Iron head grinding to reduce "digging" if bending upright isn't working

[CTG77]

Ok, so as the title suggests, I have a set of iron heads I've had bent upright to reduce the toe digging into the turf.  That worked, but then I went from hitting mostly straight shots or having a slight fade (which is preferred off the irons for me because our greens are so firm) to a frequent draw or even a pull, which is an absolute no-go for me.

 

As some more background, I have a set of TaylorMade P7MCs (2020) that are standard loft / lie and which are 5/8" over standard length.  I rarely, if ever, have a hard left pull with these unless it's an occasional ball hit off a tee.  The other set of irons has been adjusted upright to be closer to my old Mizuno Pro 223 specs of about 1.5° upright and are raw carbon steel forged Japanese irons made for Toura by the Kyoei Foundry:  https://touragolf.com/shop-all/ols/products/blank-tg-japan-mb-irons-black-bln-tg-mb-rns1/v/BLN-TG-MB-RNS1-RGH-HND3

 

The Toura irons have been moving left / drawing a little too much for my liking, but I can't really go back to standard lies because, unlike the P7MCs, they do not get through the turf very well.  The P7MC swingweights are in the lower D range for most of the clubs.

 

Given these irons are heavy as it is (most in the D8-D9 range), does anyone have any experience doing any kind of custom grinding in the toe area to reduce that corner a little bit to help get it through the turf?  I am not worried about appearances, as these are already rusty (which I like anyway), so I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.  I have a vise and a grinder with a variety of sanding pads, plus dozens of attachments for my rotary tool (Dremel).  Would doing enough to have any effect on turf interaction also take off more weight than going from say D9 down to D2?

 

This is pure speculative future guesswork type stuff, but I figured there would be someone here who's done this before and might have some advice.

[Cwebb]

Sounds like you need an iron design with more effective bounce

[rsballer10]

5 hours ago, CTG77 said:

Ok, so as the title suggests, I have a set of iron heads I've had bent upright to reduce the toe digging into the turf.  That worked, but then I went from hitting mostly straight shots or having a slight fade (which is preferred off the irons for me because our greens are so firm) to a frequent draw or even a pull, which is an absolute no-go for me.

 

As some more background, I have a set of TaylorMade P7MCs (2020) that are standard loft / lie and which are 5/8" over standard length.  I rarely, if ever, have a hard left pull with these unless it's an occasional ball hit off a tee.  The other set of irons has been adjusted upright to be closer to my old Mizuno Pro 223 specs of about 1.5° upright and are raw carbon steel forged Japanese irons made for Toura by the Kyoei Foundry:  https://touragolf.com/shop-all/ols/products/blank-tg-japan-mb-irons-black-bln-tg-mb-rns1/v/BLN-TG-MB-RNS1-RGH-HND3

 

The Toura irons have been moving left / drawing a little too much for my liking, but I can't really go back to standard lies because, unlike the P7MCs, they do not get through the turf very well.  The P7MC swingweights are in the lower D range for most of the clubs.

 

Given these irons are heavy as it is (most in the D8-D9 range), does anyone have any experience doing any kind of custom grinding in the toe area to reduce that corner a little bit to help get it through the turf?  I am not worried about appearances, as these are already rusty (which I like anyway), so I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.  I have a vise and a grinder with a variety of sanding pads, plus dozens of attachments for my rotary tool (Dremel).  Would doing enough to have any effect on turf interaction also take off more weight than going from say D9 down to D2?

 

This is pure speculative future guesswork type stuff, but I figured there would be someone here who's done this before and might have some advice.

 

My suggestion would be to fit your lie angles according to @Howard_Jones describes in the DIY fitting. Turf interaction is not the goal of lie angle fitting - ball flight is.

 

There is a whole bunch of confounding variables here, that I would look at before grinding down a set of irons. 

• you mention a spec of 1.5* upright. Upright of what? Are they all the same lie angle, or 1.5* upright of their own standard. They may have different lie angles.
• what is the length of the Toura irons? Not relative to standard, relative to your P7MC's?

 

What is the particular issue you have with turf interaction, that you are hoping to correct?

[CTG77]

- The lengths are the same on both sets (+5/8").

- These were set, on average, 1.5° upright of the stock specs from Toura's website, and those findings were based on a gap analysis I had done w/ a Trackman at PGA SS.  

 

Basically, before I had the Toura CBs set upright, I was hitting the ball "fat" a LOT, with a definite / noticeable "toe-in" type of digging into the turf.  That's less of an issue with the upright setting, and for some reason, I don't notice it at all with the P7MCs, which have been checked to see that they're still basically all right at the factory specs (which in and of itself is impressive since they're from 2020)...

 

However, I really (REALLY) like the feel and ball flight of the Toura irons.  While I am currently playing better with the P7MCs, they do not "feel" like I'm making as good of contact.  What I can do w/ the P7MCs though is flight, cut, or draw a ball as needed, because I can get through the turf as needed, and the upright setting of the Touras have me kind of locked into a straight or draw setting...and I absolutely despise draw ball flights on irons because our firm greens just won't hold them even though the Touras also bring the ball in with very steep descent angles and high spin rates (sometimes too high...I spun a 195 yard 6 iron back off a soft-ish / sloped green at a tournament a few weeks ago...ridiculous...).  Lets also be fair, I really like how the Toura irons LOOK too.  They're rusty, have custom ferrules, and well, I built them, so I would love to be able to play them as well as my 5 year old, randomly purchased off Facebook Marketplace P7MCs.

 

[Glock917]

Ive only grinded my wedges for a little personal touch but should be the same for irons.

 

Being that they are blanks it looks like that there was no grinding on the sole thus leaving it pretty blunt wide and diggy pretty much.

 

Why dont you just use your p7MCs as a template and match the sole camber and shape to the touras. Use a sharpie marker to mark the places to shape it. Dont think there is that much material on that sole to grind off 12-14g but you may be able to get down a couple of SW points.

[CTG77]

15 hours ago, Glock917 said:

Ive only grinded my wedges for a little personal touch but should be the same for irons.

 

Being that they are blanks it looks like that there was no grinding on the sole thus leaving it pretty blunt wide and diggy pretty much.

 

Why dont you just use your p7MCs as a template and match the sole camber and shape to the touras. Use a sharpie marker to mark the places to shape it. Dont think there is that much material on that sole to grind off 12-14g but you may be able to get down a couple of SW points.

I might give this a try later on this summer.  Part of me wants to get through the next few weeks of the chaos that has been my work schedule lately and find a used loft / lie machine and set the Touras back to the same settings as those that are working w/ the P7MCs (so I don't have to pay someone else to keep making those tweaks) and then get some practice time in to see if I even need to do anything to them.  In other words, was my swing just out of whack for the couple of weeks I was using the Touras and ended up finding they needed to get bent upright to keep using them?  Who knows right now.....simply not enough practice time, which sucks, as I really need to be on the course to flush some of the stress from work, and between the awful weather (first was constant rain all spring and now it's a crematorium here in DFW), the 1st 6 months of 2024 have killed my golf game.

[Socrates]

On 7/15/2024 at 7:05 AM, CTG77 said:

Ok, so as the title suggests, I have a set of iron heads I've had bent upright to reduce the toe digging into the turf.  That worked, but then I went from hitting mostly straight shots or having a slight fade (which is preferred off the irons for me because our greens are so firm) to a frequent draw or even a pull, which is an absolute no-go for me.

 

As some more background, I have a set of TaylorMade P7MCs (2020) that are standard loft / lie and which are 5/8" over standard length.  I rarely, if ever, have a hard left pull with these unless it's an occasional ball hit off a tee.  The other set of irons has been adjusted upright to be closer to my old Mizuno Pro 223 specs of about 1.5° upright and are raw carbon steel forged Japanese irons made for Toura by the Kyoei Foundry:  https://touragolf.com/shop-all/ols/products/blank-tg-japan-mb-irons-black-bln-tg-mb-rns1/v/BLN-TG-MB-RNS1-RGH-HND3

 

The Toura irons have been moving left / drawing a little too much for my liking, but I can't really go back to standard lies because, unlike the P7MCs, they do not get through the turf very well.  The P7MC swingweights are in the lower D range for most of the clubs.

 

Given these irons are heavy as it is (most in the D8-D9 range), does anyone have any experience doing any kind of custom grinding in the toe area to reduce that corner a little bit to help get it through the turf?  I am not worried about appearances, as these are already rusty (which I like anyway), so I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.  I have a vise and a grinder with a variety of sanding pads, plus dozens of attachments for my rotary tool (Dremel).  Would doing enough to have any effect on turf interaction also take off more weight than going from say D9 down to D2?

 

This is pure speculative future guesswork type stuff, but I figured there would be someone here who's done this before and might have some advice.

I think you are trying to fix something that wasn't a problem.  The main criteria should be where the ball goes, not what the divot looks like.  I'm a bit of a toe-down hitter and unless I got onto hardpan, it wasn't an issue.  If I had followed the lie-board recommendations, I would be +3° up and at +3/4" that had me hitting shots way left.  Stock lie angles for most clubs or even 1° flat in my wedges.

[grochol17]

A couple of thoughts...

 

1.5* change in lie angle is only going to make a difference of a couple of yards of directional change, so it isn't going to change a 5 yd fade into a 5 yd draw.  If the change in lie angle suddenly completely changed your shot shape, then it is more likely that the change in appearance at address with the new lie angle has altered your setup or swing in some way that is causing the draws.

 

The wrong lie angle isn't making you hit it fat.  Good contact should be ball first or ball and ground simultaneously and, if the latter, the ball isn't in contact with the face for long enough for the simultaneous contact with the ground to have any effect.  If the club is hitting the ground first, then that is a swing issue and won't be fixed by a small lie angle change, unless the visual appearance mentioned in the previous point is what is throwing you off.  If you're making good contact but don't like the feel of the new irons through the turf, then you might be making a subtle adjustment in your swing because you know it isn't going to feel right.

 

I suspect your contact issues are mostly due to the swing weight... if you like the set that is around D2, then a set at D8 is going to feel like a sledge hammer in comparison.  You're likely making an unconscious change in your delivery to compensate for the "wrong" feel of the irons.  I think a simple test to see if the high swing weight is throwing you off would be to slap a bunch of lead tape one of your P7MCs and see what happens.  If you go from hitting the P7s well to hitting them fat, then you know the issue is swing weight.  If you still hit them well, then you know something else about the new irons is messing with your swing.

[CTG77]

@grochol17 I agree that the swing weight is a very likely culprit in my feel for the "turf interaction" issue.  

 

@Socrates  I was trying to work on gapping and ensuring consistent contact with the Toura irons when I did the fitting session with PGA SS in their Trackman studio.  After warmup, we did 8-10 shots with each club to find consistency in total dispersion (distance and side to side).

 

More than likely, the P7MCs will get the call for the senior men's club championship this weekend (this is my 1st year being eligible since I turned 50 last year after the tournament happened), though we're playing from the white tees which are almost 1,000 yards shorter than the tees I normally play from with my son on either of our 2 courses.  On 1 of the courses, hitting driver is out on most of the front 9 for me, though I potentially could try driving the greens on both 1 and 2 if I felt I was in control of it on the range to give myself a big lead right off the bat.  It's tempting to use the Touras because I won't need to hit very many long irons compared to what I have been playing recently, and the better spin and hold on the greens will help from those.  I intend to do some iron practice and maybe get a quick 9 holes in after work tonight, so we'll see.

I really appreciate everyone's replies and not being immediately dismissive of my question.

[Howard_Jones]

On 7/15/2024 at 2:05 PM, CTG77 said:

Ok, so as the title suggests, I have a set of iron heads I've had bent upright to reduce the toe digging into the turf.  That worked, but then I went from hitting mostly straight shots or having a slight fade (which is preferred off the irons for me because our greens are so firm) to a frequent draw or even a pull, which is an absolute no-go for me.

 

As some more background, I have a set of TaylorMade P7MCs (2020) that are standard loft / lie and which are 5/8" over standard length.  I rarely, if ever, have a hard left pull with these unless it's an occasional ball hit off a tee.  The other set of irons has been adjusted upright to be closer to my old Mizuno Pro 223 specs of about 1.5° upright and are raw carbon steel forged Japanese irons made for Toura by the Kyoei Foundry:  https://touragolf.com/shop-all/ols/products/blank-tg-japan-mb-irons-black-bln-tg-mb-rns1/v/BLN-TG-MB-RNS1-RGH-HND3

 

The Toura irons have been moving left / drawing a little too much for my liking, but I can't really go back to standard lies because, unlike the P7MCs, they do not get through the turf very well.  The P7MC swingweights are in the lower D range for most of the clubs.

 

Given these irons are heavy as it is (most in the D8-D9 range), does anyone have any experience doing any kind of custom grinding in the toe area to reduce that corner a little bit to help get it through the turf?  I am not worried about appearances, as these are already rusty (which I like anyway), so I'd love to hear some thoughts on this.  I have a vise and a grinder with a variety of sanding pads, plus dozens of attachments for my rotary tool (Dremel).  Would doing enough to have any effect on turf interaction also take off more weight than going from say D9 down to D2?

 

This is pure speculative future guesswork type stuff, but I figured there would be someone here who's done this before and might have some advice.

Yes we can modify the leading edge, just like we doo on wedges, and it does not cost much head wgt, but to find someone who can do it right is way harder.

Its what im doing on a wedge in this video.
 

 

Edited July 18 by Howard_Jones

[BraxtonFullerton]

5 hours ago, CTG77 said:

@grochol17 I agree that the swing weight is a very likely culprit in my feel for the "turf interaction" issue.

 

I can anecdotally confirm this is what happened to me with a set of Clevelend wedges that clocked in at D6-7 vs my irons which were at D2. I was fatting every single full shot I took with a wedge because it was inherently changing my swing enough to be coming in turf-first before ball.