Strong Lofted Golf Irons

In the coming year you will start to see more and more strong (lower) lofted golf irons released by the name brand manufacturers. Many of these will be in the category that may be labeled as “super or ultra game-improvement irons”. What makes these more game-improvement than previous models? Many of these will have lighter weight face inserts such as titanium or maraging steels that allow the manufacturer to re-distribute even more weight back away from the face for added stability. This should be great news for golfers as it will result into straighter shots.

One byproduct of re-distributing weight further back is that the ball flight will become higher. To offset this and create a trajectory more similar to that of a normal iron, the lofts will need to be reduced. What you will see are #5-irons that will have a loft as low as 22° and the PW at 43°. Will these make you hit the ball further? You bet, after all these are the loft of a #3 and #8 iron respectively from 20 years ago. These same sets may not even offer #3 or even #4-iron and instead have you purchase the matching hybrid and a gap wedge and even a new iron to purchase called the #10 to fill in the gap between the PW and SW.

OK, now the problem for the average golfer that does not have a high ball flight to begin with. All the game improvements made by re-distributing the weight low and rearward in the iron were nullified by making the loft stronger. So, will you be able to hold the greens with these stronger lofted clubs? If not, then it would defeat the whole purpose of making the irons in the super game-improvement category. That is marketing to make you think you are hitting the ball further because the club you hit had a certain number engraved on the sole. So why it may game improvement for some, most notably the stronger golfer, it may not for others.