Switch from GI/SGI irons to more "players" club: did anyone get better hitting a less forgiving club?

[ephmen]

So, I learned to play with Ping Zings and have been playing game improvement irons all my life. Recently demoed some newer irons such as ZX5/7 and Mizuno Pro 223 and felt better ground interaction, more precise strikes, etc. They look tiny to me but somehow hit them well. Did anyone get better by switching in this direction?

 

[Nelson.br.1515]

I don’t know if it made me better necessarily since I lose most of my round putting but I recently switched from Ping g700 to Ping i210. The g700 was just not a match for me. I am hitting the i210 further loft for loft and with tighter dispersion.  I feel like a lot of it (much like life) has to do with expectations. I expected the g700 to be way more forgiving and longer and comparing them to i210 which I expected to be less forgiving and shorter and there is no real difference. Also am I not that great at golf and could probably shoot a 85 with any combination of clubs out there. 

[TreqJosh]

I've just been fitted into a Rogue ST Pro (granted, not the smallest of irons) from currently playing i200s and I've owned ZX4s in the past and tried T300, Stealth, etc. and found the smaller heads easier to hit. Mentally for me, I find if I only have a small club face, then I find it easier to strike better and more consistently than a larger head - can't explain why. 

[sandman98]

i'm interested in the responses here too. trying to get back to playing regularly after a 10-15 year hiatus as i dusted off my old 2004 big bertha irons. working on developing better ball contact and i've made considerable progress already this spring. i'm fine off the tee, but i wonder if a new set of irons might be in order. looking to demo the pxg either gen 3 or gen 4. i know i should probably stick with the xp, but the p model truly intrigues me...

 

will be following along...

 

[minhjn]

1 hour ago, ephmen said:

So, I learned to play with Ping Zings and have been playing game improvement irons all my life. Recently demoed some newer irons such as ZX5/7 and Mizuno Pro 223 and felt better ground interaction, more precise strikes, etc. They look tiny to me but somehow hit them well. Did anyone get better by switching in this direction?

 

 

Went from G425s to ZX5 and yea they are a little smaller, but turf interaction was much better. Turf interaction is an underrated aspect of how a iron will work for you

[North Butte]

No club is going to make you a better player. Neither "SGI" or "blade" or any type in between. As the man said, you've got to dig it out the dirt.

[rd1959]

1 hour ago, North Butte said:

No club is going to make you a better player. Neither "SGI" or "blade" or any type in between. As the man said, you've got to dig it out the dirt.

I'm 62. I started messing around with golf when I was 12. The first club I ever used was a hickory shafted niblick my father had laying around. It doesn't matter what type of club is in your hand. "The swing is the thing", "It's the beginning and the end of golf". 

[NRJyzr]

I've experienced this on a few occasions....

 

In my second year of golf, I was intrigued when a friend offered to let me hit his blade irons.  Hit them better than my own at the time.  Spent a fair amount of time with an MP14 5 iron at the range, hit it considerably better than my 6 iron.  Inspired me to give a shot at playing blades, bought Golden Rams, and my score dropped a fair amount.  Because of it being only my third year playing golf, I expect a good part of that improvement was general/overall, but it's also worth noting my scores would go up when I tried playing CBs (went through a LOT of iron sets in those days).

 

Recently posted in another thread, I spent about 12 months playing Eye2+, switching from Mizuno MS-11.  Scoring was about the same, put blades back in the bag, watched hdcp drop a stroke-plus in six weeks.  Longer term, score average dropped about a stroke with the blades.

 

In the not-iron related category...  

 

I was intrigued by the thought of playing persimmons, after finding a Louisville Smart Driver at 2nd Swing, 20 years ago.  I'd taken it to the range and was hitting it better than my own Ti driver at the time, in spite of the Smart Driver's shaft being ill-fitting.  Picked up persimmon fairway woods, and around 2008, spent the summer playing nothing but persimmons.  Watched my hdcp drop 3 shots.  Tee shots were considerably better, directionally.  Penalty strokes dropped quite a bit.  Overall, lost the ability for the occasional bomb, but otherwise wasn't appreciably shorter.  Doesn't hurt that my swingspeed apparently hits its max somewhere below 44" club length.  😉

 

[Lasorcier]

For me, yes.  The more bladier I try, the better my score.  However,  a caveat below.

 

It isn't a blade thing per se for me.  It is a thinness of the sole/turf interaction thing.  I am shallow so thinner soles work better for me.  If I was more steep then I would think thicker soles would work better.  

 

Thin soles being more common on blades explains why I play those kinds.  0311T and 0311ST.  ISI, while a GI club in theory at the time (I'm guessing) still had thin soles and I use them for about 20 years.  The T isn't a blade, but is certainly bladier than the P and XP.  The ST is definitely blade.

 

I play what gives the best turf interaction because for me that is what results in the lowest scores.

 

 

[Kmagnuss]

I went from Ping Zings to Tommy Armour 845s to Mizuno blades.  I play best with blades.

I can play equally the same, maybe a tiny bit better with a 718 AP2 (almost a blade), but when I switch to a true GI iron my scores are all over the place.  I try a new set of GI irons every year and every year they get sold off for another set of 'pretty' irons.

[Stuart_G]

On 6/8/2022 at 7:18 PM, ephmen said:

So, I learned to play with Ping Zings and have been playing game improvement irons all my life. Recently demoed some newer irons such as ZX5/7 and Mizuno Pro 223 and felt better ground interaction, more precise strikes, etc. They look tiny to me but somehow hit them well. Did anyone get better by switching in this direction?

 

 

Just be careful about making assumptions.  

1) Just because the strike felt better (which is the only thing you mentioned) - doesn't mean the ball flight results were actually any better.   Also, different head designs (as well as different shafts) can easily give different feedback on the quality of the strike - even if the strike didn't really change.

2) Are you sure it was the head that was the source of any improvement?  A lot goes into how good a fit any club might be.   Different shafts, grips, and/or swing weight all could contribute to better delivery and better impact.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by Stuart_G

[North Butte]

As Stuart_G says, everything matters when comparing irons.

 

When I made the change from "players cavity back" to "super game improvement" irons the clubheads got bigger, the soles wider, the design more forgiving and I also went from 130g S-flex shafts to 105g R-flex. And of course the lofts on each number of iron got stronger! Right away the new clubs saved me a stroke or two a round and after an adjustment period my best ball striking days got much, much better than with the old clubs. 

 

But years of experimentation and trying various clubs later, here's what I realize about that initial switch (circa 2010)...

 

Biggest improvement was from the too-heavy, too-stiff shafts. Any clubhead on a 100g-ish shaft suiting my weak and slow swing is going to work better than the same clubhead on a terribly mis-fitted shaft.

 

Second biggest improvement was from the wider soles. Not so much because they bail out a slightly fat strike by skidding rather than digging (although that is true to a certain point) but more importantly because they let me make a confident swing down and through the ball rather than trying to pick everything to avoid the chunked, fatted or duffed iron shot that used to just kill me.

 

And yeah, higher MOI, bigger, hotter faced clubheads are great. But that's not where the big gains were for me. 

[Poor Mans Ty Webb]

I have definitely improved as I moved from more-to-less forgiving irons, but that might just correlate with more practice, experience, motivation, education, etc. rather than equipment solely being the cause of improved ball striking.

 

I can say that I started as a casual golfer with Ping Zings and I just never enjoyed hitting them.  Even as other sets found their way into the bag, when I'd go back and hit the Zings again, I've realized that they're just not for me.  I'd echo other comments here about turf interaction, etc. and for me, a slightly lower COG than what the Zings offer is another thing that has really worked for me.

 

I went from Zings to Hogan Radials, and that's when I went from casually/socially playing golf to falling in love with golf.  Since then, I've continued to gravitate towards forged irons, and while my ball striking still ain't great, chasing that feeling has made me want to be better and whatever improvements I've made have just fallen into place after that.