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TaylorMade Tour Preferred MC Review Thread

SuperStroke
Great write-ups! You guys are doing an awesome job! Keep it up!
 
TC said:
I have to disagree with this science a bit mostly b/c it's quite simply a Muscle Cavity iron, and not a full cavity. The full Cavity would provide the club with "significant" perimeter weighting.

I also would think that the weight in the center of the cavity (the nut or whatever you guys are calling it) would assist in maintaining balance and more particularly, assisting in keeping that club face in a square position both throughout the swing and at impact. This is just my opinion though, and if I happen to be right, well then, it means you guys are doing some phenomenal things in being able to manipulate that face so much to successfully work the ball as well as you are (right and left).

I would imagine that the one shot that is easiest to pull off with these irons is the lower/punch type shots, especially for those of you who don't have the stock XP shafts. You guys having some good success with flighting the ball low so far?
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Of course the CB has more perimeter weighting! I used "significant" because I think there is more perimeter weighting than we are giving them credit for. We couldnt be seeing the forgiveness we are if it wasn't there.

Regarding the weight at the COG. Have you ever seen the "castle" carved out of stone in NM? There is a door there that weighs something like 4 tons and can be moved by less than 10 lbs of force because the hinge is right on the COG. It's the same idea with the screw, IMO. The weight is on the cog and take very little force/effort to manipulate it. If that same weight was off center it would be more difficult to manage the clubface in one (or both) directions.

In the end, it is a blend of perimeter weighting and weighting behind the sweet spot. More perimeter weighting than the MB and more COG weighting than the CB. I think that makes a lot of sense.


Tapatalk- USGA non-conforming
 
Yet Setho just said that his DF's have more perimeter weighting and they are less forgiving? I'm just trying to understand here.
 
RxGus said:
You will get to hit mine LONG before demo-day dude!
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Awesome! And fantastic birdie down in GA, i read kellybo's narrative and thought "way to go gus!"
 
TC said:
Yet Setho just said that his DF's have more perimeter weighting and they are less forgiving? I'm just trying to understand here.
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I am struggling with this idea as well, TC.

I don't know all the answers- just trying to apply what I understand about forgiveness and workability into a hypothesis for why these irons do what they do.

We meassure "forgiveness" by MOI (moment of inertia) which is almost exclusively a perimeter weighting issue. If you hit it on the toe, but there is a lot of weight on the toe then the club still delivers most of its power and the clubhead resists opening resulting in a straighter flight. That is the idea behind the traditional understanding of forgiveness. The MCs certainly do not have as a high an MOI as the Diablo Forged. Part of the reason I strongly suspect (and have from the begining if you read my inital thoughts) that the cavity is larger than it looks is because the testers are seeing forgiveness that seems discordant with the amount of perimeter weighting.

In my case there is no question- these irons are significantly less forgiving than my old TMs. I don't have any experience with GE irons (or GI for that mater) to draw upon. It is very much a learning process for me, though I think I am progressing nicely considering the circumstances.

One of the things I think could be happening is that since the irons are so well balanced that even on mishits the club is in a better position prior to impact(face angle wise) than with clubs that are not so well balanced. I have no scientific data to back that up, merely speculating on what could be different about these irons. The idea behind the weight and its relation to COG, however, is 100% physics. It is the basis for MBs being so workable and in part why they feel so nice on center hits.

I guess I am grasping at straws with my rudimentary understanding of physics for SOMETHING that explains why these irons are behaving like they are for most of the testers. I think across the board we are all finding them to have more forgiveness than we intially thought they would (a VERY good thing) and I and doing my best to figure out what makes these so different.
 
I think you made some good points and I especially like this sentence:

"One of the things I think could be happening is that since the irons are so well balanced that even on mishits the club is in a better position prior to impact(face angle wise) than with clubs that are not so well balanced."

I think the screw/nut/weight thing has something to do with this, and I think it assists in keeping the face square throughout the swing. Thus creating a "squar'er" club face at impact.

Interesting line of thought though Rx, and one I'm enjoying reading.
 
Wow, there is some serious science being dropped in this thread. I love the differing thoughts and the conversation in this thread. I have no clue what causes these irons to hit so well (I personally think that TM impregnated fairy dust in the irons during the forging process), but whatever they did, these things hit very straight if you want them to go straight and they curve the ball when you want to cut or draw it.
 
If you hit one out on the toe:

do you see yardage loss? if so, how significant?

How about the ball flight? straight, fade, draw?
 
One-T said:
If you hit one out on the toe:

do you see yardage loss? if so, how significant?

How about the ball flight? straight, fade, draw?
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I hit one off the toe the other day. It probably cost me about 10 yards, but it still flew pretty straight
 
ddec0418 said:
I hit one off the toe the other day. It probably cost me about 10 yards, but it still flew pretty straight
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thanks buddy! I am just trying to figure out the forgiveness of the MC's to the CB's
 
One-T said:
thanks buddy! I am just trying to figure out the forgiveness of the MC's to the CB's
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I will say that for the most part these seem to be pretty forgiving. I'm surprised with how forgiving the actually are, I wasn't really expecting it
 
ddec0418 said:
I will say that for the most part these seem to be pretty forgiving. I'm surprised with how forgiving the actually are, I wasn't really expecting it
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sounds to me like you all are pleased with the forgiveness.
 
One-T said:
If you hit one out on the toe:

do you see yardage loss? if so, how significant?

How about the ball flight? straight, fade, draw?
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ddec0418 said:
I hit one off the toe the other day. It probably cost me about 10 yards, but it still flew pretty straight
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Same here. I toed a 3 iron very badly and I lost a good bit of distance, but it flew dead straight and I ended up in the middle of the fairway. I don't think the ball touched a groove I toed it so bad. It was pretty embarassing I admit, but it still counted as a FIR haha.
 
RxGus said:
STAND BACK! I am going to try SCIENCE!

I think there are two things going on here.

1. The club does have significant perimeter weighting. Looking around the cavity, the badge adds very little weight and the outside weighting of the club seems pretty formidable.

2. As it was explained to me- even after the club is designed for perimeter weighting the swing weights don't always match club to club (different amounts of metal in a 3i and a 7i, not to mention different lengths). So, in order to balance the swing weight, companies need to add a certain amount of weight to each iron to match the set and more often than not this is added to the hosel area on each iron (I don't have a source for this information, it is only how the guy at golftec explained it to me... If I am wrong I would love to be corrected!). Instead of doing that, TM put that extra weight back on the club through the weight ports and placed it directly behind the COG. This would allow for a much more balanced club because the extra weight is easily manipulated when it is on the COG.

I think it is a combination of these two features that accounts for the feeling we are trying to describe. It is a perimeter weighted/forgiving club with the "extra" weight put right on the COG making for both a forgiving and workable iron.
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You are not wrong Gus at least as far as the head weight goes. I am looking at an order for Adams MB's(had a similar weight plug in the back cavity) and my headweights ranged from 221-297.
 
One-T said:
If you hit one out on the toe:

do you see yardage loss? if so, how significant?

How about the ball flight? straight, fade, draw?
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I'm definitely seeing some yardage loss with off center hits, but the ball flight is staying pretty straight. More distance loss in long iron mis-hits than short irons, which is pretty normal I believe. A pretty bad toe shot with a 5 iron was costing me about 15 yards. With the PW, more like 5 yards.
 
One-T,
I can't really tell you about mishits on the toe, as I have only had one since getting the clubs and it was on a windy range. My miss has been on the heel/hosel or high on the club face. I find that on the heel (as long as I don't catch the hosel) I get reasonable distance (short about 15 yards) and a good ball flight. As I joked before, I have hit the hosel once or twice that still produced a normal distance/shaped shot.

The most punishing miss to me is high on the face. I hit a really high ball (I was playing a "punch" 7i higher than Seth was hitting a normal 8) and when I catch the ball high it turns whatever I am hitting into a wedge. The ball stays straight but I can loose 50+ yards of distance. I am working on this ball flight though and hopefully it disappears.

I got a chance to put these on a sim today and I continue to be impressed. My ball striking was by far the best part of my "round" and I hit several very good shots with these today. They sound just as nice indoors as they do on the range and it was something that BOTH of my playing partners mentioned immediately. I wont put a lot of stock into how they played today (83 on pebble beach) and I don't ever fully trust the simulator but I have a lot of hope that the next time these touch grass it is going to be something special!
 
RxGus said:
One-T,
I can't really tell you about mishits on the toe, as I have only had one since getting the clubs and it was on a windy range. My miss has been on the heel/hosel or high on the club face. I find that on the heel (as long as I don't catch the hosel) I get reasonable distance (short about 15 yards) and a good ball flight. As I joked before, I have hit the hosel once or twice that still produced a normal distance/shaped shot. The most punishing miss to me is high on the face. I hit a really high ball (I was playing a "punch" 7i higher than Seth was hitting a normal 8) and when I catch the ball high it turns whatever I am hitting into a wedge. The ball stays straight but I can loose 50+ yards of distance. I am working on this ball flight though and hopefully it disappears.

I got a chance to put these on a sim today and I continue to be impressed. My ball striking was by far the best part of my "round" and I hit several very good shots with these today. They sound just as nice indoors as they do on the range and it was something that BOTH of my playing partners mentioned immediately. I wont put a lot of stock into how they played today (83 on pebble beach) and I don't ever fully trust the simulator but I have a lot of hope that the next time these touch grass it is going to be something special!
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Is your hosel round or flat?
 
golf4life said:
I'm definitely seeing some yardage loss with off center hits, but the ball flight is staying pretty straight. More distance loss in long iron mis-hits than short irons, which is pretty normal I believe. A pretty bad toe shot with a 5 iron was costing me about 15 yards. With the PW, more like 5 yards.
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cool, thanks for the input. Just trying to gauge the forgiveness of these with the CB's.
 
TC said:
Is your hosel round or flat?
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Before or after I hit it? :alien:

It's rounded. Most of the time it was a traditional shank but I have had some go straight. I don't want to say how often that happened though, for personal pride reasons. Adjusting to a +3/4" was more difficult than I thought... But, now that I am used to it I don't know how I went so long with standard length clubs.


Tapatalk- USGA non-conforming
 
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