Category: Review

I’m an admitted fan of Mizuno irons. Years back I reviewed the MP-58s and enjoyed them immensely. Before that I’ve gone through other irons from Mizuno such as the T-Zoids. I only strayed from Mizuno once during that time but quickly came back with a lot of success and great iron shots.

The pure muscle-back MP-4 from Mizuno keeps the train going. I’ve gone from muscle-back to progressive/hybrid a couple times before. Normally there is a bit of an adjustment period and a player can feel the difference and give up some playability and/or feeling. How did the MP-4s feel and perform? Read on to find out.

Continue reading “Mizuno MP-4 Irons Review”

I learned the game of golf on a pair of cut down clubs: a Mizuno pitching wedge and an Orlimar 3-wood, so both brands have always had a place in my heart.

Orlimar, a fairway metal giant back in the 1990s, has fallen off the map after head designer, and the driving force behind the company’s greatness, Jesse Ortiz left in 2003. Ortiz has long been one of the game’s most recognizable club designers, dating back to the days of permission woods. Though maybe not the best businessman, Ortiz had proven himself to be among the most innovative club designers in golf since joining Bobby Jones Golf a little less than a decade ago.

Ortiz and the higher-ups at Bobby Jones Golf have purposely limited the company’s scope to avoid stretching it thin, focusing on drivers, fairway woods, and hybrids. Bobby Jones, with input from Dave Pelz, also formerly sold wedges with a firm, wear-resistant face backed by a polymer membrane, but those are no longer being made. A short-lived lineup of irons has met the same fate.

If you’re going to review a Jesse Ortiz club though, it’s got to be a fairway metal. Let’s get into it.

Continue reading “Bobby Jones Blackbird By Jesse Ortiz Fairway Woods Review”

I’m not a PING guy. It’s not that I have anything against the company, but there are so many choices out in the market that I’ve just never really given them proper consideration. It may be because some other companies shove their marketing in your face all the time, or PING’s pros don’t have the star power (Bubba excluded) of some of its competitors. Either way, I have never given them a fair shake, so when the opportunity arrived for me to review a set of PING G30 irons, I jumped at it.

As a high handicap player, I made a switch to a set of game improvement clubs last year and I haven’t looked back since. I like to hit high iron shots that land softly on the greens. I also like to know that when I miss the center of the clubface, I’ll still be able to get the ball somewhere near the vicinity of my target. I don’t get to spend as much time on the golf course as I’d like, so it’s nice to know that my inconsistent contact won’t hurt my score too much.

Cue the G30 irons. They are the latest offering in the G line of clubs. Like its predecessors, the G30 irons are game improvement clubs. This means they are designed to promote a higher launch angle, increase distance, and maximize forgiveness; everything I’m looking for in an iron. How do they perform in my hands? Read on, to find out.

Continue reading “Ping G30 Irons Review”

Anybody who has paid any attention at all to the golf equipment industry in the last few years knows that TaylorMade tends to flood the market with club after club, each promising to add more yardage than the last. While that hasn’t changed too much, the company has slowed things down and trimmed their offerings back a bit. Earlier in the year, the company re-introduced the Tour Preferred line of clubs which featured muscle backs, muscle cavities, and cavity back models. While consumers should be able to find a set that fits their game there, the company has given us one more option, the SLDR irons.

With the SLDR irons, TaylorMade hopes to follow the success that they have seen with the drivers and woods of the same name. Many golfers found longer drives by lofting up with a club with low and forward CG, and with the SLDR irons, the company hopes to add more distance throughout your bag. Read on to see if we think the SLDR irons are as good as TaylorMade says they are or if they are just another set soon to be replaced and forgotten.

Continue reading “TaylorMade SLDR Irons Review”

In a swing of the marketing winds, a few companies are eschewing the “players’ club” designation in favor of an everyman approach. You have most likely seen that Titleist is pitching the Pro V1 for all ability levels and swing speeds this season. The PING i25 driver is carrying a similar message. But can a low-spin driver really be a fit for elite and hacker alike? We’ll take a closer look at the i25 to find out.

The i20, PING’s previous offering in this line, was a nice lower-hitting, lower spinning driver. For the i25, PING made a few important changes that should reap big benefits for golfers. The biggest differences in the i25 from the i20 are the addition of an adjustable hosel, racing stripes on the crown, and a new family of PING shafts that provide a consistent swingweight regardless of which i25 and PWR shaft you choose.

Continue reading “Ping i25 Driver Review”

Rebranding a popular line of golf clubs has got to be a very daunting task. If you are from my generation, you remember the first popular metal golf clubs to hit were the Big Bertha line of drivers from Callaway. The market share at the time was very big; they ruled the “oversized” driver market until TaylorMade got wise to shift to titanium.

In the last five years, Callaway got away from Big Bertha line and frankly has struggled to find their identity. The most recent woods from Callaway have rebranded the Big Bertha line with new logos in particular a cartoon version of Sir Isaac Newton and his famous apple. They have also modernized the graphics and lettering of the Big Bertha clubs. They also released two drivers: the Big Bertha and the Big Bertha Alpha. You can read the other Big Bertha review here, this review is for the Alpha driver.

For the review I was given a nine degree driver along with a Stiff Fubuki Shaft. Let’s dive in to see how this club performs.

Continue reading “Callaway Big Bertha Alpha Driver Review”

Just a few years ago, Callaway’s lineup of irons was bloated, confusing, and redundant. They had a few uninspired options for better players, and had clearly put all of their effort into the game improvement market.

Several years later, Callaway’s lineup has been completely transformed. Along with the holdover X Forged from a year ago, they’re introduced two new lines: X2 Hot, and Apex.

Callaway didn’t approach the Apex line lightly, and it shows. The label was originally made famous as the name of a line of Hogan clubs. After Callaway bought the Hogan brand in the early 2000s, both the “Hogan” and “Apex” names were retired, a development that many better players lamented, especially as Callaway recycled the Hogan “Edge” label into a set of gaudy game-improvement irons and despite Callaway’s recent sale of Hogan to Perry Ellis.

As Callaway’s most forgiving forged set of irons, the Apex irons need to strike a balance between appealing to both high- and low-handicappers, which is not easy to do. Let’s see how they made out.

Continue reading “Callaway Apex Irons Review”

Over the last few years, Callaway has come out with a number of different products with all sorts of different names. From the RAZR Fit and X Hot to Octane and Diablo, it seems that the company has rolled out model after model in search of an identity. However, if there is one product line that defines the company, it is the Big Bertha. When the original version of the Bertha came out, it was all about distance but through the years the company has strayed from the name trying to capture the next great thing. Now it seems that the next great thing is an old one after all, or at least one with an old name. The new version of the Big Berth is bigger and meaner and promises even more distance than ever before.

Continue reading “Callaway Big Bertha 2014 Review”

Over the last couple of years there has been no company that puts out more products than TaylorMade. It seems that every time you blink an eye they have a new driver, wood or set of irons that is suppose to add another 15 or 20 yards to your game via different technologies that are built into the clubs.

That’s all well and good, and during that time, they’ve done a great job marketing to the weekend warrior but at some point, it seemed like they lost touch with the more serious golfer. This year, that tune has changed and the company has brought back their “Tour Preferred” line of irons. The line has three different models; the first is their muscle back or MB model and is for the best of players. On the other end of the spectrum of the Tour Preferred line are the CB’s. These clubs, as you can tell by the name, have a cavity back and have a much larger foot print. In the middle, there are the muscle cavity or MCs.  These clubs combine ideas from the two sets around them to produce a club with a slight cavity, a smaller shape, and thin top lines in a package that also has some of the technology that’s missing from the MBs.

Read on to find out if TaylorMade’s newest irons are as good as they’d have you believe or if they are just another club that will be replaced in a few short months.

Continue reading “TaylorMade 2014 Tour Preferred MC Review”