Our Irons
Many golfers have emotional links with certain name brands. We never try to talk a player into divorcing a brand he has grown up loving. In the big picture, brands don't really matter. Every golf equipment manufacturer has a lineup that fills all the holes. With irons, all major equipment companies make a player's blade, a midsize cavity back, a game improvement and super game improvement model.
Our goal in fitting for iron heads is to make sure that the player chooses the right size, shape and weight to get the very best performance from his swing. When it comes to brands, we are "agnostic". We work with all brands.
We have our "favorites". We like the smaller companies with dedicated long-term employees that make a very high quality product. You will detect which those companies are with a close reading of our website.
But OUR favorites don't really matter. Most of our business is rebuilding irons a player already owns. After analysis and testing, we modify club length, head weight, shaft weight, flex and balance. We swap shafts for feel and ball flight. We adjust lies and lofts. We try different grips. We know Mizuno, Taylor Made, Titleist, Ping, Nike and Adams intimately. Any set of irons can be a very good set, if they fit the player.
We never recommend a change unless we can verify by electronic testing that the change yields a MEASURABLE performance improvement. We assume that a higher ball speed will produce more distance. We know that a more consistent swing path and face angle at impact will produce more solid ball striking. We also know that a more consistent launch angle will produce better distance control. These are the factors that we can measure electronically and that we rely on to make our recommendations. If we can't measure an improvement in performance – our recommendation will always be to stick with what you have.
And you never have to take our recommendation at face value. You can take our test clubs to the range or your course to verify our test results.
Whatever Brand you favor, we can turn a set of clubs that came off of an assembly line into a truly customized set.
About those favorites. A few family-owned Japanese boutique foundries have survived through the years. Their heritage goes back to the ancient days of forging Samuri swords. Have a look at Miura and Vega. On a larger scale, Epon is not a family boutique but their irons are exceptionally good. On the American side, we favor Scratch which sources their forgings from another Japanese foundry – Ishihara. We keep faith with the American tradition of betting on the underdog.
For forged irons, we would never forget Mizuno.
We also like the "classics". If you're thinking about playing a forged iron, you can't do better than the Taylor Made TPF from 1984. If you want a little forgiveness in a forged cavity back iron, find a set of Hogan GCD Tour Forged from 1993, install a set of modern shafts and never look back. If you grew up watching Palmer and Casper, try a set of Wilsons from the 1960's. Not so sure about playing a blade? No problem, Pick up a set of classic Ping Eye2's and rebuild them to modern specifications. If you love the classics, you should have fun exploring the Golf Lab website. We have quite a collection.