P7TW Can a higher handicappers play them?

[Pnwpingi210]

Anecdotally, I’ve found blades much more penalizing to players who are on the lower end of club head speed.  
 

Seems like mishits for the lower club head speed guys I play with are far mod penalized distance wise (20 yards) than the higher speed guys (10 yards).    A mishit 130 yard 7 iron when you expect 150 is much different than Mishit 165 yard 7 iron when you expect 175.

[ChipNRun]

No you cannot.

 

If you can't back up a 4i shot on a bentgrass green in August, you will not be allowed to purchase the set.

 

TM doesn't want just anyone to play that iron.🤔

[dufferaaron]

On 8/18/2023 at 8:41 AM, MountainKing said:

 

10 yards is huge when it comes to irons.   If I'm firing at a center pin on this green from 140 yards and I come up 10 yards short, look where I'm at:  5 yards still keeps me on the front of the green.  This isn't the type of green you could take an extra club just in case situation either.  With back/center pins it might not be a deal breaker, but when you mishit a shot to a front pin, that could put you in an awful bunker or worse.  I personally want my off center strikes to fly as far as they possibly can, that's why I bumped to the 770's, they hold their ball speed well with a bad strike, I generally only fall 3-4 yards short with them when they are mishit.

 

 

That's a fair point. My miss is usually a top, so no club is going to help me get over the water in that case. I also believe if I hit a bad enough shot to lose 10 yards then I deserve to be in the water.

[Jbar]

It is long overdue for a P7TW v2. I would buy the current model if we never see the new one. It will be part of my TW Collection 🙂

[rorykoepka]

P7tw in 7-PW are super playable for any handicap in my opinion. To me the profile is much larger than a lot of players cavity back irons. Love my set

[btyh]

On 9/25/2023 at 11:47 PM, rorykoepka said:

P7tw in 7-PW are super playable for any handicap in my opinion. To me the profile is much larger than a lot of players cavity back irons. Love my set

Lol you are saying that when you are hitting it where you need to on that club. High handicap contact isn't going to look like yours or have the same results. 

 

For this thread you can play whatever you want. Your results will determine how happy you are playing with them. 

Edited October 1, 2023 by btyh

[Jbar]

I upgraded my iron sets, Z-Forged II, to P7TW with the same X100 shafts. Perfect combination with MG4 TW Grind 56* and 60*! Looking forward to enjoying my golfing days.

[Kale_m]

On 9/25/2023 at 9:47 PM, rorykoepka said:

P7tw in 7-PW are super playable for any handicap in my opinion. To me the profile is much larger than a lot of players cavity back irons. Love my set

Ok let’s see the 4 iron strike pattern 

[rorykoepka]

2 minutes ago, Kale_m said:

Ok let’s see the 4 iron strike pattern 

I don’t even attempt to hit that thing. Tiny blade length

[Mikey_HACKilroy]

 

I've always subscribed to one rule when it comes to buying blades.

 

If you believe that you have to be at a certain hindicap to play MBs then you should not buy MBs.

 

Any golfer who fears mere steel objects because of some perceived requirement of handicap level to use will never believe they could get better with them,  and so they won't.

 

Golf is a sport that requires at least some level of commitment to get better regardless of which clubs are being used.

 

A blade is an instrument; even a work of art through engineering. One cannot master the instrument without picking it up, practicing and playing.

 

Or are all blade users savants?

 

Uh huh.... right.  😁

 

[CROUSE99]

Like someone said earlier, I am also firmly in the camp of play what you want.  It's your money.  If you enjoy playing blades, then I am not one to criticize even if you are the worst ball striker who ever lived.  The definition of forgiveness also varies according to the player and the strike.  If you look at the robot tests on youtube by Cool Clubs, you will see that the front to back dispersion of GI irons tends to be huge.  Is that forgiveness?  The sole design also matters a lot.  Blades tend to have narrow soles with low bounce.  For some high handicappers that combo is perfect.  For some high handicappers that combo would be the kiss of death.

[petep5280]

In the world of high handicapping it goes:

1.  Awful off the tee. 

2.  Never getting up and down to save bogey, maybe double bogey. 

3.  3 Putting. 

106:  Iron ball striking

[DeucingDuffer]

12 minutes ago, petep5280 said:

In the world of high handicapping it goes:

1.  Awful off the tee. 

2.  Never getting up and down to save bogey, maybe double bogey. 

3.  3 Putting. 

106:  Iron ball striking

4. Ability to scramble

5. Choosing the smart shot, as opposed to taking the stupid risk

[Jbar]

18 hours ago, rorykoepka said:

I don’t even attempt to hit that thing. Tiny blade length

Honestly, I was surprised how easy to hit P7TW 4 iron with X100 than Z-Forged II and ZX7 MKII. Still gonna keep G430 4H with Nippon Modus 3 GOST shaft in the bag. 

[Pnwpingi210]

I’ve hit p7tw recently.  I didn’t get any launch monitor data but they seemed a bit easier to hit than some of the smaller blades out there (620 mb, apex mb, cobra mb).   

[Kale_m]

I am a low cap, I can hit the p7tw irons just fine. I just didn’t like the feel of them. Very firm 

[Tree Levino]

20 hours ago, petep5280 said:

In the world of high handicapping it goes:

1.  Awful off the tee. 

2.  Never getting up and down to save bogey, maybe double bogey. 

3.  3 Putting. 

106:  Iron ball striking

 

I play with a ton of different people because my times are mostly last minute given I have a young baby. I have played with ONE guy out of the countless I've played with around a 15 who can hit his irons beautifully. Tall guy, ex high level volleyball player but the guy will blast balls OB and has no short game. This whole "ballstriker but no short game or can't control driver" is absolute bollocks. If you can swing a club properly you can swing a club properly. Y'all fooling yourselves if you think these people exist out in the wild commonly. TW are great irons no doubt, but if you're playing the long irons as a high cap you're 100% losing strokes. If you don't care about that then have all of the fun you want. Also worth stating that if you play short tees it probably won't matter as much as you won't be using long irons on par 3s anyways. My course has forced carries and lots of places to lose your ball, even on the par 3s, so if you aren't striking your long irons you're going to be blowing up. 

[Binson]

Anyone can play anything. But if their goal is lower scores (which is not always the case), then there are probably more suitable options out there for high handicappers unless they have exceptional club head speed. 

[Pnwpingi210]

Update for this thread.  I got a smoking deal on 4-pw set of p7tws.  There weren’t to my spec, but I took a flyer anyway.  
 

These things are great.  With the exception of the soles which are thin ( but have some bounce) these have a larger footprint than most muscle backs.  They are extremely consistent with ballflight and distance, and aren’t than penal on off center strikes compared to most traditional players irons.

 

i think the draw back for most high handicappers would be distance.  You need some swing speed to get them out there a reasonable distance.  
 

 

[iNeedMoreGolf]

5 hours ago, Pnwpingi210 said:

Update for this thread.  I got a smoking deal on 4-pw set of p7tws.  There weren’t to my spec, but I took a flyer anyway.  
 

These things are great.  With the exception of the soles which are thin ( but have some bounce) these have a larger footprint than most muscle backs.  They are extremely consistent with ballflight and distance, and aren’t than penal on off center strikes compared to most traditional players irons.

 

i think the draw back for most high handicappers would be distance.  You need some swing speed to get them out there a reasonable distance.  
 

 

I think thats just what it comes down to. If you know somewhat what your doing and have a good swing speed anything is playable. I know somewhat what im doing and im confident i can probably play a nice score with them but i dont have the swing speed. Really you would just adjust clubbing up but not too many people do that. Blades arent all that bad as ppl think. Swing style matters though digger or picker and swing speed. Longer irons are the harder part 4 iron 5 iron but if you played them as a full set you would just say it is what it is and expect some shots to come up short sometimes. Thats why players blend sets now.

[rsballer10]

You can play whatever clubs you want! Forums get obsessed over telling people what to do. If playing club with tiger's name on it makes you love the clubs and enjoy them, do it. They are not a good fit for 99.99% of the golfing population, but there are so many other variables to scoring well I don't think it's the end of the world.

 

I play more forgiving irons because that's what I was fit to, and I want my clubs to all be completely optimal for my swing. But I still care about how they look. Just buy what makes you happy

[MelloYello]

14 minutes ago, rsballer10 said:

Forums get obsessed over telling people what to do.

 

No, forums generate responses to questions. 

[MelloYello]

14 hours ago, Pnwpingi210 said:

Update for this thread.  I got a smoking deal on 4-pw set of p7tws.  There weren’t to my spec, but I took a flyer anyway.  
 

These things are great.  With the exception of the soles which are thin ( but have some bounce) these have a larger footprint than most muscle backs.  They are extremely consistent with ballflight and distance, and aren’t than penal on off center strikes compared to most traditional players irons.

 

i think the draw back for most high handicappers would be distance.  You need some swing speed to get them out there a reasonable distance.  
 

 

 

8 hours ago, iNeedMoreGolf said:

I think thats just what it comes down to. If you know somewhat what your doing and have a good swing speed anything is playable. I know somewhat what im doing and im confident i can probably play a nice score with them but i dont have the swing speed. Really you would just adjust clubbing up but not too many people do that. Blades arent all that bad as ppl think. Swing style matters though digger or picker and swing speed. Longer irons are the harder part 4 iron 5 iron but if you played them as a full set you would just say it is what it is and expect some shots to come up short sometimes. Thats why players blend sets now.

 

It's also been my experience that speed matters. I think that comes from VCoG and the lower launch blades tend to generate. The slower swinger needs all the trajectory they can get and really can't afford to lose much at all on a mis-hit. 

 

The only alternative is to really shallow out the path to get as much launch as possible at a moderate SS but that requires a player adapt their swing over time. I tend to think that's probably good for a lot of younger players TBH but I also think most young players are just as happy with a T100 or something anyway.

 

The faster swinger with more flexibility is far more likely to be able to handle blades without a whole lot of effort. If you're already reasonably shallow and have good SS you'll probably never quite understand why people make such a big deal about blades. 

 

But for those that are stuck with a limiting ball-flight that's low and short, there's just no worse feeling. You add in the fact that most amateurs tend to slice the ball a bit, especially in the longer clubs, and you can see why blades tend to be somewhat limiting. That wipe-fade long iron just doesn't go anywhere and doesn't have the energy to get up very high either.  

 

 

.

Edited December 5, 2023 by MelloYello

[rsballer10]

17 minutes ago, MelloYello said:

 

No, forums generate responses to questions. 

 

case in point

[MelloYello]

1 hour ago, rsballer10 said:

 

case in point

 

Me telling you you're wrong is not me telling you what to do. 

 

You can be as rude and condescending towards the public as you wish. Just don't call yourself clever and don't expect to be taken as insightful. 

 

[rsballer10]

2 minutes ago, MelloYello said:

 

Me telling you you're wrong is not me telling you what to do. 

 

You can be as rude and condescending towards the public as you wish. Just don't call yourself clever and don't expect to be taken as insightful. 

 

It's not meant to be rude and condescending. I don't bear any ill will. But I stand by what I said that forums get obsessed over telling people what to do, instead of simply presenting their opinion as just that. An opinion.

[Pnwpingi210]

2 hours ago, MelloYello said:

 

 

It's also been my experience that speed matters. I think that comes from VCoG and the lower launch blades tend to generate. The slower swinger needs all the trajectory they can get and really can't afford to lose much at all on a mis-hit. 

 

The only alternative is to really shallow out the path to get as much launch as possible at a moderate SS but that requires a player adapt their swing over time. I tend to think that's probably good for a lot of younger players TBH but I also think most young players are just as happy with a T100 or something anyway.

 

The faster swinger with more flexibility is far more likely to be able to handle blades without a whole lot of effort. If you're already reasonably shallow and have good SS you'll probably never quite understand why people make such a big deal about blades. 

 

But for those that are stuck with a limiting ball-flight that's low and short, there's just no worse feeling. You add in the fact that most amateurs tend to slice the ball a bit, especially in the longer clubs, and you can see why blades tend to be somewhat limiting. That wipe-fade long iron just doesn't go anywhere and doesn't have the energy to get up very high either.  

 

 

.

Agree with most of this.  

 

I end up with high floaty miss hits when I try to play a set of cobra tours, t100s, any of the techy players irons.  I dont get that with my mp32’s or p7tws. With no wind or a tailwind, I think the king tours and t100s are 5 yards or so longer loft for loft as I squeeze a bit more ball speed out of them but they spin more and apex higher and aren’t as easy to flight down for me.

 

 I played 9 holes in a misty rain at 49 degrees outside and missed 1 green in reg playing only  irons from the forward tees playing a club not to my spec and my first time hitting them.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

 

for reference I’m about 1-0 degrees  in to out, 2.5-3.5 down aoa, and about 95 ish mph as with a 7 iron.

 

 

[Jbar]

23 minutes ago, Pnwpingi210 said:

Agree with most of this.  

 

I end up with high floaty miss hits when I try to play a set of cobra tours, t100s, any of the techy players irons.  I dont get that with my mp32’s or p7tws. With no wind or a tailwind, I think the king tours and t100s are 5 yards or so longer loft for loft as I squeeze a bit more ball speed out of them but they spin more and apex higher and aren’t as easy to flight down for me.

 

 I played 9 holes in a misty rain at 49 degrees outside and missed 1 green in reg playing only  irons from the forward tees playing a club not to my spec and my first time hitting them.  Can’t ask for much more than that.

 

for reference I’m about 1-0 degrees  in to out, 2.5-3.5 down aoa, and about 95 ish mph as with a 7 iron.

Have a great time with P7TW!

[Moarbutter]

As a world renowned expert on blades (I got my first set 5 days ago and have played 3 rounds with them), I can confidently state (thanks to Dunning-Kruger) that an answer to the question of whether or not you should play blades based on HCP is a fundamentally wrong way to approach the question. I think that the answer to the question has a lot more to do with your mindset as a player and why you play golf than it has to do with anything else. I also think that the term Game Improvement iron could not be more misleading - they don't help you improve anything. A quick caveat before I continue, I think a really salient point has been made about clubhead speed. If you have a low clubhead speed in the 50s, 60s, maybe 70s w/ a 7 iron and you struggle to get the ball in the air AND you either don't have or don't want a path to faster clubhead speed due to injury, age, health, desire or any other factor, then you probably should not play blades. Golf can be one of the most frustrating games on the planet and not using every advantage you can get in that circumstance wouldn't make any sense. 

 

As I said, I think the question of whether or not you should play blades comes down to a question of why you play golf and what you want to get out of it. If you play golf because it is a social activity to do with friends once or twice a month; if when you're standing on the tee box at a par 3 you want to be the guy who pulls the highest numbered club out of the bag; if you have really low clubhead speed and aren't looking to change that; if you play golf because you want to card the lowest score you possibly can; if you play golf to win money or play professionally when your livelihood depends on your performance; if you don't have a lot of time to devote to honing your swing due to family, work, kids, preferences, or a myriad of circumstances; or any of a dozen other reasons; then you DEFINITELY shouldn't play blades. If however, you play golf because you love the constant self improvement; you love the process and the work that comes with trying to master an incredibly difficult skill; you love the idea of shot shaping and working the ball to an absurd amount; you want the purest hit of adrenaline from ABSOLUTELY PURING one, and want to chase that dragon forever; or most importantly you want to become a better ball striker and are willing to put in the work to get there; then I would STRONGLY encourage you to try them out.

 

The most important thing to consider is how much it matters to you to become a better ball-striker, whether you have the time and effort to dedicate yourself to it, and whether or not you are ok not scoring well during the process of trying to get better. I think it is absolutely essential to playing blades that you do not have an ego about your game and playing blades. You will miss shots, you will always be the person pulling out the lowest numbered club on a par 3, you'll hit your irons the shortest, and you HAVE to be ok with that. On the upside though, classical conditioning is a HELL of a useful tool if you want to get better at anything and you won't have to hit many mis-hits that make you feel like you just grabbed a frozen lightning bolt to make you want to not do that again, and there is no drug known to man that feels better than puring it with a blade. We're talking carrot and stick turned up to 11. This to me, is why Game Improvement is a horrible name for that category. It is EXTREMELY hard to improve your ball striking at all when playing that style of iron. How can you possibly improve without any feedback whatsoever.

 

To provide some context to my feelings about this, I started playing golf when I was like 2 or 3 years old. My dad and my grandpa taught me how to play, and some of my absolute fondest memories are from being on the course and playing golf with them. However, I never really caught the bug of truly loving golf. I had all the opportunity to take lessons, and to go play at the club my parents belonged to, but I just never really cared - mostly because I just could never tell when I was striking the ball well or what I was doing wrong. My thought standing over the ball was "I hope this goes well", and then swing away. I DIRECTLY attribute that to the clubs that I was playing. I had these giant shovel cast cavity back Callaway x-12 with about 6 miles of offset and a clubhead the size of a Toyota Camry. They were as Game Improvement as they come, and my game and my love of golf really struggled for that.

 

Flash forward 20 years of not playing, and I'm farting around with my buddy on the range with my cobweb covered set of shovels, and he lets me hit his forged set of Adams with very little cavity and it was like I saw the face of God. I could actually FEEL where the ball contacted the club - there was an actual responsiveness to it, and when I struck it well it felt like a choir of angels singing. Another couple years went by, and I picked up the game again last year, and told myself that I would get a set of clubs that were WAY too good for me to help me improve my game. I got a set of Mizuno JPX 923 Tours with a 7-iron clubhead speed of 78 MPH and a HCP of like 30. My theme for this past year was to get good at golf, and I'm really happy with the amount of progress that I was able to make. I can attribute a lot of that to the clubs that I played. While they aren't blades, they're about as close as you can get in a cavity back, and I was able to get a lot of the responsiveness and feel that I was looking for that kept me coming back and made it significantly easier to learn how to make solid contact with the ball. By the end of the season I was up to a 92 mph clubhead speed w/ my 7-iron and a HCP of 16.1.

 

I got a set of blades for this coming year with the exact same thing in mind, and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner. The difference between the JPXs and my blades feels like riding a bicycle without training wheels. Hitting them is an incredibly joyous feeling. As far as forgiveness goes, I think that the notorious reputation that blades get is largely unjustified in the modern game. Is it harder to score with them - absolutely. However, I'm noticing that a maybe 30 yard miss right with my JPX will be maybe 15 right and 15 short which on the courses that I play are usually going to be really playable. It makes it punishing and gives me the room for improvement that I'm looking for, while putting me in a challenging situation that the golf course was designed for. My blades bring interesting hazards like bunkers, rough, carries over bunkers all into play and make me actually appreciate the architecture of the golf course even more. I play golf BECAUSE it is challenging, not despite it. I enjoy testing myself against myself AND against the course; and I feel like playing blades does that better than any other set of clubs you could find.

 

If this has moved you, or maybe gotten you interested in playing blades - there are a BUNCH of sets that are available on Ebay for very little money. I'm talking sub $300. I'm not going to go into every recommendation for specific blades, mostly because I have no experience or knowledge of them, but the benefit to being a hunk of metal on the end of a stick is that 10, 20, 30 year old or older clubs are still perfectly viable. Look for a set that wasn't famous(Titleist 681 and Mizuno MP-14 I'm looking at you) for who used them or what was won with them from the past couple of decades that are in pretty good condition and just give it a try. The worst thing that happens is that set of irons gets another steward, and you make your money back from the next person who wants to try them out. Who knows, though? They might just make you fall in love.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Moarbutter
Realizing this has nothing to do w/ the P7TW 😬. Sorry I can't give specific advice, but they do look awesome.

[bodhi555]

The only way I find the VR Pros unforgiving (the P7-TWs with a Swoosh) are the soles, and only as if you're playing out of mud like we are in the UK at the minute, you're strike better be perfect or it isn't going anywhere.

 

In summer, they're no harder to get good results out than a T100 etc.