Gamed my high school irons this morning!

[rebby]

Every year I try to play at least one round with my PING Eye 2's. My Eye 2's are from the spring of 1984 and do include the square grooves and the original sole design. I bought these irons when I was 10 years old (1989) for $200. They sat in the pro-shop on consignment for less than 5 minutes before I bought them (the seller dropped them off late the night before, I was there at 6am when the course opened the next morning and stumbled across them). These Irons spent the next 10 years in my bag and I saw my average score drop from the high 80's to the low 70's while playing these sticks (sure, most of that came as a result of age and experience). I've always had fond memories of these clubs and will likely never sell them. I look forward to the days when my kids can learn this game swinging the same sticks.

Anyway, my round didn't go to bad this morning (shot a 1 under round of 70 in just over 2 hours). My set makeup varied a bit from what is in my sig but not much. Just like in high school I did not carry a 3 wood this morning and relied on the driver/2-iron combination instead.

So, what did I think? In a nutshell, these are great irons, they always have been and they likely always will be. Sure that stance comes with some major bias but I do believe that the the Eye 2's are a set that will gamed by golfers for many years to come. I won't be one of those golfers however.

As many of you know the PING Eye 2's have a ton of offset. My ZM's, not so much. I played well this morning and hit my fair share of greens (13) but I wasn't getting anywhere near the hole. I had 3 putts over 50 feet and a couple more from 30-40 feet which is very unusual for me. All 3 of these 50+ footers came on holes with pin placements on the right edge. I couldn't get the ball to move left to right and I just wasn't comfortable aiming right of the green (over the water on one hole and OB on another) to allow for the draw. This was progressively worse through the set (with the long irons being more of pull/hook, short irons a nice soft draw). I attribute this to the offset but I suppose it could be due to any number of factors.

The lie angle on these irons is also 2' flatter than what I'm used to. You'd think that this would help neutralize the offset in the irons but instead, I adjusted by lowering my hands and flattening my swing to account for the flatter lie. This made side hill lies a bit more difficult but I'm sure that I'd adjust over time. The flatter swing that I adopted for today likely added to my pull/hook issue that I was blaming on the offset earlier.

The Eye 2's are also a lot lighter than what I've become accustomed to. I'm used to a D2 in my irons with my wedges playing even heavier (D3 - D6 in PW - LW). The Eye 2's swing between a C8 and D0 and you can easily feel the difference. Again, I noticed that this was worse in the long irons than with the short irons which was the opposite of what I expected. Especially with the 2-iron, I just couldn't feel the clubhead as much as I like to.

The softer flex in the irons wasn't that big of a deal. These play just a shade softer than my hard stepped S300's. More like a standard stepped S300 so I didn't have much of a problem with flex. If anything I hit them a little further than I expected. Distances weren't as consistent as with my ZM's either. This could have been due to any number of factors though.

Ball flight was way to high. It made coming into the greens nice but I'm thankful that the wind was gusting to only about 3-4 MPH. Any more than that and I would have been in trouble. Getting ball flight down was not a goal of the PING Eye 2, in fact Karsten had the opposite goal in mind when he designed these irons and let's just say, he succeeded.

In summary, ball flight was to high and I couldn't get the ball to do anything but move right to left. My feel, especially with the long irons, was way off and it really toyed with my head. All in all though, I still enjoyed my round. Sure, I'd never buy the PING Eye 2's today but because of my history with them I will continue to game them at least once a year just for the pure enjoyment and nostalgia of it. The fact is, they just don't fit my game right now (although it didn't hurt my score much if at all). Maybe that will change as I age? Who knows, these could be my daily gamers again in 20 years or so.