3/8" Iron Length Increments as suggested by Mr. Wishon

[mnissen]

First and foremost, I'm wondering who has tried the 3/8" iron length increments and what has your success been?

 

As for myself, I recently started a part time job on the side of building/repairing clubs at a local golf store and I'm having a blast with it and learning a lot. I've started reading Tom Wishon's 10 part club fitting to help me out with what I'm doing. Anyway, I read the club length article and am really intrigued about the 3/8" increments in irons and would like to try it myself.

 

If Tom were able to chime in that'd be awesome but I realize he's busy man and can't reply to and chime in on everything but for those of you that have done it and are familiar with the concept, what iron do you use as a starting point? I've always played standard length irons and have been always recommended that I play a 38" 5-Iron and am thinking that may be a starting point? My swing characteristics are more of a flat/shallow swing plane and an aggressive transition. Additionally, I would assume that the lie angles would have to be adjusted, is that something that has to be determined on an iron by iron basis or do you take one and adjust accordingly like the typical 1/2 degree per club and just make it 3/8 of a degree?

 

Thanks in advance for all of your input.

[adsgolf]

Have done 3/8 steps often. Sometimes for a taller player we may step down from the 6 or 7 iron and keep 1/2 step going up, where ever it makes sense. Sometimes its the reverse. I have my 7 iron at 37 but play the 6 at 37.375 and the 5 at 37.75. There really isn't a right or wrong, it is more based on why. In my case I don't need a longer 5 iron being slightly vertically challenged, I tend to swing to the right of the target line, and shorter lets me come closer to the target line with my swing direction, which helps to reduce the chance of snapping one left. I like having my wedges and shorter clubs a little longer and I have no issues with hitting them on center, with a good swing direction number. As for lie angle check them dynamically don't just bend because you have a tool that lets you bend them.

[TomWishon]

[quote name='mnissen' timestamp='1431575308' post='11556454']
First and foremost, I'm wondering who has tried the 3/8" iron length increments and what has your success been?

As for myself, I recently started a part time job on the side of building/repairing clubs at a local golf store and I'm having a blast with it and learning a lot. I've started reading Tom Wishon's 10 part club fitting to help me out with what I'm doing. Anyway, I read the club length article and am really intrigued about the 3/8" increments in irons and would like to try it myself.

If Tom were able to chime in that'd be awesome but I realize he's busy man and can't reply to and chime in on everything but for those of you that have done it and are familiar with the concept, what iron do you use as a starting point? I've always played standard length irons and have been always recommended that I play a 38" 5-Iron and am thinking that may be a starting point? My swing characteristics are more of a flat/shallow swing plane and an aggressive transition. Additionally, I would assume that the lie angles would have to be adjusted, is that something that has to be determined on an iron by iron basis or do you take one and adjust accordingly like the typical 1/2 degree per club and just make it 3/8 of a degree?

Thanks in advance for all of your input.
[/quote]

I started to look at 3/8" increments back in the late 90s as a result of seeing a good number of golfers would tend to begin to bend over more or crouch down more when they set up to their high loft irons made with normal half inch increments. Doing 3/8" increments allows the irons to very slightly become progressively longer as you move down through to the higher loft irons in relation to what those irons would be if made with normal half inch increments. In turn this allowed the golfers to maintain a more consistent posture and spine angle both over the ball as well as through impact. Also, we saw that with golfers who had a tendency to push or pull the high loft irons, this also helped reduce that tendency.

Then later in the very early 2000s when I got into the work to develop a way to do MOI matching of irons, we found that using 3/8" increments made it easier to build the irons to all have the same MOI through the set. Doing an MOI match with half inch increments usually requires the addition of a bit more weight to the heads as the set graduates down to the high loft irons than if you do the MOI match with 3/8" increments. So that became the second reason to consider using 3/8" increments as well.

Lie fitting wise, it is always best to individually do dynamic lie fitting for every iron, one at a time and not to try to make assumptions to calculate lies from having only done dynamic lie fitting on a couple of the irons. The reason is because we golfers do not always maintain the same posture through the ball we had at address the same way with each iron, our hand/arm angle position at impact can change with different irons and of course the downward droop of the shaft also differs as the clubs get shorter through the set. So to account for all these variables to ensure that every iron travels through impact with the face plane in line with the target line or path, it is necessary to do dynamic lie fitting individually with each iron.

One thing that proves this is when you do properly dynamically fit each iron and then measure the static lies afterward, you hardly ever see the lies progress in an even increment up from iron to iron in the manner that heads are designed for their spec lie per head number.

[cmb71]

^ Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Wishon. I owe you a lot of thanks for sharing your wisdom. I now build in 3/8" increments using a lot of the information you have provided previously on the site, and found out that my lie angles were flatter with some (compared to manufacturer std.) than others. I am 5'10" with long arms.

I've learned that each club is a unique weapon and the increments typically used don't fit everyone. Dynamic lie fitting worked so well for me and I suggest you try it if you have inconsistencies within your set. Now, if we could just get more manufacturers to produce flatter lie angles on their drivers and fairway woods... but that's another story.

[mnissen]

adsgolf, Tom, and CMB71, A big thank you goes out to all of you for your thoughts and wisdom. This is incredibly useful information and I'm going to put it to use starting with myself and take my experience with me.

I guess for me, I hit my 5 iron very well so I think I'll base it all off of that and having a slightly shorter 4 iron should help as I have a bit of trouble with it. I'm looking forward to seeing my results although it'll be a few weeks before I've completed the re-build.

And again, I can't thank you enough for your responses and Mr. Wishon, I appreciate you taking the time to chine in here. I've learned a lot from the information you've posted on the site.

[ConstantineJr79]

I just had a set built off a 37" 7 iron and 3/8" up and down from there to my gap. My 56 and 60 were set to be 35.475" so I just left than at 35.50. This essentially gave me the same built I originally wanted based off a 38" 5 iron except now my 4,5,6 are just slightly shorter and my 8,9,P,G just slightly longer. I'm excited about this as I don't really need the extra length for the longer irons and was really doing it so I could have longer short irons as I struggle with shorter irons than I do with long irons. Should be easy to generate an even swing weight too as I requested.