Post by Richie3Jack on Jul 24, 2015 16:08:00 GMT -5
I went thru this on my blog, but some important pieces were missing when I read this excellent article from Andrew Tursky at GolfWRX:
Parsons Xtreme Golf on GolfWRX
Again, the main principle is that Parsons is trying to create what they feel is the 'ultimate golf club.' In their mind, it's about something that looks like and feels like a muscleback blade, but performs and is as forgiving as a Game Improvement iron.
So, they created a club that has muscleback traits along with game improvement cavity back traits.
To me, the big issue is that the club doesn't really look like a blade other than the back of the head is not in a cavity form.
They are comparing it to the Ping I25 iron and rightfully so when you look a the head grind. And the I25 iron model is far more Cavity Back-ish than PING's S55 model. And the PXG irons look less blade-ish when you look at the amount of offset.
The other concept is making it club perform more along the lines of a Game Improvement iron in terms of forgiveness and smash factor. Game Improvement irons tend to produce the highest smash factors and the are the most forgiving.
So, what the PXG guys did was hollow out the head.
That will help lower the CoG which in turn will help make them more forgiving.
The problem is that the feel won't be as good and they'll lose that forged blade feel.
So they tried to figure out different things to use to fill into the head to get that feel back. The idea is to find something that is lighter than carbon steel so you can keep the inside of the head lighter and lower the CoG. That's when they came up with the idea of using Injection Molding.
Their claim is that the injection molding is such that it allows for even thinner club faces so they increase the smash factor.
I've found over time that cavity backs do tend to produce higher smash factors than blades when you get on Trackman. But for me, launch, spin and the grind are more important than smash factor.
This is something I've debated countless times...how important is being able to hit your irons further?
I think the main issue with most people that find certain sets of irons that they hit further is that they are essentially hitting a stronger lofted club in order to do so. So, the spin loft (dynamic loft - attack angle) is the same. And as Fredrik Tuxen showed, the spin loft is quite important in terms of accuracy as the tilt of the ball's spin axis plays a larger roll in curvature than the spin rate.
So many people are fooling themselves when they think they are hitting irons further when it's more about them hitting a lower lofted iron. The accuracy is going to be the same outside of the placebo effect.
But, if they can keep the same loft and hit the ball further thru improved smash factor, that's a different story.
I experienced this with the Ping S55 as I was generating smash factors of 1.40+ with the 7-iron compared to 1.35 smash factors with my Wishon 595MMC 7-iron.
So, if we are at 90 mph club speed with the 7-iron, a smash factor of 1.4 would produce ball speeds of 126 mph compared to 121.5 mph with the 1.35 smash factor. That's probably close to hitting those irons 1-club longer.
Except, that never happened for me with the Ping S55's. Between the low CoG and the grind, I was hitting very high launch and high spin shots and hated the interaction with the turf. And now with my Yonex EZone MB irons, I'm guessing the smash factors are lower, but the spin and launch is far better and I hit them much more precisely.
Speaking of Yonex, the concept of removing the steel from inside the head of a MB designed iron and inserting a different material was already done by them. They did it with their Ti-Hybrid MB irons.
Yonex inserted Titanium instead of injection molding. Again, a lighter material than carbon steel (they have a set of CB's with graphite inserted into the core) to help lower the CoG.
What's interesting is Yonex is using a smaller amount of Titanium in their core than PXG is using injection molding.
But, the Yonex Ti-Hybrid MB's look much more like a blade.
It will be interesting to see what comes of PXG over the next year. My guess is that they will be at the PGA Merchandise Show in January, so I will get to try them out then.
3JACK
