma's normal product cadence without becoming a sought-after used club.
For better players who want a small, tour-shaped fairway wood with real speed and a satisfying feel/sound, and who are willing to trade some forgiveness for a compact profile. A high-handicap player chasing maximum ball-speed forgiveness on off-center hits would be better served by a larger, more forgiving modern fairway wood.
Released in 2022 as the fairway-wood companion to the TW757 driver and iron lineup, aimed at the same tour-shape-conscious buyer as competitors like the Titleist TSi2/TSi3 and Titleist T-series fairways of the period, rather than the max-forgiveness end of the market occupied by Callaway's Rogue ST Max or TaylorMade's Stealth HD.
The 455 maraging cup face and sole slot genuinely protect ball speed on mis-hits, and the low-and-deep CG from the 9g tungsten weight and carbon crown helps launch — solid mid-pack forgiveness for the category. But the compact 175cc profile is deliberately smaller and less MOI-forgiving than a modern max-game-improvement fairway wood, trading some forgiveness for shape and workability.
Calibrated across the whole catalog — a tour blade scores low here on purpose; it means control, not ease.
Retailing around $415 new, used examples typically sell for roughly $150-$220 depending on shaft and condition — a moderate depreciation curve consistent with a niche-brand fairway wood with limited but steady demand from players who specifically want the compact Honma shape.
Reading is one thing — hitting is another. Book a bay and see the numbers for yourself before you buy anywhere.
