Around here, golf season is just beginning, as the weather is finally beginning to warm up (now if it would only dry up, too).
Since early December, I've been able to toy around with Nike's new Victory Red irons and everyone I've let play with them, from high handicappers to single digit players, has been impressed.
There are three different models: a Tiger Woods-designed blade, half-cavity back and full cavity-back.
“This is my iron,” Woods said. “This is what I created. This is what I've been playing and now consumers get to play what I've been playing.”
Given a choice of which to try, we opted for the half-cavity ($899.99). The pure blade version, which Woods uses, seemed a little too much like a butter knife. The half-cavity is forged, like the blade, but is easier to hit high. Woods said the full cavity is even easier to launch.
“Very similar to my blade but more forgiving,” Woods said. “I think everyone who plays these irons will thoroughly enjoy playing them.”
In this case, Tiger is right. The standard grip was a little too small and a little too firm, so we swapped it out for our current favorites, the Golf Pride MultiCompound (half-cord, half-rubber) and some Rifle Flighted 5.5 shafts. After the changes, the Nikes really sung.
A lot of mid-handicappers like the look of a thinner club and this is a great option. Despite the lack of size, the Nike is awful forgiving and launches the ball well. The stock shaft performed well, but the 5.5s made this club better. Even our stronger testers preferred the 5.5s with this head, and the high handicappers simply wanted to take it home for good. One of them kept saying, “these feel like butter.”
Because winter around here was so unusually sicked, most testing was done at the range or on those rare days when the temperature was above 50. So now we're going to give these a long term spin and report back with more results, but know this: we let 13 different golfers give these a try and asked them to rate the clubs from 1-5 with 5 being high.
The lowest rating that came back was a 4.
I guess that means you should try these.
HOT NEWS
Former Nike staffer Rory Sabbatini has joined TaylorMade Golf Company. Ranked in the Top 50 of Official World Golf Rankings, Sabbatini will play TaylorMade equipment and wear TaylorMade headwear. Sabbatini played a set of TaylorMade Tour Preferred® irons (4-PW), a TaylorMade Burner® driver, an R9™ 3-wood and 56° and 60° rac™ wedges at the WGC-CA Championship. The following week at the Transitions Championship, Sabbatini switched to the new R9 driver with Flight Control Technology.
Wilson Staff's new Eco-Carry golf bag is the first on the market made from 100 percent recycled polyester fabric, offering eco-conscious golfers a fashionable and environmentally-friendly golf bag.
The 3.7 pound carry bag is made from the equivalent of 12 plastic gallon bottles, similar to two-liter soda bottles. In the initial manufacturing phase, the plastic bottles are crushed into plastic flakes. The flakes are then transformed into a stable fiber through a process called de-polymerization and re-polymerization. Lastly, the stable fibers produced from this process are woven into a filament yarn that is used as the fabric for the final product. This process reduces the release of carbon dioxide by 70 percent as compared to normal polyester production that can be harmful to the environment.
Golf icon Greg Norman has joined TaylorMade. Norman, 54, will play TaylorMade clubs, a TaylorMade TP golf ball, use a TaylorMade staff bag and display the TaylorMade logo on the side of his headwear. Norman chose on his own accord to play TaylorMade's TP Red golf ball with Low Drag Performance (LDP) Technology during his remarkable run at last year's British Open, where he held a two-stroke lead going into the final round and finished tied for third. It was his 30th career top-10 finish in a major. Soon after a conversation began between Norman and TaylorMade that resulted in the relationship announced this week
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