Finally, some real data on Iron forgiveness…

[Red4282]

 

Saw this video today, and finally someone has done some robotic testing with different irons and charting strikes and dispersion.

 

Ive screenshotted the dispersion charts and noticed a few things. Here they are (note that scaling is different so visually its not accurate):

 

 

Heres a few nuggets I noticed: all mishits missed right of target.  The zx7 had the worst lateral dispersion (15 yards). Ping was the best at 5 yards, while everything else was appx 7-8 yards.

 

Center heel and low center are by far the best place to miss, but low heel is dreadfull.

 

The two “hot face irons” (apex and p790) have the worst vertical dispersion, and the biggest gap from a center strike to the best mishit….essentially, its hot in the middle but no more forgiving than anything else on misses. 
 

Cool clubs said they would be doing more of this and releasing it for public l, which is great. Cant wait to see some blades in there.

[sniper]

I hadn’t watched this one yet but that’s really interesting. Appreciate the post!

[Cwing]

In to follow.

[TonyDAnnunzio]

Thanks for posting the video...

 

It would be really interesting to see how some blades compare...

[nsxguy]

37 minutes ago, Cwing said:

In to follow.

 

[fixurpitch]

If the i230 shows that consistency in  human hands, we will see a lot of PGA and LPGA pros bagging them soon. 

[RJ_MJ_JJ]

I love this stuff. Thanks for posting!

[Valtiel]

Good stuff, and IMO this supports MOI as a basic measure for these things as PING is always king in that category with the ZX7 and Apex 21 being much lower. 

Also important to note that the scale on the X-axis of the is different in the PING graph vs. the others which artificially makes it look way tighter by comparison. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Valtiel

[Red4282]

Yep a few corrections to my original post: 

The ping scaling on x and y axis is different than others so visually it looks way tighter. The numbers are still excellent so just look and compare those. I also said all mishits were right. I meant to say none were left. There are a few mishits that finished on target, while most finished right.

[Sean124]

150 yard 7 iron? Definitely not a WRX robot. 

 

[BirdieBob]

Ah......Cool

 

Distance....all of the ones I looked at ....

-Center-Heel was always more distance than Center-Toe;

-Center low was usually a bit less distance than Center-Heel

Ping i230 was very good on direction for Center-Heel and Center-Toe and Center-Low

 

...If you are going to miss the exact center, best to miss more towards the heel for less distance loss;  some of those go more right.

 

Not sure how much off center these measurements are?  Edge of grooves?

 

Edited November 5, 2022 by BirdieBob

[NRJyzr]

13 hours ago, Red4282 said:

The two “hot face irons” (apex and p790) have the worst vertical dispersion, and the biggest gap from a center strike to the best mishit….essentially, its hot in the middle but no more forgiving than anything else on misses. 

 

Speaking only from a theoretical standpoint, I'm not surprised to see this.

 

[joostin]

Love it.  Nice job to Cool Clubs.  Would love to see more data:  how far off center are the strikes; ball speed center vs ball speed on certain distances off center (COR dispersion); spin variance...  There's still variables to robot setup and all, but better than endless videos of normal club reviews even if the people are machine like 👍 

[Nessism]

The Ping graph is using a different scaling, which makes the distance dispersion look tighter.  

[nsxguy]

1 hour ago, joostin said:

Love it.  Nice job to Cool Clubs.  Would love to see more data:  how far off center are the strikes; ball speed center vs ball speed on certain distances off center (COR dispersion); spin variance...  There's still variables to robot setup and all, but better than endless videos of normal club reviews even if the people are machine like 👍 

 

This.

 

And I have to wonder how that X&Y axis scaling got to be different. I mean, same method, same computer, etc. It's a conspiracy I tell ya,,,,,,,,

 

But yes, especially how far off "center" but more importantly, how large is the effective sweet spot AND how far to the heel or toe, and how far below off the SS the balls are hit.

 

Did they test to find the vertical center of gravity and the HCOG to determine where THE sweet spot actually is ? (Sorry if I missed it, but I didn't watch the whole video)

 

Frankly, I find the ESS often enough so that if I'm punished by missing it I don't get overly crazy about how much I'm short/right/whatever.

 

I'm much more concerned with length and dispersion on strikes on, or very close, to the ESS. If I swing so poorly I almost miss the grooves I deserve what I get. If I "just miss" the ESS, I'd like the help.

 

 

P.S. And personally, I get the warm fuzzies when a club like the P790, one mentioned who knows how many times as producing fliers for no reason, shows a pattern as tight as, what, maybe 2 yards in radius from the pin, on center strikes. 6 feet either side of the pin ? I ain't that good. I can live with that.

[Red4282]

1 hour ago, Nessism said:

The Ping graph is using a different scaling, which makes the distance dispersion look tighter.  

Yes this is mentioned, but if you look at the actual numbers its still the best horizontally  and one of the best vertically

[Pepperturbo]

Interesting chart comparisons.  Not sure that I'd use it to determine what goes in my bag.  I will check out Ping i230, though.

[ALIF]

6 hours ago, Pepperturbo said:

Interesting chart comparisons.  Not sure that I'd use it to determine what goes in my bag.  I will check out Ping i230, though.

I’m going to stick with my PXG blades for now!

[Feelingofgreatness]

On 11/5/2022 at 4:25 PM, Pepperturbo said:

Interesting chart comparisons.  Not sure that I'd use it to determine what goes in my bag.  I will check out Ping i230, though.

Key is... If you know your usual miss, you can test irons that do better with that miss. Instead of wasting your time testing everything. 

[ezra76]

I play the Apex 21's and demo'd the 790's. You got me thinking now. When I'm off my miss is toeside on the Apex 21's. It took me a while to figure out the distances with them. I might be better off with something with less distance loss on the toe hits and maybe slightly larger head, especially in the 5,6 and maybe 7irons. 

[Red4282]

Must have missed this, but this goes more in depth to their testing methods. Seems very legit.

 

 

[joostin]

On 11/5/2022 at 1:26 PM, nsxguy said:

P.S. And personally, I get the warm fuzzies when a club like the P790, one mentioned who knows how many times as producing fliers for no reason, shows a pattern as tight as, what, maybe 2 yards in radius from the pin, on center strikes. 6 feet either side of the pin ? I ain't that good. I can live with that.

Agreed.  Personally I've seen the rare long ball even off a blade gap wedge and just figured I caught it perfect and there was a little wet grass caught between the ball and face. 

[ThinkingPlus]

It would be nice if they setup the impact conditions relative to the measured CG rather than the "center" of the face (unless I missed something in their process description).  They may do it that way, but their marking template did not seem to take that into account.

 

They have the perfect or near perfect setup to explore the relationship between AOA and CG location to find the relationships between spin, launch, and ball speed.  Lots of other cool stuff they could do as well with shafts or club builds (SW matching, frequency matching, MOI matching, etc...) or even range mats (which replicates spin the best vs. turf).

[pjc]

17 hours ago, ezra76 said:

I play the Apex 21's and demo'd the 790's. You got me thinking now. When I'm off my miss is toeside on the Apex 21's. It took me a while to figure out the distances with them. I might be better off with something with less distance loss on the toe hits and maybe slightly larger head, especially in the 5,6 and maybe 7irons. 

ZX5!

[WristySwing]

I haven't watched the video yet so maybe it is said in there, but it is interesting there is no data on high on the head strikes, which would be indicative of a slightly fat shot.  I'm seriously impressed by the Apex performance.  You've got what, like 3 yards difference between centre-toe, centre-heel, and centre-low?  P790 is also impressive on centre-heel, centre-toe and low strikes with about 6 yards.  The i230 is interesting, I will have to give that a test but it does look like it might have a bit more spread than the Apex but similar to the P790.

[Wham49]

the problem with the really hot sweet spot is that I always pick the wrong time to flush it and airmail the green, would rather have a less hot sweet spot and a little more forgiveness on slightly offcenter hits, more predictable

Edited November 7, 2022 by Wham49

[ThinkingPlus]

10 minutes ago, WristySwing said:

I haven't watched the video yet so maybe it is said in there, but it is interesting there is no data on high on the head strikes, which would be indicative of a slightly fat shot.  I'm seriously impressed by the Apex performance.  You've got what, like 3 yards difference between centre-toe, centre-heel, and centre-low?  P790 is also impressive on centre-heel, centre-toe and low strikes with about 6 yards.  The i230 is interesting, I will have to give that a test but it does look like it might have a bit more spread than the Apex but similar to the P790.

They don't address fat shots because the turf interaction overrides the strike.  Because they are not hitting off a mat or turf, results shown for high hits would be unrealistically good and thus not beneficial in the real world.  They could do slightly high, but they probably didn't see much data bang for data buck there.

[Pepperturbo]

On 11/6/2022 at 3:25 PM, Feelingofgreatness said:

Key is... If you know your usual miss, you can test irons that do better with that miss. Instead of wasting your time testing everything. 

My misses are mainly me going brain-dead when I should be paying attention to details.  Shaft profile has contributed at times; it's certainly true with the current MMT 105s shafts.  I liked the MMT 125s a lot, more high bend, but grew too heavy over extended play.  Though I can make 105s work (yesterday 5 over) never been comfortable with mid-bend shafts.  Mid-bend force me to slightly change my swing to get their best.  Has nothing to do with my 620 MBs or 620 CBs. 

 

I recently bought T200-2&4i and T100s 5-W.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Pepperturbo

[Pepperturbo]

I play 620 MBs and sometimes include 620 CBs.  Both heads are solid currently with MMT 105s shafts, thus don't experience unusually long or flier shots.  IMO Fliers or hot spot shots are the result of a questionable manufacturing of the head, material, and or often missing the sweet spot, then surprisingly finding the sweet spot; which is the case with a few friends.

[PNW]

This is one of the few really useful club head evaluations. Hopefully they continue with this and if they do, they add an index for loss of distance across the listed face 'zones' to easily compare a percent loss. Do the same for ball speed, maybe also spin. Would make MGS redundant.