PXG 0211 irons make statement with more affordable price but same fundamental distance and feel technology

The PXG 0211 irons might strike some as a departure for the brand that established itself as a luxury performance golf equipment company. But if you’re just looking at the 0211’s investment cast construction (instead of PXG’s traditional forged bodies on its 0311 family of irons) and most noticeably its price (less than half the price of the 0311 GEN2 irons), you’re looking at the wrong thing. Rather than a departure, the new 0211 irons are an extension of the company’s technology platform.

The PXG 0211 incorporates the same hollow construction, the same high-speed, high-strength steel face at the same thickness and the same highly resilient polymer (COR2) compound within that hollow construction, says Brad Schweigert, PXG’s chief product officer.

“We feel like we came up with some concepts and technologies that were unique to the industry in designing our 0311 irons,” Schweigert said. “One of the things that we learned along the way is the importance in the construction of an iron in the relationship between the face and our COR material and how dominant that was in the overall performance.

“Our goal is to shift the paradigm of cast vs. forged when it comes to the difference in feel. What we’ve learned through our testing and working with these unique modern day constructions is that the forging body material has very little impact on the overall feel and sound. It’s the way it’s constructed and the filter that is created by the face material and the COR material.”

That paradigm shift certainly makes the 0211 irons a more affordable option and potentially introduces PXG to a broader audience, and that introduction is largely going to be about the way the face and inner polymer work together, Schweigert said. Not only is the proprietary COR2 polymer the same as the 0311 irons, which were introduced last spring, so, too is the HT1770 steel face, which measures .058 inches (1.47 millimeters) thick, or about as thin as a penny. That performance is an enhancement of typical performance parameters like moment of inertia, he said.

“The interaction of the way our face geometry and our COR geometry work together creates a consistency that goes beyond just MOI so you get very consistent distance control across a larger region of the face,” he said.

Unlike the 0311 family of irons, the 0211 irons will be offered in one version and will not have the customizable screw weights found on all four versions in the 0311 lineup. The 0211 irons feature a traditional sizing that transitions progressively with slightly larger and slightly more offset long irons that move to a more compact players shape in the short irons. For reference on head size, Schweigert said the longer irons are similar to the shaping on the game-improvement 0311XF, the middle irons are between the 0311XF and the "players distance" 0311P irons and the short irons are similar to the 0311P irons.

“It’s very much a comfortable set of golf clubs that can be used by a wide range of playing abilities,” Schweigert said.

Another key carryover in the 0211 irons’ design is the robotic laser welding on the face insert. “It moves the weld to the perimeter of the iron and allows us to expand the effective face size in general for better consistency across a larger area of the face,” Schweigert said.

From Schweigert’s perspective, the 0211 was a simple and direct mandate from PXG founder and CEO Bob Parsons to make a high-performance iron that would be available to more people from a price point perspective. He believes they got there with little sacrifice.

“I’m not saying that there’s not a difference between a cast and a forged iron if they were exactly the same solid body construction,” he said. “I’m saying that given our construction methodology, it kind of makes it less relevant when it comes to feel and sound. In addition to that, our construction technique creates in my opinion the industry’s best feel and sound.”

The PXG 0211 irons will be available May 21 ($195 in steel with True Temper’s Elevate and Elevate Tour shafts; $210 in graphite with the Mitsubishi MMT shafts).