Have you ever given any thought to as how impact would feel if there was no cavity design in your cavity back iron? I did while working on a couple of new design prototype irons in Japan. The iron in the picture above is fully forged of S25C. Each head is about 10 grams heavier than if it were produced with a milled or pressed cavity pocket. I became curious and wondered how these would play on the course and much to my surprise the result was pretty darn good!
Usually in the design & prototyping stage while producing a forged cavity design most do not apply a satin chrome plating over the raw carbon steel. When we design a face shape it needs to be seen in the same finish that will hit the public in order to have the same experience the customer will have. Over the last few years many desire a square toe, this is a visual trend and brands such as Taylormade feature the high box toe shape that so many touring pro’s love.
On the other hand some Japanese golf club designers don’t fully endorse the square toe for performance saying it spreads much needed mass to an unnecessary area. I figure lets meet somewhere in the middle, something not so high and blocky yet not low too rounded. Below are two of the Prototypes currently under consideration by the OEM.
One proto iron has a very player adaptive foot print while the other had a lot more size to it yet little to no offset. We have many brand new sets of NS950 & S200 pulls from JDM aftermarket builds so I decided to insert the S200’s and give these a rip.
I brought along the #6, #8, and PW to the course with the plan of dropping balls here and there to see how these perform and feel. The specs I built them based off of were #5 37.5″ D5 swing weight ( heavier heads ). I also shafted the #8 iron with a weight counter balancing grip which brought me back to a D3 overall club balance. Applied 4 layers versus my normal 1 layer wrap of grip tape under the grip, don’t ask why, just felt like a short heavy set like this should have big grips!
Feel: These prototypes felt very much like a muscle back, when hit well it was softer than just about any cavity back I have hit. I do think there are ways to improve the feel in this iron through some new curves and rounded edges but even at this stage I could rank the vibration and feedback among the best blades on the market. I would describe the impact as a soft medium “tack” sound.
Forgiveness: Higher box shaped toe areas not only improve the visual footprint but they also help shift the Center of Gravity location away from the heel and closer to center. I’ll be honest with my ball striking I can’t tell if this is true or not. For a point I was thinking that these prototypes would have CB like forgiveness with MB feel. In the category of forgiveness these didn’t do as well as I wanted. It leads me to think that the cavity pocket does matter for this reason. Back to the drawing board, We have some good ideas!
Distance & Trajectory: The ball flight was medium and very piercing. This is another reason why the shape and design of the cavity really matters. With more mass near the top line the CG is placed higher, yet the bulk of the mass was still near the sole, when testing the CG location it was higher on the face by almost 2mm. Oh well, that was expected hitting an unfinished design.
In conclusion I think that testing these out gave me a burning desire to seek out a harmony in feel & performance. On one hand the pure mass like a blade creates good vibrations, on the other hand having the wrong or no milled or pressed pocket effects forgiveness, trajectory, and performance.
Will keep you posted. In the mean time check out the pics below…
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That club looks amazing! I would love to own one. Muscle back? Hmmmmm lets call it FastBack instead, like on a car? OK may be then lets call it FullBack? Hmmmmm OK lets call it StrongBack. No? OK how about PowerBack? Whatever it is, I WANT it.
I remember a set of Callaway irons back in the 1980s that looked just like that. You could hit the sh.t out of them. They didn’t take off at the time. I would love to try those.