At what point is playing blades an advantage?

[rd1959]

1 hour ago, me05501 said:

Okay, Dad. 

I agree with Red4282. It was a nonsensical thing to say and then he follows up with another smarta** remark. It's very arrogant and disrespectful. 

[Chunkitgood]

When you can control spin (while not absolutely necessary blades tend to have higher COG) and when you are trying to learn to swing well enough to control spin, you might benefit from blades.

[mukster]

[Red4282]

Just now, mukster said:

You aint wrong. Same tired arguments!

[metaldog]

golf.com had a cb vs blade miss data where blades had less of a dropoff vs cb in the heel misses
https://golf.com/gear/irons/are-you-ready-blade-irons-how-find-out/
their conclusion was cb had more forgiveness towards the toe, but if you miss heel side you may have some gains with a blade, maybe that's one reason?

 

Since I'm a hard-stuck titleist boy with my 4* upright irons (not many other brands go much more upright), looking at all the pros hitting t100 (aside from Justin Thomas blade 5-9, Max Homa 6-9 blades), I play t100's too, but I am sorely tempted to try mb's from 6-9 iron when I just seem to flush my 8 iron so well (8 iron t100 is a one piece construction like a blade). 

[bodhi555]

5 hours ago, metaldog said:

golf.com had a cb vs blade miss data where blades had less of a dropoff vs cb in the heel misses
https://golf.com/gear/irons/are-you-ready-blade-irons-how-find-out/
their conclusion was cb had more forgiveness towards the toe, but if you miss heel side you may have some gains with a blade, maybe that's one reason?

 

Since I'm a hard-stuck titleist boy with my 4* upright irons (not many other brands go much more upright), looking at all the pros hitting t100 (aside from Justin Thomas blade 5-9, Max Homa 6-9 blades), I play t100's too, but I am sorely tempted to try mb's from 6-9 iron when I just seem to flush my 8 iron so well (8 iron t100 is a one piece construction like a blade). 

 

Interesting article, thanks for posting. Seems to fit in with my experience - the only time blades really punish you is if you are way out on the toe to the point you're running out of grooves, even being 0.5 of an inch out there they only seem to drop 3 yards over a CB. Heel side there is no difference at all.

 

 

[Retrop1]

On 9/10/2022 at 4:56 PM, Douglsss said:

Hypothetically speaking

 

All things being equal - loft, lie, etc - If I have a level of ballstriking to where playing blades vs player distance vs GI irons clubs each have similar average distances, why wouldn’t you play blades?

 

IMO - easier to work multiple trajectories, easier to remove spin, better consistency( no hot faces ). 
 

Another argument could be made that in this scenario - what are you losing in the scoring clubs, say 8i - pw, by not using a bladed club?

I am simply not a good enough ball striker to enjoy the game playing with blades. I do, however, enjoy hitting blades in some settings. There is nothing like the feel of a well struck forged blade. I suppose if I were to have a larger budget, I could tinker to the point where I could play blades up to an 8 iron or so, but honestly I don't see that as realistic so I opt for a nice feeling club that is more forgiving so I can have a better overall experience and score better. 

[driveandputtmachine]

15 hours ago, Red4282 said:

Good solid post. Maybe some manufacturers have figured it out. Im guessing there may be some that havent or dont care… so let me ask you as a really good golfer, in your opinion why arent any of these types (hollow players distance) not very popular on any of the major mens tours?

Plain and simple, they reduce spin.  In general you need height and spin to hold greens on the PGA Tour.  They also play rough thicker than most normal people see.

 

So you take an iron that reduces spin, which is something PGA Tour players already do not need, and you add rough that also reduces spin, and voila....you have an iron type they does not suit the majority of the courses they play.

[Ger21]

58 minutes ago, bodhi555 said:

Seems to fit in with my experience - the only time blades really punish you is if you are way out on the toe

That's been my experience for the last 20 years. These threads make it seem like I must be an incredible ballstriker! 🤣

[Red4282]

1 hour ago, driveandputtmachine said:

Plain and simple, they reduce spin.  In general you need height and spin to hold greens on the PGA Tour.  They also play rough thicker than most normal people see.

 

So you take an iron that reduces spin, which is something PGA Tour players already do not need, and you add rough that also reduces spin, and voila....you have an iron type they does not suit the majority of the courses they play.

Ok but the main reason the spin is less is because of stronger lofts. Couldnt oems just make them a weaker lofted set?

[Bye]

17 hours ago, Douglsss said:

Ok, so it took me a bit. Mostly was having to lookup who does and doesn't use blades. Ran this for the top 100 players off of datagolf rank of last 12 months.

 

Averages aren't everything but there it is. 

 

Blades Counter: 44.0
Blades Average Rank Overall: 55.43181818181818
Blades Average Rank APP: 61.45454545454545
Blades Average STDDEV APP: 1.5164318181818182

CB Counter: 56.0
CB Average Rank Overall: 46.625
CB Average Rank APP: 60.357142857142854
CB Average STDDEV APP: 1.5771607142857142

 

Of the top 100 - 44 use blades, 56 use CB's. I counted mixed sets as blades as well since some people use a CB 4/5 or whatever. 

 

Of the top 100 players in the world for the last 12 months, it seems players using a CB makes them .06 standard deviations better than tour average vs top 100 players who play blades. 

 

I'll attach the list and maybe its not perfect but good enough for an hour of messing about.

 

In answering my initial question - I guess if you are a top 100 player in the world, playing a CB makes you a little better than tour average than if not? I don't know if I have enough data to really dial down to figure out if these differences are large in different circumstances, age, course, etc. Fun though 😄

blades_vs_cb_top100.csv 3.5 kB · 0 downloads

Outstanding work with this info, very interesting to see. I am being genuine, it's the kind of thing I would do. 

 

It would be great to know why each player opts for the type of iron they use, if it is purely due to mishits or if there are other factors involved. Could controlling spin, launch etc come into it as well? Some of Chris Trott's fitting videos are quite enlightening on this. 

 

I read an article a few years back on Jim Furyk, in it he said that he would love to play blades but he missed everything left with them. Recently we saw Billy Ho talking about playing was it a 5 iron head with a 6 iron loft or something to get the bounce on the club right. 

 

Every WITB video which come out I keenly load to watch to hear if there will be real geek moment where one of the pro's will go into great detail on what they use and why. Most are disappointing, Jon Rahms first one with Callaway was the worst. 

 

 

[me05501]

10 hours ago, rd1959 said:

I agree with Red4282. It was a nonsensical thing to say and then he follows up with another smarta** remark. It's very arrogant and disrespectful. 

 

Message boards are for sharing opinions. Telling someone else their opinion is pointless or ridiculous is the height of arrogance and the opposite of respectful. 

 

Besides, he's right. The pros consistently hit it much closer to the center much more often than even very talented ams. This is empirical. No need to get defensive about it. 

 

 

[Wayside]

8 hours ago, metaldog said:

golf.com had a cb vs blade miss data where blades had less of a dropoff vs cb in the heel misses
https://golf.com/gear/irons/are-you-ready-blade-irons-how-find-out/
their conclusion was cb had more forgiveness towards the toe, but if you miss heel side you may have some gains with a blade, maybe that's one reason?

 

Since I'm a hard-stuck titleist boy with my 4* upright irons (not many other brands go much more upright), looking at all the pros hitting t100 (aside from Justin Thomas blade 5-9, Max Homa 6-9 blades), I play t100's too, but I am sorely tempted to try mb's from 6-9 iron when I just seem to flush my 8 iron so well (8 iron t100 is a one piece construction like a blade). 

I wish there was a bit more detail to that as it could be quite interesting, but you’d need to know which clubs they compared, and how results were elsewhere on the face too.

 

I’ve seen a few iron-Byron type reports which factor in specific impact areas (vertical/horizontal) but this report seems to suggest higher levels of punishment for missing the middle with both types of clubs. 

[Tim_Gavrich]

I think there's an aspirational aspect to blades that might be underrated in this thread. A fairly good argument has been made, here and elsewhere, that goes something like "No one is actually good enough to play blades." But I think that the people who enjoy hitting them are generally trying to almost use them as motivation to get better. The austere look at address, the more noticeable spectrum of feels on mishits, the sense of history and "tradition" behind them all point to an older-school approach to getting better at golf.

 

Now, I am not at all suggesting that people who do not play blades are any less serious about performing their best than those of us who do play blades. I'm saying there's just a different approach at play for different people. And because so much of golf is mental, I would treat any attempts to objectively quantify any performance inferiority of blades with healthy skepticism.

 

The satisfaction of hitting the clubs you enjoy hitting trumps some of the fitting process. Objectivity is useful as a reference point and a guide, but it's not the whole story of what makes a club the best fit for a given golfer, IMO.

[Red4282]

33 minutes ago, Bye said:

Outstanding work with this info, very interesting to see. I am being genuine, it's the kind of thing I would do. 

 

It would be great to know why each player opts for the type of iron they use, if it is purely due to mishits or if there are other factors involved. Could controlling spin, launch etc come into it as well? Some of Chris Trott's fitting videos are quite enlightening on this. 

 

I read an article a few years back on Jim Furyk, in it he said that he would love to play blades but he missed everything left with them. Recently we saw Billy Ho talking about playing was it a 5 iron head with a 6 iron loft or something to get the bounce on the club right. 

 

Every WITB video which come out I keenly load to watch to hear if there will be real geek moment where one of the pro's will go into great detail on what they use and why. Most are disappointing, Jon Rahms first one with Callaway was the worst. 

 

 

Its also to be noted alot of pros really know nothing about equipment. They just get handed stuff and until they find something that they like. 

[Red4282]

13 minutes ago, me05501 said:

 

Message boards are for sharing opinions. Telling someone else their opinion is pointless or ridiculous is the height of arrogance and the opposite of respectful. 

 

Besides, he's right. The pros consistently hit it much closer to the center much more often than even very talented ams. This is empirical. No need to get defensive about it. 

 

 

Except that wasnt what was said. He said wrxers, which i consider myself one, miss the center more often than they hit it. Thats not an opinion. Its speculation, and one that I can attest is just absolutely false. You can come in and twist it all you want and defend it, but you are just looking silly doing so.

[Bye]

11 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Its also to be noted alot of pros really know nothing about equipment. They just get handed stuff and until they find something that they like. 

Probably some don't want too, like some don't want to know about swing mechanics. 

[iknowbagu]

20 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Except that wasnt what was said. He said wrxers, which i consider myself one, miss the center more often than they hit it. Thats not an opinion. Its speculation, and one that I can attest is just absolutely false. You can come in and twist it all you want and defend it, but you are just looking silly doing so.

 

Dude, is this your first time on the internet? 

 

I'm also scratch (no one cares). I've had a bunch of sub-par rounds recently myself (no one cares). I consider myself an excellent ball striker, and play blades from 7 iron down (no one cares). And I'm still on the other side of this argument. Do you really not realize that you and I and several others in here are not exactly in the meat of the bell curve? No one was attacking you personally by saying the overwhelming majority of people miss the center more than they hit it.

 

I said it before and I'll say it again, everyone can and should play whatever they want. But let's stop pretending our own justifications apply to anyone but ourselves, especially when there is real world data to the contrary. 

Edited September 13, 2022 by iknowbagu
Spelling is hard

[driveandputtmachine]

1 hour ago, Red4282 said:

Ok but the main reason the spin is less is because of stronger lofts. Couldnt oems just make them a weaker lofted set?

It is a reason, but wasn't the only difference in my testing.    In testing my ZX7's with Recoil shafts and P790 at the same length and same loft the P790's spin quite a bit less.  I wish I could find my testing data.  I tested 7 irons both at 31* and the P790 spun less I believe it was almost a 400 RPM difference on average.  However do not quote me on it, I do know it pulled my spin down to where the rough would become more questionable.

 

Those are the only ones I have ever tested and only a couple of times before I knew that the ZX7 were a better iron that fit my launch and spin windows I wanted to hit better.

[driveandputtmachine]

30 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Except that wasnt what was said. He said wrxers, which i consider myself one, miss the center more often than they hit it. Thats not an opinion. Its speculation, and one that I can attest is just absolutely false. You can come in and twist it all you want and defend it, but you are just looking silly doing so.

Well considering Hogan, Nicklaus, Tiger and others have stated they only hit 1-3 perfect shots per round.  Maybe they mean absolute dead center contact and perfect path and perfect face angle and perfect AoA.  Still my guess would be that the best in the sport hit dead center 50% of the time.  Yes it is a guess, yes it is speculation, yes my definition of dead center may be different than yours.

 

Do you consider 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19 MM to one side still center?  What is center in your viewpoint?  This is all part of an opinion and why there is an argument.  Dead center is dead center, less than 4mm(1/10th of an inch) off center to me.  So yes EVERYONE on this board misses dead center more than they hit dead center based on my opinion of dead center.  

[Wayside]

49 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Except that wasnt what was said. He said wrxers, which i consider myself one, miss the center more often than they hit it. Thats not an opinion. Its speculation, and one that I can attest is just absolutely false. You can come in and twist it all you want and defend it, but you are just looking silly doing so.

I think you highlight a point, which is that maybe people have different perceptions on what the ‘middle’ of the face is. 
 

I think a lot of people don’t hit it as well as they perceive based on feel/feedback - foot spray or impact tape can be a very revealing thing 😄 

If, by middle, you mean getting decent results from roughly the centre of the face of a driver, then sure. But even scratch guys commonly miss the actual centre of the face of a driver by an inch. It’s still central on the face, but it’s not the middle in the way a pro would find it. 

 

‘Wrxers’ includes all members. I’ve met, played with and fit quite a few (others, that shall not be named!) forum guys and I’d suggest that group missed it much more often they hit it (and their swing speed was way lower than they suggested too, but that’s another discussion...)

 

*D’oh, just seen the post above. I really took 50 mins to write that? What am I doing with my day?!*

Edited September 13, 2022 by Wayside

[Red4282]

31 minutes ago, iknowbagu said:

 

Dude, is this your first time on the internet? 

 

I'm also scratch (no one cares). I've had a bunch of sub-par rounds recently myself (no one cares). I consider myself an excellent ball striker, and play blades from 7 iron down (no one cares). And I'm still on the other side of this argument. Do you really not realize that you and I and several others in here are not exactly in the meat of the bell curve? No one was attacking you personally by saying the overwhelming majority of people miss the center more than they hit it.

 

I said it before and I'll say it again, everyone can and should play whatever they want. But let's stop pretending our own justifications apply to anyone but ourselves, especially when there is real world data to the contrary. 

Man people sure have a hard time reading. Might go back and re read the threads and try again. Ive never said everyone should not play whatever they want, ive never said because it applies to me its justified. And he certainly didnt say “the overwhemingly majority of people miss the center more than they hit it” because THAT I actually agree with (even though that is wild speculation too). 

[Rosco1216]

Wouldn’t play blades if missing slightly short is dead. Would play if missing long was dead. 

[Red4282]

7 minutes ago, driveandputtmachine said:

Well considering Hogan, Nicklaus, Tiger and others have stated they only hit 1-3 perfect shots per round.  Maybe they mean absolute dead center contact and perfect path and perfect face angle and perfect AoA.  Still my guess would be that the best in the sport hit dead center 50% of the time.  Yes it is a guess, yes it is speculation, yes my definition of dead center may be different than yours.

 

Do you consider 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19 MM to one side still center?  What is center in your viewpoint?  This is all part of an opinion and why there is an argument.  Dead center is dead center, less than 4mm(1/10th of an inch) off center to me.  So yes EVERYONE on this board misses dead center more than they hit dead center based on my opinion of dead center.  

Thats a good question. Maybe thats where this conversation gets lost a bit.  Take a typical 7 iron strike. The ball compresses and usually leaves a ball mark on the face about 1/2”-ish in diameter, maybe 3/4” if you really compress it or using a softer ball.  If any of that ball touches the so called pencil eraser, did they not “hit the center” or does it have to be lined up like a bullseye? In my mind any point of the ball touches that spot, its not really a miss, or at least the shot result on a LM or on the course behave like a true miss. 

[rd1959]

1 hour ago, me05501 said:

 

Message boards are for sharing opinions. Telling someone else their opinion is pointless or ridiculous is the height of arrogance and the opposite of respectful. 

 

Besides, he's right. The pros consistently hit it much closer to the center much more often than even very talented ams. This is empirical. No need to get defensive about it. 

 

 

I was going to comment, but I see Red4282 beat me to it. I'll just add this:
"Your golf accomplishments and $2 will get you a cup of coffee."  Explain to me how this comment is anything but disrespectful? 
 I didn't get defensive about it, I got mad. There are thousands of golfers who are nowhere near being pros, but they can absolutely hit center just as good as they can.

[Red4282]

5 minutes ago, rd1959 said:

I was going to comment, but I see Red4282 beat me to it. I'll just add this:
"Your golf accomplishments and $2 will get you a cup of coffee."  Explain to me how this comment is anything but disrespectful? 
 I didn't get defensive about it, I got mad. There are thousands of golfers who are nowhere near being pros, but they can absolutely hit center just as good as they can.

Well the bar has been moved now. Its not hitting the center its hitting it “dead solid perfect”. Still just wild speculation.

[rd1959]

3 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Well the bar has been moved now. Its not hitting the center its hitting it “dead solid perfect”. Still just wild speculation.

Yea, I was waiting to see the "goal post moving van" pull up. 😁

[driveandputtmachine]

2 minutes ago, Red4282 said:

Well the bar has been moved now. Its not hitting the center its hitting it “dead solid perfect”. Still just wild speculation.

I think peoples definitions are the problem in this thread.  I see my average round and to my definition I do not hit center more than 50%, someone else hitting it exactly the same thinks they hit 75% in the center.

 

Is your definition of center within 4mm left and right, or is it 13mm?  These are NOT the same and I may think only 4mm is center and you think 13mm is center.  It is not disrespectful it is a difference in what your parameters are.

[Red4282]

Just now, driveandputtmachine said:

I think peoples definitions are the problem in this thread.  I see my average round and to my definition I do not hit center more than 50%, someone else hitting it exactly the same thinks they hit 75% in the center.

 

Is your definition of center within 4mm left and right, or is it 13mm?  These are NOT the same and I may think only 4mm is center and you think 13mm is center.  It is not disrespectful it is a difference in what your parameters are.

My definition is did at any point of the compressed ball hit the geometric center (or cog). I can tell you without a doubt that happens more than not, at least most days. If someones definition of hitting middle is hitting it dead solid perfect, like center ball hitting that pin mark, and tiger only does it once a round, wouldnt that even mean HE, the best ball striker in the world misses center more than he hits it? Like WAY MORE. So what are we even talking about then?

 

 

 

[rd1959]

25 minutes ago, driveandputtmachine said:

I think peoples definitions are the problem in this thread.  I see my average round and to my definition I do not hit center more than 50%, someone else hitting it exactly the same thinks they hit 75% in the center.

 

Is your definition of center within 4mm left and right, or is it 13mm?  These are NOT the same and I may think only 4mm is center and you think 13mm is center.  It is not disrespectful it is a difference in what your parameters are.

When practicing, I use impact tape stickers with a round circle, the size of a quarter, in the center. I'm a little OCD about lining them up properly so, the stickers are lined up as close to exact as I can get them. About 85% of my shots will impact within that circle, which is the actual size of the club's sweet spot, so anything in that circle was hit in the sweet spot. That's close enough for me. 

Edited September 13, 2022 by rd1959