Ash said:
@Will
This video is about a 70mph swing speed. Your average is obviously much higher. Forgiveness is more than distance control. There are absolutely ways to increase MOI that help with dispersion.
This comment is empty, admin should fix.
@Aubrey
Mark Crossfield did a great video comparing a vintage blade and a GI. The comments kept saying that his strike was too good to really be representative in tests.
So he redid it all left-handed. Sprayed them all over with both. Statistically, his miss was still smaller with the blades. Turns out, loft is loft, and forgiveness is mostly marketing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqpa_dlEDXA
There’s far less of a difference once you have a large data set, particularly with a human swinging. Of course there are still aspects that are important like sole and descent angle that still give value to different models, and spin loft issues once you get into the 4 and 5 irons in blades that can creep up, but the difficulty of blades is massively overstated in the shorter and mid irons.
@Aubrey
He did test that in the 2nd half of the video. Still didn’t show very significant difference.
@Aubrey
No club responds well fat or thin. ‘You hit that fat, you shouldn’t be using a blade.’ would be an absurd line of thinking.
Toe and heel shots dropped off the exact same in distance across all clubs tested proving that ‘you’re not good enough to hit a blade’ is a myth.
However, the test says GI iron requires a higher swing speed to get anything near a good launch, doesn’t stop as well, and has worse trajectory.
Essentially the takeaway is: the only reason for not playing a blade is ‘forgiveness’ since they are superior in every other category, and this test proves that the forgiveness argument is a complete myth.
Conclusion: everyone should be playing blades because they’re no harder to hit than any other iron and give far superior results.
@Will
This test wasn’t conducted well enough to show the difference. But robot testing has shown that players irons have the least drop off on mishits.
Miss the trampoline face on a game improvement iron and you lose efficiency quickly. The players irons don’t use those trampoline faces so they can maintain consistency across the face.
People who bring their own speed should be playing clubs without flexing faces.
@Lael
Interesting. I’d be interested to see how much that is compared to a true blade. Drop off is drop off but we have to bring real world into the equation. Like are you hitting a 5 iron on a par 5 and a mishit is coming up 20 yards short vs 30 with the blade? In which case you have a 56 instead of a 52 into the green? ie no real actual difference at all in the real world.
@Will
The blade would have less drop off than the distance iron. But the distance iron would go farther overall even on a mishit. So if you’re looking for distance, the distance iron is king. But an iron is usually about hitting a distance number consistently. Distance is irrelevant because you can just take the next club up.
@Lael
Well yeah but distance irons are stronger lofted. Loft for loft, I bet there’s no real difference. I don’t get why some people (not saying you) are obsessed with distance = better. If I want more distance, I just take more club.
@Will
Why do people watch one video on YouTube and decide that this one guy disproves golf and physics experts over the last 40 years?
Wilder said:
@Will
Why do people watch one video on YouTube and decide that this one guy disproves golf and physics experts over the last 40 years?
I’m more inclined to believe an actual real world test than someone employed by OEM’s to help them sell clubs to dopes.
I also have played GI irons and blades. No difference between them. I still carry a GI 5 iron alongside my bladed 5 iron. Hit both exactly the same. Toe and heel strikes don’t carry the distance you’re aiming for with either. You also don’t have to hit exact middle on the blade to get a very good strike from it. The sweet spot feels just as big.
The video corroborates what I know from playing both kinds of club in my own game.
The forgiveness thing is BS. The ‘don’t play blades until you’re off 8 because you’ll never be able to hit them’ is TOTAL BS.
Imo what’s really going on here is people are turning blades into this mythical thing that are only for the elite, when that’s not been true for at least 20 years (I had some MP33’s, very easy to hit 5-PW). The rhetoric around blades is based on tiny butter knives from the 70’s and 80’s. Not applicable anymore and if people would just try them instead of simply parroting what they hear others say, they would KNOW it’s not true.
I’m off 18 and have lots of video footage of me hitting blades just fine.
Now we’ve proven toe and heel strikes drop off the same with a blade as with a GI, there’s literally now no reason left not to use them. And certainly not any reason to tell others they shouldn’t use them.
Case closed.
@Will
Yeah people just don’t understand what blades do. I’m currently a 4 and I play Titleist 620 MBs and they are wonderful. Of course, if I hit a bad shot with any club (even a GI iron), it’s come up short or go offline. Blades don’t change that. But if I hit a good shot, I know the blades will go the correct distance and have stopping power. Whereas if I hit a good shot with a GI iron, I have almost no idea what’s really gonna happen. Will probably come out as a low knuckleball bullet and roll through a green. There’s just no use for that for most people.
People look in my bag and go “you use blades??” And I go “yeah, try them out” and they say “oh no, I’m not good enough, I couldn’t even hit that.” Like come on.
@SonicScribe
Yep, hit the nail on the head. I’d wager 95% of people saying that have never even hit one.
I got into them because years ago I was curious so I bought a used MP67 7 iron to see if I could hit it. Imagine my surprise when I figured out it was no different to hitting the 7 iron in my T Zoid Comp CT set.
And yes, the actual real difference is that you have control with the blades and greater stopping power compared to GIs. P790’s, distance control was a nightmare, even on good strikes, and they are almost impossible to stop on a green, especially in summer. My blades hold greens almost every time I land on one.
I played today and shot to a 14 handicap - an 86. I hit a few poor shots - fatted my P790 5 iron (I use it as a driving iron or like a 4 iron for my set) and it dropped off 40 yards from target. I bladed a 58 degree wedge on two different full shots. Overcut a 7 iron blade which was too steep AOA but still got on the green.
So out of a full round, I hit a bladed iron on almost every single hole and hit a poor shot with one of them, which still got on the green.
@Will
My 4 iron blade is way better with off center hits than my Callaway Apex 4 iron (similar to P790). But it doesn’t launch quite high enough to game off the deck. But as a driving iron it’s reliable and straight as an arrow.
@Lael
Yeah, for me the driving iron is exclusively for 200+ yards out since my 5 iron goes about 200. I’ve been interested in getting a 2 or 3 driving iron but don’t know whether to plump for something like a 5 wood, which seems to be all the rage.
Wilder said:
@Will
Why do people watch one video on YouTube and decide that this one guy disproves golf and physics experts over the last 40 years?
How would a club with more mass behind it not be better at hitting shots fat? The turf would slow it down less and open the face less.
@Aubrey
Somehow you’re correlating distance with better. You chunked it and it only ended up 60 yards short of target instead of 70 short. Zero real world difference.
Will said:
@Aubrey
Somehow you’re correlating distance with better. You chunked it and it only ended up 60 yards short of target instead of 70 short. Zero real world difference.
If there’s water at 70 yards short it matters lol. More distance is better.
@Aubrey
Yeah, only there could be water at 60 yards short too. Less distance is better.
Will said:
@Aubrey
Yeah, only there could be water at 60 yards short too. Less distance is better.
If there was water further away I wouldn’t hit a club that goes that far when I hit it fat though.
@Aubrey
You hit a 7 iron blade, and it apparently doesn’t ‘help’ with a fat. So it only goes 80 yards instead of 160 yards and finishes up 5 yards shy of water that it would have easily carried had you flushed it.
You hit the same shot with a 7 iron GI shovel that apparently ‘helps’ with fats. So it goes an extra 10 yards and ends up in the water because it apparently ‘helps with fats’ which basically just means ‘goes further’.
Which club was better?
I can’t believe i’m having to spell this out.