Best irons you ever used?

lynx parralax

morphey richards

Have a set of Ping somethings at present ( not that I play much ) .  They are not within a beagles gowl of my first real set of irons which were Hogans . They got stolen though and I never found another set as good . If I played much I would be searching around for similar  , probably some on e-bay I am informed .

Kelly: I bought 5 sets of blades off Ebay some years ago from a guy in Detroit. Cracking nick - new grips etc, Hogan Apex were amongst them.

Tis a great place to pick up some traditional clubs..

Yes , guiness , a friend runs golf shops locally and offers to sort me out with Hogans or whatever anytime I want .  Know he buys stuff on ebay , and has lots of second hand sets etc , but not high priority for me as I can still operate with my Pings even though I know I could get better suited .But thanks for the info anyway .

If I get a new lease of "golf life" I may activate the offer !  Cheers .

Ben Hogan blades.Nothing comes close and i've tried pretty much every major premium iron out there.

Trouble is,there's only about 0.000001% of players who could ever get the best out of them and im certainly not one......but,my god,when you flush one of them(very rare) it's just like nothing you'll ever hit.

Might just follow it up clarkey , with that sort of opinion coming from you .  Not sure about me being in the category you mention , but certainly they were the best for me .

Reminds me a bit of when I was learning golf , 45% of the pros in the Open in the early 50's used Fred Daly irons , made by John Letters .  They were the best then , this side of Atlantic anyway .

The trouble with older blades is that the sweet spot was ridiculously small!!Modern blades try and spread the sweet spot to cover a larger area but it takes away from the pureness of the strike,imo.

Hitting a modern MP64 compared to an original Hogan blade is like chalk and cheese.Not saying theres anything wrong with that just i dont think pure blades are made anymore

we've had this chat before , and i still agree about hogans , top clubs

and nothing ever came close

after our last chat i looked on ebay too, and there were plenty about, and fairly cheap..
no guarantees of course on the quality of the clubs being sold, but thats just an ebay issue

less than a round of golf at a top course for a set of clubs , funny old prices.

My brother took the opportunity to inspect Tigers clubs ( via chatting to his caddie -- not steve , think it was a local one off ) when he played Newcastle early morning many moons ago .  He was expecting Tigers clubs to be unlike anything he had ever seen , given Tigers unbeatable status at that particular time when he just had to turn up to win even a major .

But the clubs were surprisingly "ordinary" blades , just like you would have been able to buy anywhere .  Maybe that was more a testimony to Tigers ability than anything else  , and they always said Jack could have borrowed the other guys clubs and still have beaten the tar out of him . Saw Jack at Newcastle about 10 years ago , the "snick " was 100% pure and he was  63 year old then .

Dont even know what an MP64 is .

Reference the older blades , the best I ever saw at shaping shots was Roberto De Vicenzo .  He played an exhibition at our course way back in the sixties , and chatted his way around talking to members and asking how they played the course etc .  Could make the ball talk , and probably playing with the non sweet spot irons mentioned in despatches .  But then I think he won more tournaments world wide than anyone else in history , they lost count .

Ahhh John Letters irons. The first shot i ever hit in anger was a JL 3 iron, one of my my uncles clubs. Like clarkey says, the sweetspot is a lot smaller on the older clubs, but i still love playing with them.

The reason i put the TP11'S as my best iron club is for the simple reason i found them so easy to use and the feeling they gave me.

Picked up a Ping one iron the other night in my brothers , never used one myself , but once upon a time a lot of the better golfers were heavily into that club .  Suppose it has been replaced by rescue clubs .

One of the clubs I learned to play with was a "jigger" , hickory shaft .  It was a bit like some of the newer rescue clubs , about a 4 iron , but with a flatter sole and it brushed the ball off the fairway , particularly good on tight lies as on firm links .  Often wondered why the likes of that club went "out of fashion " , never saw one between 1950 or so and 2000 .  It was also brilliant for pitch and runs from just off the green , a la 3- woods some people use in certain situations near the green .

I still use a 1 and 2 iron, Kelly. And i still carry a Tony Penna 4 wood now and again. Metinks i'm stuck in a time warp.

Can't bring myself to use a hybrid, don't like 3 woods much either.

I've got some mashies and niblicks in the garage somewhere, don't think i've got a jigger (except at Punchy)

Ah the old mashie niblick , guinness .  Learnt to play with one , basically a 5 iron .  Hours and hours chipping balls into a wooden orange box set at 45 degrees against the garage .

No 60 degree wedges in those days , drivers , brassies , OK , but no funny looking putters , and no broom handles either .

Often wonder has the technology development dumbed down the art of playing golf as I knew it .

No doubt it has, but that's life in todays world i spose..
There is someone though on the PGA tour who practises with persimmon clubs (may be Ricky Fowler) There may well be more.

Wouldn't it be interesting to have one event per year were you could only use razor blades and persimmon, bullseye putters, no elephant headed drivers and the ilk. Never going to happen but would love to see it.

The evolution of big headed driving implements has changed the game , possibly forever .  Personally I find there is absolutely no "feel " associated with these drivers , and I suspect it may be harder to shape a shot than with the older type of drivers we learnt to play .

It is probably a lot easier for the average Joe to shift the ball forward off the tee nowadays than it used to be , but to me its a bit like us all swapping our "individual " cars for high speed and powerful bull dozers .

If I was in charge of world golf , the putter would have to be shorter than any other club in the bag , club head size would be restricted , groovage would be strictly controlled/ monitored , and balls would be "governed" to eliminate potential 400 yard driving .  Some golf courses then might be able to reclaim some of the land they have had to utilise to accomodate todays extra length capability .  Golf up to the seventies was still a very skilful and enjoyable game , accomodating all shapes and sizes of people from the ages of 10 to 80 / 90 , and a round of golf was happily possible within a 3-4 hour time frame .  Nowadays it's  a 5 hour job on a Saturday , and the pros never play round in under 5 hours , despite their golfing capability and help with everything .

Small wonder a lot of golfing "widows" view their "partners" disappearance for 6 hours plus each Saturday with a sceptical eye .

having an old equipment competition is a great idea, but the pros may need to play off the
forward tees !

st andrews for one would be restored to its former glory



some of the players pose for too long because its an advertising chance, 90 seconds of limelight whilst lining up a putt,... probably the longer the better for some insurance company that has bought cap space

like the forward tees bit , donny , but its putting help most of them need .

Having said all of the above , most of the pros are good golfers , nearly all can move the ball aggreably into position in / around the green .  The better ones though are the ones who can eliminate the 3 putts and the ill advised shots from at/ near the fringes .

The other thing I suspect about "modern play" is that when I learnt to play most courses had what I would categorise as "fair greens " .  A lot of the courses I see nowadays , particularly of recent design , have greens sloping all over the place with tiers and run offs abounding .

callaway X-14 pro series

Callaway x-14 easiest iron i've hit but it was a nightmare to keep them low or shape them.

Never tried the pro version.

The evolution of big headed driving implements has changed the game , possibly forever

When you see big lunks like Bobby Gates doing well you can see that the game is evolving into a power game similar to the way tennis has gone, and it isn't any better for it.

mizuno mp62's best I've ever used had them 4 or 5 years wont be changing anytime soon.

Would that be the same Bobby Gates who had missed every cut until this weekend.

Golf isn't a power game. The winner is very rarely the longest hitter but they are nearly always the top when it comes to strokes gained putting.

The old saying is as true as ever you drive for show but putt for dough. Golf is game that comes down to how well you play from 100 yeards and in.

Can anyone explain to me why a top flight pro could possibly miss a normal green from 130 yards approx ( a wedge or 9-iron ) .  Can understand someone spinning back off a green , or getting a flier and firing through the green , but most tournaments nowadays I see some awful shots from the distance quoted , some 10 yards off line . Thats like a rugby conversion hitting the corner flag in my book .

Is it the balls , the clubs , or the players ?

obviously a good few non fairway  shots included but , ....


GIR PERCENTAGE - < 125 YARDS


1    1    Garcia, Sergio        92.11   
2    3    Woods, Tiger        91.04   
3    30    Rose, Justin        90.70   

170    181    Knost, Colt        77.12   
171    167    Herron, Tim        77.03   
172    162    Stallings, Scott    76.73   
173    173    Curtis, Ben        76.38       
174    174    Poulter, Ian        76.29   
175    171    Bohn, Jason        76.09   
176    176    Bolli, Justin        76.00   
177    182    Glover, Lucas        75.33   
178    177    Potter, Jr., Ted        75.00   
179    178    Pride, Dicky        74.78       
180    179    Ishikawa, Ryo        74.77   
181    180    Kaymer, Martin        74.63   
182    184    Herman, Jim        72.00   
183    185    Villegas, Camilo        71.91   
184    183    Stefani, Shawn        70.68

do they try out different shots whilst not in contention ?

get bored, lose concentration

spend too little time lining up shot  ?

Assuming I am reading those stats correctly , some of the pros only hit a green 125 yards away ( or less ) 3 times out of 4 .  Cant say I am impressed by those figures , would expect a good player to hit 9 out of 10 greens even if all the shots were from 125yards , never mind from nearer .

Mind you a lot of the modern players dont seem to be able to guage "half shots " from 60-70 yards from the green , which should be 100% .

Fred Daly reckoned he could hit a standard door 200 yards plus away farly regularly with a drive , Hogan probably could too .  And they were not using balls as consistent as nowadays or playing with clubs with a big sweet spot .  Has skill disappeared at the altar of power ?