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New Looks
Digging Deep
Are your iron soles wrong for your swing?
By Max Adler
Photos By Jim Herity
November 2008
There isn't a book that tells how to win on the PGA Tour, but Kenny Perry could attribute his three victories in 2008 to a little reading. Of his divots, that is. "I want them to start square to the target line and then curve a little left," Perry says. "I've always been real steep in my swing. So if my divot starts shallow, then gets deeper toward the front, I know the sole is digging too much. After a lot of trial and error, I've added a different amount of bounce to each iron in my set."
Club designers read divots, too. Any new idea for a clubhead also poses the challenge of developing the correct sole to accommodate it and its intended user. Sharon Park of Cleveland Golf says varying touches of things such as camber, sole width, trailing- and leading-edge relief, bounce angle and toe-heel length all combine to determine a club's "effective bounce," or how much it will tend to rise out of the dirt once it enters the ground.
If you don't have a tour van at your disposal to build custom grinds like Perry does, don't fret. Though subtle, sole shape is one of the most distinguishing design features across all iron models and brands (notice the variety in the profiles pictured top right). There's surely one out there to suit both your swing and the turf conditions of your home course.
"As designers, to get the greatest improvement in things such as center of gravity and moment of inertia, we're always asking, 'How wide can we go?' " says David Llewellyn, manager of golf-club research and development for Mizuno. "In terms of turf interaction, a wider sole is not necessarily a bad thing for a middle-to high-handicapper. Just as a fairway wood is less likely to take a divot on a fat shot, a wider iron sole doesn't dig but rather skips and rides above the turf." In other words, the sole of an iron is like the hull of a boat: The wider it is, the less it will sink.
So if big, honking soles not only boost the performance of the mass properties by redistributing weight low and can overcome chunky strikes, what's the downside? Versatility, says Llewellyn. "To have shotmaking options, like picking the ball clean or setting it back in the stance to trap it low, a player needs to be able to tell the club what to do. With wide soles, essentially the turf is what's telling the club what to do. That's why skilled players need something narrow, or something wide with drafted relief areas."
Home turf plays a role in sole preference, too. If you mostly play on soft, lush turf, consider wider, more rounded soles because they resist digging. If your home course is usually firm and dry, narrow irons with sharper leading edges might be more useful. But for serious sole-seeking, test irons side by side, and read the divots. (Hint: If your divots are striking oil, lean toward a wider sole.) The sole that suits your swing should move through the ground like it isn't even there.
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Cleveland
- November 2008
- Each iron in the HiBore XLi set is a hollow-construction hybrid style. The sole width on the 7-iron is 42.5 millimeters ($600, eight irons, steel shafts, clevelandgolf.com).
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Adams
- The wide sole Idea Tech a4OS has significant relief on the trailing edge. A maraging-steel face insert and dual-tungsten weights are technological bonuses ($800, adamsgolf.com).
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Wilson
- The Di9 cavity is shaped to extend the hitting area to the toe. The wide-tip shaft is designed to control vibration, and consistent loft gaps promote distance control ($500, wilson.com).
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