Modart Suda-Blade TSG Exclusive

Those who follow Modart closely may have seen a picture from a few years backof a muscle back iron hand made by Suda-san himself.  We can always count on TSG members to find these hidden gems and when I asked the team at Modart if they were available the answer was a quick no.  Why?  It’s because Suda-san can hand grind no more than 2 heads per day including wedges so a single set of blades 3-PW would take him 4 days just to grind the heads pre stamping and finish.

Grinding an iron or wedge usually doesn’t take very long,  I’ve watched many being made but never any the way Suda-san does his,  It literally takes him 1 hour to get the base shape done on just one head and you can blame that on his extreme attention to detail where everything must be perfect.   Follow the jump to see the prototype blade and the very first available set of Modart Suda-Grind MB’s being made…  Click Read More to continue.

Above the original prototype forged in Himeji of S25C steel that was once a raw unfinished head,  now if you have no interest in grinds or the quality of a handmade club head then read no further because these are for the extreme and discerning they are considered expensive at almost $4000 usd per set and at this point only 5 sets of Suda-Blades are scheduled to be produced not offered in Japan they exclusively sold by TSG.

Who is Suda-san?  He was in charge of the Tour Players wedges as Fourteen Golf for almost 10 years and has designed countless wedges including the very popular MT-28 V5 wedge,  his wedges have been used on the JPGA tour for many years back when Fourteen was known for their driving irons and prototype limited wedges.   Today Suda-san runs and operates his own high end and rather boutique brand called Modart,  Modern + Art which has a full retail line up of really nice irons, wedges and woods but for specialty clients he is able to produce his own signature hand made wedges which TSG calls the Suda-Grinds.

Original Prototype on bottom,  new TSG Exclusive MB on top.  So with the honor of being able to offer these to our top clients we also had the ability to choose the grind,  we consulted with Suda-san and came up with a shape that is slightly shorter heel to toe than the original,  slightly thicker and with a toe that aligns more inward rather than pushed out as you can see in the below picture.

When a head is custom hand ground the point of the toe can be made to sit far out or closer to where the grooves line up,  for example Zodia’s Chiba-san is known to grind the toe peak extremely close to the inside and this gives the club a smaller and more edgy or sharp appearance.  The ONOFF CB358 is another example of this and that style was specifically requested by Shingo Katayama.  This creates a more tear drop shape vs boxed toe.  Suda-san prefers this as well butI made the call to go slightly more pushed out because to my eye the shape looked more appealing this way.

This photo shows the sole before it has been completed,  the next few steps take it down in size making it more narrow but if we stopped at this point it would be a mid sized MB with a heavy head,  interesting thought but we can always save that idea for later.  The main attributes we wanted from this grind was a butter knife think top line and sole,  shorter heel to toe,  slightly boxed off and not so tear drop in order to create a blade that is soft, workable, and looks very sexy at address.

Ultimately the sole will look like the below picture, so much will be ground off the sole that we will need to engrave new numbers on it as the original stamped #7 will be no longer visible.

The original prototype below has just the right amount of offset in the 5.0-5.5 FP range,  the top line is extremely thin at only a touch over 4mm thick.

So when will these arrive?  It’s gonna be another 2-3 months before they are completed,  Modart is pretty busy with their custom wedges already having a 2 month wait list but TSG has everything finalized and the first set is currently in production.  In the next couple of months we look forward to providing you an update on the new Suda-Blade.