If you've bought irons in the last few years, there's a decent chance the 7-iron has less loft than a 6-iron from a decade ago. Welcome to what many commonly refer to as “loft-jacking”—the equipment industry's favorite way to make you feel like you're hitting it farther without actually changing how you swing.
Nobody's hiding it. Manufacturers know that stronger lofts produce more distance, and when your competition is doing it, you can't afford to stand still. The result is a 7-iron category where stock lofts now range from 27 to 34 degrees. That's a seven-degree spread across irons that all have the same number stamped on the sole.
So we did what felt obvious: We put 30 current 7-irons on the Golf Laboratories swing robot and measured what stronger lofts actually do to your game. Distance, dispersion, trajectory, descent angle—all of it, across players irons, players-distance, game-improvement and super-game-improvement models.
Here's what surprised us: Dispersion and peak height—two things you'd assume take a hit with stronger lofts—held steady across the field. But there is a cost, and it showed up in a metric most golfers never check on a launch monitor.
Our analysis breaks it all down.
|
Is there a tradeoff when chasing distance? We put 30 irons on the swing robot to find out |
Here’s what happens when you play a stronger lofted iron in the name of more yards. |
Mizuno's latest iron fills an important hole in the S-Series lineup.
The newest addition joins a family built on the idea that accomplished golfers don't all want the same thing from a forged iron. The S-1 muscleback leans into workability and direct feedback. The S-3 cavity-back, oddly the first club released in the family, added stability. Now the S-4 ($215 per club) pushes another step toward playability, though its compact profile keeps it in the better-players category.
Every S-4 head is forged in Hiroshima, Japan, from a single billet of 1025E carbon steel and run through Mizuno's Grain Flow Forged HD process, with a copper sandwiched in between to soften feel at impact and Harmonic Impact Technology tuning the sound on top of it. None of that's new to the family. What's different is the shape: a curved muscle that pushes more mass low in the head, with a wider sole, deeper center of gravity, and a lower sweet spot, all aimed at making the long irons launch easier and keeping mishits from leaking distance.
That shaping tapers through the set—more offset and topline for confidence that's carefully scaled down through the scoring irons. The Triple-Cut Sole's beveled edges handle the rest, letting the head slide through turf instead of digging on steep contact. It's a forged iron for players who'll admit they want a little help, as long as it doesn't show.
|
Brooks Koepka reunited with a famous blade putter at the Irish Open. After a stretch with various mallet offerings in the bag this season, Koepka returned to a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Teryllium, in Ireland, that looked eerily familiar. It was his first start with a blade putter since the Farmers Insurance Open, but the head isn't the T10 Select Newport 2 that carried him to four major titles in two years (2017-19). This is the updated Teryllium TNP2, the version that was in his bag when he won the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill.
The distinction matters because Koepka doesn't appear to be chasing nostalgia by reinserting the exact putter from his major run; he's going back to the last blade that actually worked.
Unfortunately, the blade couldn’t provide a spark, as Koepka finished T55.
|
On the latest Club Lab podcast, we visited Titleist's Manchester Lane ball testing facility. There, we sat down with Frederick Waddell, director of golf ball product management, to talk through how golfers should actually go about testing balls, what it takes to bring Pro V1 to market, and the ball that's had everyone talking—Pro V1x Double Dot—and its potential to complicate an impending rollback. Listen to the full episode here.
|
|
|
What's In My Bag: Sahith Theegala |
|
|
|
Hot List: Club Comparison Tool |
|
|
|
|
