Are club manufacturers fooling us into thinking we are good?

[madandra]

The number on the club means nothing to the guy hitting it. Its the other guys on the tee that try and talk you into going with a longer club or they are are asking if you think your a hot shot cos YOUR 9 iron goes as far as their 6 iron.

 

[USER1999]

Ahh, I find the opposite. I am the one with the six iron. Conversly, after everyone has hit, I am also the only one on the green. Odd that.

 

[vig]

I think as others have stated loft is irrelivant, certainly to me. I know how far I hit each club and factor that in.

Interestingly the X20's set this debate going. I have X20's and when I went for mine custom fitting I was told about the gaps in loft and given the choice of not getting a sand iron as part of the set and customising with whatever wedges that I chose. I only paid for the clubs that I chose from the set. I opted for 52*,56* & 60* in the Xtours but that was purely my choice, no sales pitch. I also opted to ditch the 3iron in favour of an hybrid. (just for another option from the tee).

Can I just say that if the seller is being up front then there is more chance that you will go back when you replace them and as has been previously stated there is a suspicion about some retailers bumping up their sales figures.

Incidently I was fitted at the Belfry by Jon Watts, Fantastic day and very eye opening.

 

[TonyN]

Good post mad, I was going to post something like this tonight so am glad you beat me to it!

What I meant from my original post is, I think club manufactures are having us over. Look at Wilson for example.
Every mag i pick up has Padraig in it saying these FYbrid clubs are a club longer than my other ones or what ever. But thats prob because wilson have made an 8 iron a 7, a 7 into a six etc.

So thats why I.M.O lofts should be universal between all manufactures. Otherwise how long will it be before my PW is actually my 7 iron.

Good point about numbers being dropped in favour of lofts but if they were all universal, we wouldnt need to do this!

 

[haplesshacker]

Great read for the last 15 minutes.

Okay so my few bobs worth, as a retailer / ex sales rep / ex nightclub manager.

The cynical bit.

1. By suggesting that you can hit a 6 iron as far as a 5 iron the punter thinks they're superman, bragging rights on the tee etc.
2. By selling sets with stronger lofts, you will need a gap wedge.
3. With stronger lofts you are likely to leave the 3 and 4 iron in the garage and buy a couple of hybrids.

That's modern buiness, it's not a crime, it's an imaginative way of selling more clubs.

It also doesn't make it right.

I don't think that the answer is standardised lofts, but I do think that using degrees of loft on all clubs is the way forward, as with hybrids and wedges. At least then if we can't find the lofts on the manufactuers website (surely all manufactuers should have this anyway or are they trying to hide something!).

Perhaps the way we buy clubs needs to change. Perhaps we should be buying all our clubs individually, rather than as sets. At least that way we can chose to have hybrids rather than 2, 3 or 4 irons, and then start adding various wedges at the other end. Maybe the price should be for a set of 11 clubs as a whole.

Back to my normal waffling replies then! Sorry to bore you all.

 

[Nico]

Hapless!!

Nailed one 350 down the middle with a slight draw.

Best post on this thread.

 

[haplesshacker]

Wow.

Thanks mate.

 

[Nico]

Credit where it is due kid.

 

[StuartD]

Must admit I am not too bothered what number is on the club i hit 150 yards.

When i replaced my blades with TM 200's i did not think about lofts at all but since then i have become more aware

When I replaced the tm 200's last year I had narrowed down my choice to 2 sets but went for TM R7's because the lofts were the same as the 200's.

With so many manufacturers having different specs, could it be a way of pulling us into some sort of brand loyalty??

 

[GB72]

I have been on the receiving end of this very issue when I bought my first set of irons so can speak with some experience. I was deciding between Wilson Staff DI7s and Mizuno MX19s and as I was very naive I picked the DI7s on the assumption that because I was hitting them a bit further they must be better suited to me. I had no idea at the time that the lofts were stronger and thus fell into this very trap. You are right in that the number on the club means nothing to someone with a bit of golfing knowledge but to the novice faced with racks of clubs and little information the fact is that most will asume that they are hitting the ball better if it goes further.

Needless to say I regreted buying the DI7s and wished I had gone with the MX19s.

 

[Imurg]

I've got the X-20's - changed last year from a well used set of Ping i3's and all the lofts are nearly 2 degrees stronger in the callaway irons. That's one of the reasons when sorting out clubs either end of the irons I used the loft of the club rather than the number to try to get suitable yardage gaps. For instance, I've got 4 wedges but my pw is really a 9-iron with 45 degrees on it. A 50 , 54 and 58 set of wedges bridges the gap for me. In the longer clubs I worry about how far I hit the ball rather than the number on the club - does it fit into the yardage parameters I'm looking for? if it fits into the gap between 5 wood and 5 iron then its in the bag. More people should take notice of their lofts. If there is approx 10 yards between clubs in a set and they have 3 degrees between each club then that's about 3-4 yards per degree. With a 45 deg pw and a 55 deg sw just putting a 50 deg gap wedge in will still leave you up to 20 yards between clubs so you have to manufacture a shot instead of playing a nomal one with a more appropriate club.