Loft change differences from 1976-Present chart..neat to look at

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[JoePete]

I remember hittings balls a year or two ago, a friend, who just got new clubs, comes up to me all excited "Here, hit this 7 iron!" I take a few swings, and he starts in about how much better these new clubs were - that 7 iron was flying like my 5 iron. After he few minutes, he mentions he got them an inch longer and two degrees strong on loft. To which I respond "Of course I hit that like my 5 iron because it is my 5 iron!"

Club tech folks might say the lofts started to get jacked up because perimeter weighting and oversized faces basically resulted in a higher launch angle. Jack the lofts to keep a consistnent launch. I buy that to a degree, but I think it eventually got to marketing "play our longer clubs."

[Archie Bunker]

The number stamped onto the bottom of a club is meaningless, and often used to trick the consumer into thinking they are buying a technically superior product. It would be a much better idea to stamp the loft degrees onto the bottom of an iron. Some irons (like the old Tommy Armour 845's) did put a loft number on the face of the irons. When you see an LPGA player hitting a 7 iron on a 180-yard hole, you know something is fishy...