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Latest gear
Will the true muscle-back blade exist forever?
Step one of a Tom Wishon forging: A steel billet is pressed into the shape of a head.
Nothing sits prettier in the bag than a set of blades. There's something about the way the sunlight glints off those svelte soles. But does it make sense to use them? (Ten of the top-20 players in the world don't even play true muscle-backs.) Almost every company that makes a blade also forges a slightly easier-to-hit, perimeter-weighted version with a sweet spot that is 10 to 15 percent larger. These wannabes still have slender top-lines and can work the ball.
To compare performance, we hired Golf Laboratories Inc. in San Diego to test a Bridgestone J36 Blade 6-iron against a J36 Cavity Back 6-iron using a robot. With a 90-mile-per-hour swing, shots were hit on 10 spots on each clubface. For center hits, the blade carried the ball two yards farther, and its 3.4-gram heavier head launched the ball half a degree lower and with 300 more revolutions per minute of spin. But when we averaged the drop-off in carry distance of all nine off-center hits, the blade lost seven yards, and the cavity-back only lost three. So for players with typical launch conditions, a blade might be better, but only if they're very consistent ball-strikers. The data suggests the best miss with either club is on the heel. With most irons, the hosel weight tends to pull the center of gravity toward the heel, making this the hottest part of the face.
An idealist would say the true value of blades gets lost in robot numbers. "We swing differently depending on the tools," says Dan Stone, vice president of golf club R&D at Titleist. "Certain golfers swing with more precision with a blade because they're responding to the high level of feedback from the feel and ball flight of mis-hits, and making tiny adjustments."
So the question is: Do golfers need to be good first to play blades, or do they become good by playing blades?
Today's blades look similar to past models, so one misconception is that they haven't developed technologically.
"We design on computers now, so each head comes out uniform. We don't have to do a bunch of grinding to get the weight and center of gravity right," says David Llewelyn, manager of R&D at Mizuno. "Twenty years ago a tour pro had to pick and choose heads to make his set. Today every set we sell is perfectly ordered and so much easier to play."
To those for whom golf is the chase of perfection, there will always be blades. Tiger plays them. Whether you should depends on your consistency of contact.
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By Max Adler
Photos By Jim Herity June 2008
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BRIDGESTONE
The J36 Blade and the J36 Cavity Back are forged from 1020 mild carbon steel and have the Rifle Project X Flighted as a stock shaft. Mixed sets are an option ($800, bridgestonegolf.com.
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MIURA
The Blade and the CB-202 are made using the company's spin-welding process designed to ensure consistent hosel heights and bore depths ($1,200, miuragolf.com).
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MIZUNO
Slender-cut muscle notches throughout the set in the MP-67 help position the CG. Also forged from 1025E Pure Select mild carbon steel is the MP-57 cavity-back ($850, mizunousa.com).
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