Regarding Game Improvement Irons

[darthweasel]

Matched up with couple randoms Saturday. One of the guys had a very similar sense of humor to mine...at one point, planning to hit a fade, i hit a driver and instead of fade, pulled it, whacks a tree, ricochets 40 yards left into another fairway almost clipping a kid looked like he was 12 or 14 years old. I commented on feeling bad about not yelling "fore" but not realizing it could get anywhere near the kid.  Guy, deadpan, not missing a beat, drops a prince of a line..."No worries, has lived a long full life." Being sick and twisted, I laughed and will be using that one in the future.

 

Anyhow, I was mostly having a good day for me...aside from one brutal blowup hole where I managed to lose 3 balls, ended up with a 48 on the front, and that includes the 10...on the back had 6 pars and 3 doubles. Felt good about it. But the comment on game improvement clubs really has me thinking.

 

Hole 15 plays like a slight dogleg left but if you hit it straight, you are in the trees, if you pull it left you are in the swamp. I chose to hit a 6i trying to layup about 180 yards out which would leave me a clean look at the elevated green and stay back from the trouble where the fairway narrows. I made a clean swing, Get that crisp "click" of ball first contact. That beautiful ball flight when it is really hit well. Unfortunately I pulled it maybe 20 yards left of my target line, which would not be a problem if I hit it my average length of 180. In this case, it went 215 and ended up in the red stake left of the fairway. 

 

This guy, who has been a club fitter at Columbia Edgewater, glances at my clubs and says something along the lines of "you are too good for MI6. "

I asked why... I certainly don't feel good. I started the year as a 12.8 with a goal of getting to single digits. Instead, after that round I am a 15.2...slightly better than my 15.6 I bottomed out at.  But we had a quick conversation about why and his answer made sense.

 

He said game improvement irons are good to a point...reduce the penalty for mis-hits, primarily, and can benefit distance on off center hits. Both those things sound magical to me. But one of my ongoing complaints has been it is hard to score well when you are 30 yards different shot to shot when the swing and contact feels the same.

 

And that was exactly what he pin-pointed, making the claim that game improvement irons do not hit consistent distances...if you make the same swing 10 times, you might get 10 widely divergent distances. Is that accurate?

 

I mean, some things it ain't gonna matter what club I use...the 135 yard PW I yanked 30 yards left into the sand, that is always going to be suboptimal. That pull on 15 is always going to be a pull...but if a different club would make my distances more consistent that would matter. I am no great shakes with a club in hand and the strike patterns are not consistent enough to make me think I should change...but it does have me thinking and that is the question. Are Game Improvement clubs really that inconsistent with distance?

[pganapathy]

Here is the catch with GI/SGI irons.  Almost anywhere on the club face will give you a reasonable shot.  Unlike a blade, perfect contact isn't necessary for reasonable distance.  Which means your perfect shot will accentuate the distance gap along with a shot off the toe or heel.  But if you contact the ball in the same spot everytime, wherever that is, you should get consistent distance

[Darkfrog]

1 hour ago, darthweasel said:

Are Game Improvement clubs really that inconsistent with distance?

I play Srixon ZX5 irons, which I think fall somewhere between "player's CB" and "game improvement" category, as they have elements of both club styles. I haven't noticed much, if any, distance inconsistency on good strikes. I think any distance inconsistency that happens to me is related to my swing, and not the clubs, e.g., I can pull hook my 7-iron 200 yards, and I can block fade my 5-iron 180 yards.

[ChetlovesMer]

4 hours ago, darthweasel said:

30 yards different shot to shot when the swing and contact feels the same.

And that was exactly what he pin-pointed, making the claim that game improvement irons do not hit consistent distances...if you make the same swing 10 times, you might get 10 widely divergent distances. Is that accurate?

I can tell you this. I was at the Callaway Learning Center in Las Vegas, NV back in 2009. (It has since been bought by Taylormade. But that doesn't matter to the story.) Anyhow, The Callaway tech set up an Iron Byron there and used it to hit a bunch of different clubs, both Callaway and other brands. Both the bladiest of blades and the chunkiest of GI irons. He could set it up with which ever club and have it hit ball after ball. No matter what club he put in there all the shots would land in an area about the size of a kiddie pool. Now, some clubs were longer than others, obviously. But in terms of consistency, there was no way you could discern between a GI and a blade, between forged and cast. They were all uber consistent. It's the archer not the arrow. 

Here's the thing, GI and SGI irons are designed to give you help on poor swings. Sometimes you need the help, sometimes you don't. For every time you hit a GI iron and "Catch a flyer" because it gave you too much help, there will likely be a time when you hit a blade and get badly punished because you needed more help. 

Unless you are wearing out a dime sized spot in the center of your club face then the trick is to find a set of irons that gives you just enough help when you need it most. Yes, some irons fit some people's swings better than others. But a 30 yard difference with the exact same swing... NOPE. Once again, its the archer not the arrow. 

[colin007]

You have it backwards. SGI/GI are more consistent distance wise. Players irons would be more consistent dispersion wise.

[darthweasel]

makes sense. I like my clubs a lot and know my swing is...uh...closer to Barkley than Mickelson lets say...and I can conclusively say the marks I look at indicate I am not one of those people who hits it in the sweet spot shot after shot after shot...more like once every 200 shots so i will stick with what I have. 

[gg194]

I know that if it weren't for SGI/GI clubs I probably wouldn't be able to play. When I've tried clubs closer to players clubs it's not been a pretty picture.

[Colins69]

When my handicap was 9 I used blades, actually they came from Ian Baker Finch's garage to a aussie golf Pro I know to me. Anyway In 3 years I tried with them I nutted the 4 iron once, I did like the short irons and still use the Sandiron 20 years later, I use and really like my Nickent DX3 Hybrids and use them mostly.