Irons
Ping G730 and i530 irons: What you need to know
What you need to know: Ping introduces two new irons, the G730 and i530, designed for distance but geared towards different player types. The G730 is more of a game-improvement offering while the i530 serves better players seeking to regain some lost distance.
Price/Availability: Available immediately for custom fittings and pre-order, the G730 is $185 per iron in steel and $200 in graphite. The i530 is 205 per iron in steel and $220 in graphite.
3 Cool Things
1. Metalwood performance in an iron. Ping’s first hollow-body game-improvement iron was in 2018 and in the ensuing time the company has improved on its efforts. For the G730 that means an enhanced metalwood-style variable face that uses a special heat treatment to significantly thin (seven percent thinner than the G430 iron) the 17-4 stainless steel face.
The large head and wide sole ups the moment of inertia in both directions (heel-toe, top-bottom) mitigating the negative effects of mis-hits—the kind of shots players in the game-improvement iron category hit with frequency. The rear badge is a 10-piece construction that uses two different plastics and has five bending regions to assist face flex.
Ping realizes off-center hits are part of the game, even for single-digit players. This iron doesn’t ignore that unpleasant reality but places more of an emphasis on a clean aesthetic and more pop than a ball coming off Aaron Judge’s bat. The construction is almost metal-wood-like with a hollow-body design using C300 maraging steel for the face—the same type of metal used in landing gear for aircraft. The sole has an “arcing cascade” that aids in the flexing of the face and combines with strong lofts to ensure the desire for distance is satisfied.
3. Good players need speed, too. The players-distance i530 uses a blade-style, hollow structure and high-strength maraging steel face to allow for significant bending of the face at impact compared to a standard cast iron. That bending leads to distance increases, because not only does the ball launch faster off the face, but the face also bends in a way that launches shots higher.
These irons were built for speed. A proprietary heat-treating process makes the variable-thickness 17-4 stainless-steel face super strong, allowing it to be thinned significantly, resulting in more face bend for greater distance and added height. The lofts are quite strong but when combined with a low center of gravity and additional perimeter weighting bring about noticeable ball-speed gains. The 10-piece cavity badge has multiple flex zones that help generate a higher launch with steeper landing angles to hold the green. Call this one the 12-handicappers secret weapon.
“Maraging steel is used in landing gear systems on aircraft,” said Travis Milleman, design engineer for Ping. “Because that material is so strong, you can go really thin. It’s a constant thickness face but the center of the face is thinner than i525. It’s almost like a forged metalwood construction. We’re using the whole iron design to get as much movement as you can. As you get thinner in the face you’re taking more mass that you can redistribute, so you’re also getting a boost in moment of inertia [off-center hit stability].”
An arcing sole cascade aids in the flexing and combines with stronger lofts (29-degree 7-iron, 42-degree pitching wedge) to ensure max height that delivers enough stopping power to hold greens. Four grams of precisely placed EVA polymer improves feel and sound without hindering face flexing.
The aesthetic was cleaned up, too. A shorter blade height had the added benefit4 of helping driver the CG low while a new machining technique thins the back wall some 40 percent, saving more weight.
The face and grooves are designed with tighter spacing and a geometry that results in an average of four extra grooves on each iron. A hydropearl 2.0 chrome finish combines with the grooves to help ensure lower launch angles with high spin rates.
