As we all know, the universe of iron designs is immensely diverse, with nearly every brand offering at least three or four models of each of their lines and changing the cosmetics or even the line names every couple of years — even if ever-so-slightly. There is simply no way any golfer can know much about any of them, much less enough to make an informed decision as to which models you should be considering, given your individual preferences for brand, appearance, and performance.

Even in the complex and thorough fitting environment that is growing exponentially, how is one supposed to make an intelligent decision about which model is most likely to deliver what you are really seeking? Hopefully, this two-part series can shed some light on this complex environment and simplify the process for you.

I will begin by stating that I am trying to be brand-agnostic with this topic. While I favor certain brands over others for various reasons, it is simply not realistic to say that “X” company builds the best irons and “Y” company builds the worst. Every major brand and many minor ones are producing top-quality golf clubs — “bad” products simply cannot make it in the marketplace, whether you’re talking golf clubs or balls, fly rods, shotguns, automobiles, cell phones, it really doesn’t matter. “Bad” products are rejected by consumers and go away, while good ones usually continue to enjoy success (though that’s not always so).

What makes choosing irons so challenging is that within each brand’s line-up is a wide range of design concepts, each one purporting to deliver a given package of performance. While one of the major brands limits its iron selection to just four models, another “top five” company has no less than fourteen, not counting mix-and-match combo sets. All the others fall somewhere in between.

But in spite of all the differences, I believe the entire spectrum of iron models can be reduced to four basic “types” of irons, with each having its strengths and weaknesses. Within each of the four basic types of irons, you can find an almost endless array of brands and models, with the biggest differences being in cosmetics, not performance. So, here is how I see the four basic categories and the strengths and weaknesses of each:

1. Reasonably traditional blades. By this, I mean mostly a single-piece forging – a solid piece of carbon steel pounded into shape under 800 tons of pressure. For this category, I’ll define the design as some sort of ‘muscle back”, wherein the majority of the mass of the clubhead is more evenly distributed across the lower half of the blade, though some might exhibit a slight bit of depression or “cavity” to displace a bit of the mass toward the heel or toe. This type of iron is favored by the more advanced shotmakers for the ability to work the ball. And these are found in the bags of most of professional golf’s best iron players. These players will give us some forgiveness so they can get the most out of their advanced skills.
2. Super game improvement models. I have put this category second, in that I really don’t understand what “super” means. Either you can hit the ball in the face of the club with reasonable consistency or you can’t. If you can’t…get lessons. And if you can, I don’t think this category will help any golfer really improve. Harsh, but that’s the way I see it.
3. Game improvement models. These were traditionally characterized by “perimeter weighting” or “cavity back” design. Inspired by the early Ping Eye2 and all its copies, it was generally proven that a thinner face and more mass around the perimeter of the clubhead helped golfers get more forgiveness of their reasonable mis-hits…at the cost of some shotmaking precision, which is also indisputable. In today’s marketplace, this category seems divided between single-piece designs with more weight low and in the toe, and those multi-material designs with thinner, faster faces and tungsten loading in the sole to pursue greater distance . . . delivered with higher ball flights and reduced spin. This type of iron best suits golfers who are more concerned with helping their worst shots than optimizing their best ones.
4. Modern blades/distance players blades. This is currently a hot category, as manufacturers work to balance the clean look of a blade iron with technologies that mimic or even improve upon traditional perimeter-weighted designs. The use of multi-materials is also pushing these irons to launch higher with lower spin…as the pursuit of distance is driving everything these days. My beef with many of these is that they apply 6-iron technologies – thin face, low CG, high launch, lower spin – to the higher lofts where those are NOT what you want.

In the simplest of iron design analysis, what you see is what you will get. The trick is knowing what to look for, and I’ll get into that next week.