Stronger Lofts Hurting Your Game?

[InTheRough]

Hi Everyone.  I had an interesting question pop up this weekend while playing a foursome with some friends of mine.

One of our group is a long hitter--he is not very consistent yet and still is scoring well over 100  but he gets great distance throughout his bag.  He is currently playing a beginner set (top flite box set i think) but has upgraded his woods and putter and told us that he is looking into upgrading his irons within the next couple of months since he has been taking lessons and is getting very into the game.  Since he is inconsistent he told us that he is looking in the GI category and has had his eye on xhots, x2hots, Rocketbladez, Rocketballz,or something along those lines.  When he mentioned this another player in our group who is about a 4 handicap (he has played as good as scratch before) told him that the stronger lofts and extra distance he will get from those clubs will more likely  hurt his game and he would be better off getting a pro or tour version which have more traditional lofts and still offer some forgiveness.  His reasoning was that since he is currently hitting his 6 iron (which i believe has 30 degrees of loft) around 185 and even out to 190 he can expect to hit the 7 iron of the new set that far (or even further depending on the set) meaning his 8 will go roughly 170, his 9 will go 155-160 and his PW will go about 145-150.  This will leave a huge gaps between his wedges which he argued would essentially negate his ability to hit it long off the tee because chances are that he would end up within 140 yards on par 4's where he will most likely to be forced to play half and 3/4 shots which can be tough even for good players.

So my questions are....

-Is there any merit to what our friend was arguing and would clubs like the xhot pros or rockebladez tour offer enough forgiveness for him to use them?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

[MS256]

Hi Everyone.  I had an interesting question pop up this weekend while playing a foursome with some friends of mine.

One of our group is a long hitter--he is not very consistent yet and still is scoring well over 100  but he gets great distance throughout his bag.  He is currently playing a beginner set (top flite box set i think) but has upgraded his woods and putter and told us that he is looking into upgrading his irons within the next couple of months since he has been taking lessons and is getting very into the game.  Since he is inconsistent he told us that he is looking in the GI category and has had his eye on xhots, x2hots, Rocketbladez, Rocketballz,or something along those lines.  When he mentioned this another player in our group who is about a 4 handicap (he has played as good as scratch before) told him that the stronger lofts and extra distance he will get from those clubs will more likely  hurt his game and he would be better off getting a pro or tour version which have more traditional lofts and still offer some forgiveness.  His reasoning was that since he is currently hitting his 6 iron (which i believe has 30 degrees of loft) around 185 and even out to 190 he can expect to hit the 7 iron of the new set that far (or even further depending on the set) meaning his 8 will go roughly 170, his 9 will go 155-160 and his PW will go about 145-150.  This will leave a huge gaps between his wedges which he argued would essentially negate his ability to hit it long off the tee because chances are that he would end up within 140 yards on par 4's where he will most likely to be forced to play half and 3/4 shots which can be tough even for good players.

So my questions are....

-Is there any merit to what our friend was arguing and would clubs like the xhot pros or rockebladez tour offer enough forgiveness for him to use them?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

That might hold some water if a pitching wedge was the highest lofted wedge you could buy...But since he can fill almost any gap he wants with any loft combination he needs in wedges the worry is a moot (and IMO silly) point.

Doesn't matter which number is stamped on which iron. Doesn't matter if a 7 iron goes 190 yards or 140 yards.

What does matter is to get clubs he can hit well.

[colin007]

He could get a set that runs 5 iron through wedges. The 5 would effectively be a 4, and just learn to hit consistent distances.

[InTheRough]

thanks for the input!

i think his though process what that since he doesnt want to completely reorganize his entire bag especially since he has upgraded the top and bottom of his set already (and it would also have been a huge waste of money).  With his current setup he would only be able to carry 3 or 4 wedges at most and that seems like a lot of yardage to cover with only 4 clubs

[Shindig]

The matter is simple: figure out what lofts/distances you want from the clubs and get those. A guy I used to play with would brag all the time about his distances, and how he got even more with his new irons. Then he removed everything higher than the 6-iron and replaced them with hybrids, when he used to hit his old 5-iron well, no problem. If it's an option with my next set of irons (whenever that is), I'd prefer it if the lofts were printed on the iron instead of the number. There's a chance I'm the only one who would buy such a set though.

[WUTiger]

It's dangerous to make decisions from his blanket statement that "stronger lofts... will hurt his game." He is citing a design problem which the OEMs have started fixing.

Some of the early distance irons had hot spots in the face that would send the ball a bit longer on dead-middle hits than hits lower or on the edges. This caused some distance variance - a solid feeling 7i goes 140 yards on hole 5 but 160 yards on hole 8. TaylorMade engineers discuss this in a GolfWRX piece on development of the Rocketbladez irons.

http://www.golfwrx.com/50341/2013-taylormade-rocketbladez-video/

A Golf Digest piece from last year compared Pro vs. standard iron versions: it said the average player can hit the standard irons longer and higher because of the forgiveness characteristics of the heads. The tradeoff is distance variance of up to 10 yards, but a good shot will still land you on the green. A better player with more clubhead speed can utilize the higher lofts of the Pro or "players" trending irons, and cut the distance variance to 3-5 yards.

When Mizuno man comes to town, he has golfers hit the JPX-EZ, JPX825 and JPX825 Pro heads with different shafts to see which combo gives the best performance figures. Ping man has golfers hit the Karsten, the G25 and the i25 to see which head-shaft combo produces the best results.

In these comparisons, don't forget that the shaft it half the club. Also, once you find your "ideal" iron, go back a couple of days later and re-hit it. Make sure you didn't have a "super day" with that model of irons which you won't reproduce very often.

[InTheRough]

Thanks guys!  I guess the better player in our group is dishing out some poor advice.

[dwade247]

Thanks guys!  I guess the better player in our group is dishing out some poor advice.

That is not what people are saying. He has some logical thoughts such as that it would be detrimental to a players game if he had huge gaps between his wedges. All the people are saying on this thread are that there is different ways to shrink those gaps. Your buddy should buy irons that fill the distance gaps he wants them to fill. As the better player in your group was saying....your buddy doesn't need 10 clubs that hit the ball 200 yards and he would be better off having a few more options inside 150 that will help his stock shot land close. There are some very forgiving "players" irons that I believe would be great for your buddy. Just a couple examples are ap2s, mp54s, jpx 825 pro, callaway apex/apex pro, taylormade tour preferred cb/mc, i20s, and I'm sure there are many more. Your buddy definitely doesn't need extra distance so he should just concentrate on forgiveness and filling the gaps he needs to.