Less is (definitely) more! Are club manufacturers still chasing distance too much?

[RussUK]

First off, hope you all had a wonderfull Christmas and Santa brought you all what you wanted.

I was scanning through facebook the other day an a post popped up from Mark Crossfield from his (delayed) Taylormade M2 test. To try and get back on his good side they gave him the whole shebang to test. he wasnt overly impressed with the driver but it was the irons that suprised him. 

Now, we all know the current trend in the eternal pursuit for more distance is stronger lofts but i think TM may have lost the plot a little. Mark's standard Mizuno 7 iron has 33 degree loft while the M2 8 iron also has 33 degree's. So the 8 iron is really a 7 iron.....but is it?

If the recent iron lofts where strengthened to make the average 7 iron the loft of an old 6 iron (e.g. Titleist 695 6 iron is 32deg) that makes the new M2 8 iron effectively a 6iron.

Is it any coincidence that TM have also released hybrids that go all the way up to the 7 iron for the M2 set?

I may be sounding like a boring old fart but is the tren for stronger lofts and more distance becoming a monster the manufacturers are struggling to tame?

[iacas]

There's more to launch angle, etc. than the loft of the club. The shaft flex, kick point, the CG… all matter quite a bit.

@saevel25 got to test some recent GI clubs with strong lofts. They launched significantly higher than his weaker lofted game

[Hardspoon]

The designated number of a club (7i, 8i, etc.) isn't specifically related to loft.  That's the problem; you can't think that a modern 8-iron is equivalent to an older 6-iron just because their lofts are the same.

The numbers on irons are relative to the overall set, and aren't related specifically to loft or length.  While not entirely accurate historically, it makes much more sense if you think of them as a % of driver distance for every player.  So, a 7-iron is the club that carries about 60% of the driver distance for a specific player.  The 4-iron carries about 75% of the driver distance.   Et cetera.

In order to achieve that gapping, with newer clubs that have much hotter faces (and drivers that carry further for a given swing speed) the loft of each numbered iron is getting lower.

It's not as simple as "manufacturers lowering loft to claim more distance for a specific numbered club".

[WUTiger]

I was able to chase down the specs on lofts/lengths of the four iron sets I have used:

(1973) MacGregor MT 2i = 22* / 38.5"
(1994) Pro Tour Black 3i = 21* / 38.75" (clone, Ping Eye2)
(2007) Calla X20 Tour 3i = 21* / 39"
(2014) TM SLDR 4i = 21* / 38.25"

Shaft characteristics and head design (esp. Center of Gravity location) also influence loft and distance. The past few years, you have to find technical reviews that address head design and shaft details to get an idea of what a club will do.

Thinner, hotter faces also aid iron distance. Also, designers are varying the center of gravity across the clubheads within an iron model. In its Steelhead irons, Callaway calls it Progressive COG : the COG is very low for long irons (higher launch), modest for middle irons, and a bit higher for short irons so shots don't balloon so much. Hogan irons offer a similar feature called Linear Center of Mass weighting in its new PTx iron model

Tom Wishon tried this a couple of years back in one of his wedge models, and Vokey made it a mainstay of its SM6 wedge design of 2016.

The COG variance accomplishes a similar effect to the shaft flighting  initiated circa 2005 with the Royal Precision Rifle and Project X shafts (later sold to True Temper).

Another thing to consider: shaft length. The later GenXers and the Millennials tend to be taller as adults than the Boomers; plus, us Boomers are losing height as we age and our spines settle. So, a taller person with longer shaft length will be able to get more leverage (and yardage). But, a person that's 5-foot-9 may find the new longer standard length irons just don't work: too long. That's just one reason fittings are important.

[DavidMatthew1978]

There is not much more we can do legally to make the ball go further without changing the golf ball it self. I think we reached almost maximum distance with the equipment available.

I think golfers should focus more on gaining power from their hips and club head speed.

[RussUK]

5 hours ago, iacas said:

There's more to launch angle, etc. than the loft of the club. The shaft flex, kick point, the CG… all matter quite a bit.

@saevel25 got to test some recent GI clubs with strong lofts. They launched significantly higher than his weaker lofted game

I completely agree with you Erik, however it all does have a knock on effect. Along with the above changes to shaft the head needs to be made more forgiving too. There is no point in having a 7 iron with the loft of a 5 or 6 iron that many people struggle to hit.

The tech they put into them is great but it comes at a cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. 

[WUTiger]

9 hours ago, DavidMatthew1978 said:

There is not much more we can do legally to make the ball go further without changing the golf ball it self. I think we reached almost maximum distance with the equipment available.

It seems like we're reached the point where we have a matrix of different ways to manipulate head design and distance. Will be interesting to see which ones become the dominant designs for long-term manufacturing.

As a side note, I told my brother to hand onto his late 1990s bubble-shafted Burner FWs. I waiting until someone "rediscovers" bubble tubes.

8 hours ago, RussUK said:

The tech they put into them is great but it comes at a cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. 

We'll have to see if any golf company adopts the German auto manufacturing model followed by Daimlar and BMW: Every five years a truly new golf club model would come out, and ones made in ensuing years would involve fine-tuning of the base model.

[iacas]

11 hours ago, RussUK said:

I completely agree with you Erik, however it all does have a knock on effect. Along with the above changes to shaft the head needs to be made more forgiving too. There is no point in having a 7 iron with the loft of a 5 or 6 iron that many people struggle to hit.

The tech they put into them is great but it comes at a cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. 

A lower CG helps launch the ball in the air. More flexible shafts do too. Even longer shafts help that (they are also a tiny bit tougher to hit solidly, but on solid hits the clubhead speed is higher and the shaft kicks forward more).

Plus, consider that back in the day most club heads were musclebacks, and you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that modern clubs, even the strong lofted ones, are tougher to hit than those. 

[acerimusdux]

While I'm sure modern clubs are easier to hit and can launch higher, I'm not sure this fully justifies the expansions in length and loft, which seems to me to give the short end of the bag short shift.

As for the long end of the bag, while I'm sure that modern 21.5 degree 5-iron is easier to hit than the old muscle backed 20 degree 2-iron, is it going to be any easier to hit than a modern 23 degree hybrid? It just seems to me that when I really need distance, I prefer the fairway woods and hybrids.

From the irons, I really want to be able to score, especially from 140 yards in.  Does this loft gapping really serve me there?

7i - 28.5 degree

8i - 33.0 degree

9i - 38.0 degree

PW - 43.5 degree

It seems to me most players are still playing a SW around 56 degrees. And some add a higher lofted lob wedge. So it doesn't seem those lofts have changed much on the bottom end.

Back in the 1960s though, the pitching wedge was around 52 degrees. It was only after the initial round of loft expansions back in the 1980s that the pitching wedge went to around 48 degrees, and the gap wedge was invented to fill in the void this created, essentially to do the job the pitching wedge used to do. This proves to me that this initial round of loft strengthening at least was likely not fully justified by club performance considerations.

So where are we today? It doesn't really matter to me what numbers they are putting on these clubs, but I wonder whether these loft gappings are really working for most golfers on these newer clubs. Or are we heading towards a situation where, in another 5-10 years, pitching wedges will be 42 degrees, and they'll come up with another "new" club that is 48 degrees, to fill the same role recently filled by the pitching wedge (and before that the 9 iron)?

 

 

[StefanUrkel]

Funny stuff. I was just going to post a topic on this.  I went to Golf Galaxy today.  They had the 3 new Cobra irons.  I hit 10 shots with each 7 iron.  The F7 blade I averaged 180, the single length I average 182, and the F7 MUSCLEBACK I average 202!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.  The thick clubs now are a joke

[saevel25]

22 hours ago, iacas said:

There's more to launch angle, etc. than the loft of the club. The shaft flex, kick point, the CG… all matter quite a bit.

@saevel25 got to test some recent GI clubs with strong lofts. They launched significantly higher than his weaker lofted game

Yep. The lofts were about a club stronger, but they launched way too high. 

[Hardspoon]

2 hours ago, acerimusdux said:

Or are we heading towards a situation where, in another 5-10 years, pitching wedges will be 42 degrees, and they'll come up with another "new" club that is 48 degrees, to fill the same role recently filled by the pitching wedge (and before that the 9 iron)?

Yes, we are, and that's fine and inevitable...if there are distance improvements in the longer clubs.

I'm oversimplifying a bit, but if you take a 20-year-old 3-iron that carries 180 yards and replace it with a 3-hybrid that carries 210, you have two choices: match it with a new set of clubs where each "number" goes further (because of stronger lofts and hotter faces), or make up some weird 3.5-iron that fills the gap.

Club makers chose the first option. 

When the long clubs (drivers/woods/hybrids) hit the ball further, the gap has to be filled somewhere.

[Hardspoon]

2 hours ago, acerimusdux said:

the gap wedge was invented to fill in the void this created, essentially to do the job the pitching wedge used to do. This proves to me that this initial round of loft strengthening at least was likely not fully justified by club performance considerations

Again, as drivers/woods got longer (metalwoods replacing persimmon), the gap had to be filled somewhere. If pitching wedges had stayed at 52 degrees, we would all just carry more clubs at the "top end" (7-woods, 2-irons, etc.)

I don't see how either alternative is better, so I don't understand why people get upset about "loft-jacking".

[Buckeyebowman]

Hmmmmm. Much scientific talk here, but it all makes me wonder. If the modern clubs are so much "better" the average Handicap Index should have dropped like a rock! Has it? Uhhhh, NO!

Let's face some facts here. The club manufacturers need clubs to sell every year! The strategy they've hit upon has them lengthening clubs and jacking down the lofts, thus turning mid-irons into long irons which most people can't hit. They did come up with hybrids, which is in their favor, but they only did so because people couldn't hit their 3,4,5 irons any more! 

And please explain why it is we need a "gap wedge" these days! Explain where the Hell the "gap" came from!

Also, as far the old style "muscle back" player's blades goes, that's what I learned to play with. And something occurs to me. Having all that mass concentrated in a small area behind the ball would launch the ball a mile! I might seem arrogant in stating this, but while I can't swing as hard as I did in my youth, I think I can swing just as precisely!

If I can find one, I'll buy a used set of "musclebacks" to perform an experiment. Let's see how "precisely" I can hit them and how they perform. I think this might be useful. God knows where I'll find them!

 

 

[jbishop15]

6 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Hmmmmm. Much scientific talk here, but it all makes me wonder. If the modern clubs are so much "better" the average Handicap Index should have dropped like a rock! Has it? Uhhhh, NO!

Let's face some facts here. The club manufacturers need clubs to sell every year! The strategy they've hit upon has them lengthening clubs and jacking down the lofts, thus turning mid-irons into long irons which most people can't hit. They did come up with hybrids, which is in their favor, but they only did so because people couldn't hit their 3,4,5 irons any more! 

And please explain why it is we need a "gap wedge" these days! Explain where the Hell the "gap" came from!

Also, as far the old style "muscle back" player's blades goes, that's what I learned to play with. And something occurs to me. Having all that mass concentrated in a small area behind the ball would launch the ball a mile! I might seem arrogant in stating this, but while I can't swing as hard as I did in my youth, I think I can swing just as precisely!

If I can find one, I'll buy a used set of "musclebacks" to perform an experiment. Let's see how "precisely" I can hit them and how they perform. I think this might be useful. God knows where I'll find them!

 

 

The handicap has dropped, though. 

A gap wedge is just a wedge between a pitching wedge and a sand wedge, to make sure that club "gapping", or the distance difference between the clubs, is more uniform. For example, I play a pitching wedge that is 48 degrees, and flies about 150, I hit a 60 degree that flies about 125; that's a big game that makes it hard for me to hit in between. My "gap wedge", a 52 degree, flies 140. It's not ridiculous; it's just good strategy. 

Even if you bent the irons back to their past lofts, most amateurs would struggle hitting long irons. A 4 iron at, say, 24 degrees now, versus like 28-29 in the 1960s, would not be that much easier to hit. The bigger head and club design makes it easier for people to get the ball up in the air. 

[Hardspoon]

21 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

If the modern clubs are so much "better" the average Handicap Index should have dropped like a rock! Has it? Uhhhh, NO!

That's incorrect. Handicap indices are relative anyway, because of how they are defined, and the improvements in clubs are not necessarily reflected in lower indices anyway. 

Once again: if you object to stronger lofts for the arbitrary numerical designations of "9-iron" and "8-iron", and think they should be frozen in time, how do you propose that manufacturers fill the larger overall gap created by hybrids and new driver technology?

[saevel25]

17 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Let's face some facts here. The club manufacturers need clubs to sell every year! The strategy they've hit upon has them lengthening clubs and jacking down the lofts, thus turning mid-irons into long irons which most people can't hit. 

Actually a modern 5 iron is way easier to hit than a 4 iron from 20 years ago. Jacking down the lofts have not made them harder to hit. There is more to it than that. 

20 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

And please explain why it is we need a "gap wedge" these days! Explain where the Hell the "gap" came from!

Gap wedge, as to fill the gap between a pitching wedge and a sand wedge. 

They have existed for a while now. This is not a new thing. 

21 minutes ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Also, as far the old style "muscle back" player's blades goes, that's what I learned to play with. And something occurs to me. Having all that mass concentrated in a small area behind the ball would launch the ball a mile! I might seem arrogant in stating this, but while I can't swing as hard as I did in my youth, I think I can swing just as precisely!

A muscle back iron doesn't hit the ball farther because it has more mass behind the ball. If a GI club and a muscle back club have the same mass it doesn't matter where it is distributed. 

 

 

[RussUK]

8 hours ago, saevel25 said:

Yep. The lofts were about a club stronger, but they launched way too high. 

Do you think that was down to lighter shafts and very low CG?

I moved from my Wilson Staff Di9's as the shaft was so light everyting went straight up in the air. Not even good old lead tape seemed to help.