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Does this sound familiar? You’ve hit a decent drive down the middle of the fairway and have 150 yards to the green. You take out your normal 150-yard iron and proceed to make a decent swing on your approach shot, but you can tell that you didn’t quite “flush” it. Not exactly on the sweet spot, perhaps just a little toward the toe. And you watch in frustration as the ball takes off to the right of your target on a low trajectory, and lands in the rough 20 yards short of the green. A reasonable chip from there leaves you 15 feet from the hole, and you two-putt for a bogey. Not a bad score, but it’s still a bit frustrating to make a bogey from the middle of the fairway, right?
The main culprit in this scenario was that little mis-hit on your approach shot, which ended up costing you significant yardage and putting you in the right rough. Wouldn’t it be great if there were irons that could compensate for those occasional mis-hits and minimize the damage when you do have one?
Well, here’s some good news for you. Because of recent technology improvements in the design and manufacturing process, you can now get a lot more help from your clubs than before, help in the form of forgiveness on mis-hits, a better launch angle, and more distance.
In this article, we’re going to explore these technological improvements and go on a mission to find the most forgiving irons in golf.
In the example above, your mis-hit resulted in a reduction in the distance that the ball flew. It also produced a ball flight that was lower than you wanted, and one that was off target.
These types of sub-optimal results often occur because the irons you are using are not equipped with modern features that limit the impact of slower swing speeds and off-center hits. This is what is meant by “forgiveness.”
Forgiving clubs are designed to provide help where you need it, by supplying the high launch angle on your shots that you may not be able to generate yourself, or by compensating for an off-center hit by sending the ball almost as straight and as far as it would have gone with a strike on the sweet spot.
Clubs designed with these features are generally referred to as “Game Improvement” (GI) irons. Golf can be a difficult game at times, particularly for beginners and high handicappers. It makes sense to simplify it by using Game Improvement Irons that are specifically designed to make the game more fun.
There are many features that GI irons utilize that differentiate them from other types of irons, and which make clubs that incorporate them the most forgiving irons for high handicappers.
Most GI irons have heads that are both longer in length from the toe to the heel, and higher in depth from the sole to the top line. This larger head serves several purposes.
First, it can instill a sense of confidence in the player, offering the perception that it is easier to hit.
Additionally, the extra surface area increases the “Moment of Inertia” (MOI), a technical term pertaining to an ability to restrict the amount of “twisting” that clubs do when a ball is stuck somewhere other than on the sweet spot. Greater MOI = less twisting = increased distance.
The sweet spot on a clubface is fairly small. As much as we’d like to hit that spot every time, only the best players do. The rest of us occasionally hit the sweet spot, but all too often, miss it slightly.
Club designers have figured out a way to make that sweet spot a little bigger so that we can benefit from hitting it more frequently. To effectively expand the sweet spot, designers shift weight around the club head. They remove some metal from the back of the club head, and then re-position that weight around the perimeter.
This removal of weight from the back of the club results in a “cavity back.” The distribution of that material around the border of the club head provides “perimeter weighting.” This forgiveness feature provides a huge benefit to golfers.
One of the keys to maximizing distance is to produce a high launch angle on your shots. Very strong players, whose fast swing speeds deliver the natural force to give the ball lift, don’t need a feature that increases their shot trajectory.
But for those with slower swing speeds, help is needed to generate the lift needed to launch the ball high. That help comes in the form of a lowered center of gravity in the club head. To get a lower CG, designers place more weight at the bottom of the club head. This added mass, on the bottom of the club, serves to help get the ball airborne and flying on a higher trajectory.
Offset in a golf club describes the positioning of the leading edge of the clubface back from the hosel, or neck, of the club. Another way to think of offset is that the shaft of the club appears to be in front of the clubface.
The primary benefit of offset is that, due to the club face being “behind” the shaft, players have slightly more time on the downswing to rotate the clubface back around to arrive back at the ball in a square position.
This is another forgiveness feature, as a square clubface can reduce the amount the golfer might slice the ball.
There are many excellent clubs in the GI category. If you are a golfer that is in need of increased distance with your irons, compensations on off-center hits, and higher launch angles, you should definitely seek out GI irons that offer these features.
To help you in your search, we have examined the irons in this category and have selected the ones below as the most forgiving irons for beginners and for others with slower swing speeds:
The standard version of the Callaway Rogue irons has been wildly successful since it first came out. Earlier this year, Callaway supplemented the Rogue line with its introduction of the Rogue X irons.
The Rogue X ticks off every forgiveness feature that we discussed in this article. In distance tests, the Rogue X has proven to have more distance than the standard Rogue, generating high launches from its low center of gravity.
The face uses a feature Callaway calls “360 Face Cup,” which is the thinnest face Callaway has offered to date, and they spread that over a larger face area. This provides faster ball speeds when the ball is struck off-center.
The Callaway Rogue X is highly recommended for golfers seeking a top-rated Game Improvement iron.
The name of this TaylorMade iron tells you exactly what they were trying to accomplish. CBG stands for Center of Gravity Back. As we discussed in this article, a center of gravity pushed down in the club head, and toward the rear, dramatically increases your ability to hit the ball with a high launch angle.
The M CBG also includes a very successful feature they have incorporated into previous models, called a “speed pocket.” On the sole of the club, the speed pocket is a narrow slot, which allows a sort of flexing or “accordion-like” effect, to generate increased ball speeds.
This is another great introduction from TaylorMade and is highly recommended.
If anyone thinks that Game Improvement irons aren’t as attractive as the smaller, “player” clubs, I’d encourage you to take a look at the Ping G700.
These are gorgeous clubs. And yet, they are packed with all of the game improvement features. Ping says that they are the longest and highest-flying irons they have ever produced.
They also have a wonderful feel when you hit the ball, and are extremely forgivable. The Ping G700 definitely belongs near the top of any list of best game improvement irons.
In introducing the Launcher CBX irons, Cleveland said that their design goal had been to “try to make easier-to-hit long irons blending into easy-to-control short irons.” They combined two kinds of irons in the same set to accomplish this.
The long irons have a lower-profile shape, which keeps the center of gravity low encouraging a higher launch. The set then gets progressively more compact as it moves to the short irons to add playability. These irons have a fairly thick topline, which definitely give you the impression that there is a lot of “mass” down there.
The matte finish on these irons is a departure from the normal high-gloss chrome finishes on most irons, and gives the CBX a unique look.
