Bryson and Single Length Irons

[maowv]

OK, I'm curious. How many of you guys have tried this? 

 

In theory, the idea of grooving one iron swing/posture/lie/etc makes sense but I keep hearing the announcers talk about his difficulty with wedges and that a 6-iron length wedge is tough to control.

 

Why not a combo concept? Maybe 3-9 being one length and then try PW-LW at a shorter but same length? Crazy?

 

Just curious with how many other than the mad scientist are able to make this work.

 

[Ferguson]

3 of us got demo sets and played 18 after hitting roughly 15-20 balls on the range.  

Lots of fun.  Nothing I would adopt 100%.  

Shot 78 but hit fewer greens.

 

[bladehunter]

1 hour ago, maowv said:

OK, I'm curious. How many of you guys have tried this? 

 

In theory, the idea of grooving one iron swing/posture/lie/etc makes sense but I keep hearing the announcers talk about his difficulty with wedges and that a 6-iron length wedge is tough to control.

 

Why not a combo concept? Maybe 3-9 being one length and then try PW-LW at a shorter but same length? Crazy?

 

Just curious with how many other than the mad scientist are able to make this work.

 

Tall guys have been issuing similar to your approach for years.  My pw-lw is same length. My 7-pw is 3/4 inch over ping standard and step down only 1/4 inch my 3-6 iron are 1/2 inch over ping standard and step the standard 3/8 ( I think that’s right ) between each club.  I figured that out by trial and error as far as comfort and contact.  I can’t play a 1/2 over wedge ( too short ) and don’t want to play a plus 3/4-1 inch 3 iron.  Lol.     

[bladehunter]

To answer your initial question.  No I haven’t tried a well fitted single length set.  Y I’d love to.  It’s just an expensive experiment that’s not easy to do correctly.   Most single lengths are only made with  GI iron sets , so makes it odd to me off the bat.  A set like Brysons initial edel set would be my preference.  

[rawdog]

I love mine. I have the OG F7s going on their 3rd season. I play mine at 8i length with 5* gaps from 59* on down. So my 6i plays closer to a 5.

 

The biggest advantage has been with my wedges. I can go after them hard without the pulls I used to get.

 

Only downside is I have felt like I reach at times with the longer irons (and cycle through days of toe misses), so I demo'd the SpeedZones with a graphite 7i shaft and was finding a much better result up through the 5i. I will probably pick those up in the offseason and adopt something closer to Cobra's suggested gappings now that they are in 4th-gen. I can elevate this gen of heads easier.

 

My game has improved down from about a 10 to a 5 in that time but I believe that is primarily due to improvements off the tee. I was always a decent iron player but this gives me one stance from about 90 - 180 yards out. Then it's single length 7w, 5w, 3w time. They're all shorter and play like hybrids.

 

So three main lengths, Driver, Wood, Iron. And in the summer I carry an 18* driving iron for punching out or just gobbling yards on a par 5.

 

Makes decisions easier, IMO.

Edited September 18, 2020 by rawdog

[JDCON]

I loved them. But in a club hoe moved traded them for the Srixon z785s I play now. I didn’t have the distance problem some talk about with short irons. Would play them again.

[Mcgeeno]

I've played single length for 3+ seasons. I even built my own single length set many years ago before anyone knew who Bryson was.

 

I was a fringe 5 cap and now I flirt between scratch and 2 cap. I attribute a good chunk of that to improved iron play.

 

Will never go back. Simplified my setup, swing, practice and mental game haha.

 

I dont swing on one plane like Bryson but the idea just made sense to me.

[freowho]

I don't get it. If they were such a good idea more pros would be doing it and all the clubs would be the same length. All the clubs. 

So you make a concession on the driver because it's teed up.

Then you make a concession on the 3wood because it's the longest club off the ground.

Then you concede the 5 wood because it's not quite the 3 wood.

Then you concede the wedges because you want more control.

Then you concede the 9 iron because it's like the wedges.

At what point do you realise that having different length clubs actually makes sense!

The only thing I would say about conventional clubs is that 1/2 inch increments in length might not suit everyone. Shallower golf swings generally handle longer clubs better and Bryson has a very shallow golf swing. He might be seeing an advantage to having say, a longer 8 iron, but loses this benefit if the wedge is the same length as his 8 iron.

I've had many clubfits where the 6 iron is half an inch longer than standard but the sand wedge is standard length. So where does that leave my gap wedge or pitching wedge? And they don't fit for these!

[golfandfishing]

Friend of mine has a set of Tommy Armour EQL’s that he has played since 1993. He’s terrible.  

[BlackDiamondPar5]

17 hours ago, bladehunter said:

To answer your initial question.  No I haven’t tried a well fitted single length set.  Y I’d love to.  It’s just an expensive experiment that’s not easy to do correctly.   Most single lengths are only made with  GI iron sets , so makes it odd to me off the bat.  A set like Brysons initial edel set would be my preference.  

Agreed. I'm 100% behind their logic but I can't justify the expense nor take the time for such an experiment. 

 

 

[Titleist99]

Is there anyone that won a major championship with single length golf clubs? If BdeC go on to win the USO, will more pros gravitate to the Idea?

[Kilo1545]

They mentioned that DeChambeau tried the 2 length idea and didn't find any benefit from it.

 

For me, I play +3/4" in everything down to 9-iron and then my 46/50/54/58 wedges are all the same length (usually +3/4" on the 46/50 and +1" on the 54/58 to get them the same length).  My posture tends to break down with the wedges, so the extra length allows me to keep my spine straight.  It's also a "same club, same swing, different loft/distance" kind of a thing.  If I need a shorter wedge for control or whatever, then I'll just choke it.

 

 

 

[miamistomp]

As a taller guy, I like the one length irons 6-gw

    My five and four iron are from  a different set and 0ne inch longer than standard

       sand and lob are also extended one inch

 

  Picked up a Cobra one length hybrid and tho it feels weird -it is a screamer-trajectory is more like a four iron- when I stop hitting it too far left I will put it in the bag

 

 One length makes sense to me

[chipa]

I hit my driver and long irons better than my short irons so I never really considered going single length until I started thinking my lower back inflexibility due to surgery may be the reason why I don't hit my short irons any more accurately than my 7 iron. Then my brother who has back problems as well got a set of F8's and has done very well so I'm going to build a set 6-L to try. Everything else will be standard of course.

[tannyhoban]

1 minute ago, chipa said:

I hit my driver and long irons better than my short irons so I never really considered going single length until I started thinking my lower back inflexibility due to surgery may be the reason why I don't hit my short irons any more accurately than my 7 iron. Then my brother who has back problems as well got a set of F8's and has done very well so I'm going to build a set 6-L to try. Everything else will be standard of course.

I just picked up a set of OL F7 4hyb and 5-G for same reason. Figured it's worth a shot.

[chipa]

1 minute ago, tannyhoban said:

I just picked up a set of OL F7 4hyb and 5-G for same reason. Figured it's worth a shot.

 

It seems a lot of people like to criticize Bryson's short iron play as a reason to discount SL clubs but honestly I'd be satisfied to hit my short irons half as well as Bryson as that would be a profound improvement.

[tannyhoban]

1 minute ago, chipa said:

 

It seems a lot of people like to criticize Bryson's short iron play as a reason to discount SL clubs but honestly I'd be satisfied to hit my short irons half as well as Bryson as that would be a profound improvement.

Lost in the weight gain distance hype is the fact that he has been much improved with distance control on the short irons. His short game and putting have been very good as well.

 

For me 37.25 is plenty long for a 5 iron and manageable at Gap wedge. I can stand a little taller at address and that feels worlds better on my back.

[Kilo1545]

45 minutes ago, chipa said:

I hit my driver and long irons better than my short irons so I never really considered going single length until I started thinking my lower back inflexibility due to surgery may be the reason why I don't hit my short irons any more accurately than my 7 iron. Then my brother who has back problems as well got a set of F8's and has done very well so I'm going to build a set 6-L to try. Everything else will be standard of course.

This is exactly why I play my wedges all the same length as a +3/4" PW.  I have very tight hamstrings and a 15 year old back injury, so when I have a wedge in my hand, it's very easy to let my back posture break down in order to get down on the club.  (Slump, curve in spine in order to get down there.)  Keeping my posture would require standing right on top of the ball and getting super steep.  My solution was to just lengthen those clubs a bit so I could maintain both ball position and posture.

 

It's not bad enough that I need to do it for anything other than wedges since my irons (3-9) are +3/4" anyway, so I'm not quite where you are, but I think you'll like the concept.

[doubledub]

I recently bought a set of cobra forged one length heads off ebay. Shafted them up with .370 tip C Taper 130x using a 5.75" trim on 7 iron and adjusted the trimming by .25" up and down the set to have something that is semi-flighted. Took them out yesterday and absolutely loved them. Made eagle on the first hole (par 5) after hitting the 5 iron to 4 feet from the fairway. It just felt like I could really go after each swing when I wanted because I had been grooving that same swing every time I had an iron in my hand. My ball flight dropped slightly on the 5-6 irons (5 iron is the lowest loft that came with my set) which was actually welcome because I hit the ball very high with my long irons. I also didn't feel I was losing any distance from a similarly lofted club from my VL set. My VL 4 iron is at 24* which is the same loft as the cobra 5 iron and I was basically hitting the cobra the same distance if not more (especially into the wind). I didn't feel like my ballflight got noticeably higher on 9-GW probably because I wasn't ever going full bore on those shots. I shot a slightly better than average score with no warmup and mediocre putting so I'm definitely going to be giving these clubs a shot. Now I just need to fill the gaps between 3 wood and 5 iron and figure out my SW and LW. Highly recommend the SL experiment for high speed players with high long iron ballflights because I think that is the group that will have the easiest transition to SL irons.

[sshadow2]

Todd Graves mentioned in one of his single plane videos, one length eliminates the need to worry about so many ball positions. It just further simplifies the swing. It's not necessary though and Graves himself prefers normal lengths.

 

I personally struggle most with all the diff ball positions to get optimal flight. I always thought ball position was due to loft, but based on his comments, its actually based on club length.

 

One length is looking more and more interesting.

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/18/2020 at 9:47 AM, maowv said:

In theory, the idea of grooving one iron swing/posture/lie/etc makes sense but I keep hearing the announcers talk about his difficulty with wedges and that a 6-iron length wedge is tough to control.

 

I play my Sterlings--and soon my Wishon EQ1-NX irons--a full inch shorter than that (an 8-iron length). This means the PW and GW are just an inch longer than "normal," which was very easy to get used to.

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/18/2020 at 9:47 AM, maowv said:

Why not a combo concept? Maybe 3-9 being one length and then try PW-LW at a shorter but same length? Crazy?

 

Not crazy. In fact, it sounds reasonable. But it doesn't work very well in practice. In fact, it defeats one of the two main advantages of the single length concept.

 

In theory, the lower-lofted clubs are easier to hit with single length--assuming you can swing them fast enough. If you build the set around the 8-iron length (36.5" is "standard), most golfers top out at the 6-iron. After that, they can't swing it fast enough to get proper gapping on the 5- and 4-irons. (So much so that Wishon didn't include a 4-iron in his new EQ1-NX irons.) Each golfer is different. But what makes the low-lofted irons easier to his IS their shorter length. Again, as far as you can hit them with proper gapping. That part is true. (The lower lofts still make them harder to hit, but not as much as traditional long irons.)

 

The other advantage is grooving your iron swing. Now, don't get me wrong. I think it would be silly to address the ball thinking you're going to hit this one with a "6-iron swing" or an "8-iron swing." But you do. In a variable-length set the lie angles get flatter as you progress through the set because....your swings get flatter to accommodate each subsequent longer shaft. But because you can't adjust to each club consciously, it creates myriad swing planes that you have no way of managing. Single-length clubs get rid of all of that. One length, one lie angle, one swing. 

 

I'm a 5. My weakest area was iron play. That is simply not the case anymore. I'm much more dialed in with my wedges (I play single-length through the SW) than ever before, even though they're longer than before. It's because every swing, whether it's a 4-iron or a sand wedge, feels the same. 

 

I've been doing this for four years. I assumed, like others, that the high-lofted irons and wedges would be harder to hit. In fact, they got easier to hit. (Remember, if you build a Wishon set around an 8-iron length, the PW and GW are just an inch longer than traditional clubs.)

 

Now the lob wedge. This, I found, was a bridge too far for me. The combination of the high loft and the longer length meant I was hitting my shots with a flat 8-iron swing. This severely interferes with lobs and sand play. And if you choke down on the club, you bring the toe into play, flipping the club open. (This because of the flatter lie angle combined with the more upright swing plane caused by choking down.) As much as I liked hitting the LW for full-, three-quarter, and half-swings from the fairway, it's lack of utility around the greens was too limiting. And since I use the LW for most sand play, I made my Sterling set 4I-SW, with a traditional LW. Believe me, I've gone back-and-forth with the Sterling LW and the Callaway Mack Daddy, but I just can't get the Sterling to work. My EQ1-NX set (being assembled right now) will be 5I - SW, with traditional (Ping 410) hybrids above them and that Callaway LW below.

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/18/2020 at 11:18 AM, bladehunter said:

 It’s just an expensive experiment that’s not easy to do correctly.

 

This is really true, with one exception. It's true because you cannot really tell if this is good for you without playing a good SL set. IMHO, there are four: Wishon Sterling (out of production, but you can still get them), Wishon EQ1-NX, Edel, and Cobra. The Edel is built around a 6-iron length and the Cobra around a 7-iron length. I imagine the lie angles could be adjusted to accommodate slightly shorter or longer lengths than those.) But....

 

One option might be to purchase a used set of quality SL irons, assuming the lie angle fits and the shaft specs are reasonable for you. 

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:01 AM, freowho said:

If they were such a good idea more pros would be doing it and all the clubs would be the same length. All the clubs. 

 

This isn't true for a few reasons. First, it's tough to get someone to make such a radical change when their livelihoods are on the line. Radical equipment changes have sometimes threatened careeers.

 

Second, I'm not so sure a professional at the very top of his game (and the world of golfers overall) needs to make this kind of switch. 

 

Third, you can't do "all the clubs." There are physical limitations you cannot overcome. Take the driver. If you shorten to less than 42" or so, you simply won't get the performance you require vis-a-vis the 3-wood. I've posted at length the difficulties in doing this with the lob wedge as well. And the lower-lofted irons need some serious swing speed to maintain gapping. If you have your irons built around 36.5" shafts (traditional 8-iron length), you have to swing it around 85 mph to take advantage of that 4-iron. If not, the 5-iron (or even 6-iron, or 7-iron) might be your least-lofted iron.

 

Using an extreme example--especially one that those with experience know isn't reasonable--doesn't negate the entire concept.

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/19/2020 at 4:02 AM, golfandfishing said:

Friend of mine has a set of Tommy Armour EQL’s that he has played since 1993. He’s terrible.  

Those clubs were terrible.

 

The technology didn't exist back then to fully execute the concept. As a result, different clubs had different static weights, swing weights, MOI, etc. That's not the case these days with modern single-length irons from trustworthy sources.

 

As for your friend being terrible, we all know that such a condition can arise from many causes, and probably cannot be saved by one solution.

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/19/2020 at 5:33 AM, Titleist99 said:

Is there anyone that won a major championship with single length golf clubs? If BdeC go on to win the USO, will more pros gravitate to the Idea?

Besides Bobby Jones?

[Rich Douglas]

On 9/19/2020 at 5:33 AM, Titleist99 said:

If BdeC go on to win the USO, will more pros gravitate to the Idea?

 

As we now know, he did.

 

I doubt a single professional will make the change. Their livelihoods are on the line. Besides, these guys are the best ball-strikers in the world with very, very little room for improvement, and almost none of that available from equipment. (Which is so heavily constrained by design rules.)

[Rich Douglas]

On 10/11/2020 at 10:33 AM, sshadow2 said:

Todd Graves mentioned in one of his single plane videos, one length eliminates the need to worry about so many ball positions. It just further simplifies the swing. It's not necessary though and Graves himself prefers normal lengths.

 

I know you're not saying this, but the subject of 1-plane swings and single-length irons often comes up. They are two unrelated concepts. You can be a one-plane swinger with either conventional or single-length clubs. Same with two-plane swingers. 

[sshadow2]

1 hour ago, Rich Douglas said:

I know you're not saying this, but the subject of 1-plane swings and single-length irons often comes up. They are two unrelated concepts. You can be a one-plane swinger with either conventional or single-length clubs. Same with two-plane swingers. 

I myself am a 1-planer (now) and use conventional lengths, too. One length irons are no longer in my consideration.

 

In fact, I recently had a gap fitting and found I needed to add 1/4" to my 6i (to get the distance right), whereas the rest of my irons are 1/4" shorter than standard.

 

Standing at 6', I wouldn't mind keeping all my wedges 1 length matched to my PW though.

 

 

[golfandfishing]

2 hours ago, Rich Douglas said:

Those clubs were terrible.

 

The technology didn't exist back then to fully execute the concept. As a result, different clubs had different static weights, swing weights, MOI, etc. That's not the case these days with modern single-length irons from trustworthy sources.

 

As for your friend being terrible, we all know that such a condition can arise from many causes, and probably cannot be saved by one solution.

Clubs of any length, swing weight, manufacturer or anything else would not change his ability one iota. In fact if you switched out his EQL’s for anything else I doubt he would even notice.