My colleague, Johnny Wunder, recently joined Jake Knapp at Scottsdale National to hit every iron in the PXG lineup, and they came away with some really cool findings about ball speed. This is a wonderful metric for every golfer to look at when they’re picking out new irons, and I want to talk about how to use ball speed when choosing what irons you want to put in your bag.

What’s the “target” ball speed?

The PGA Tour average for a 7-iron is right around 123 mph of ball speed. The “average” golfer is closer to 115 mph if they’re swinging between 75-80 mph. Tour players, like Knapp, obviously swing faster but also are aided by single-piece irons, whereas most amatuers use an iron that provides a little bit more help.

The truth is, there really is no “standard” speed that fitters try to achieve for every golfer. Instead, we try to match up speed, peak, height and spin to dial a player in. Remember, though, speed creates spin and height. Regardless of loft, which is where most golfers get tripped up, having something with a lower CG that produces a higher ball speed will inherently spin the ball a touch more and launch the ball higher.

An important metric to think about here is smash factor or efficiency. You typically want your irons to live in the 1.35 realm. Even up to 1.40 is completely usable. Many golfers may think that trying to get a set of irons close to the legal limit of 1.51 would be the most useful, but you’ll start to run into playability issues.

PXG 0311T GEN8 Custom Irons

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What we want to try to find is a set of irons that still have a usable level of control built into them. That’s where having a “baseline” speed to target in a fitting can actually help.

The best example I can provide is a good ball-striker who’s losing speed. I know plenty of senior-aged golfers that still strike the ball out of the middle, but their 7-iron has lost 15 to 20 yards over the years, and they want to bring back their “old distances.” This is where the difference between a PXG CB and a PXG Gen8 T can be useful — but going to something like a P or an XP could be too much.

Good ball-strikers still want control with their clubs. They want to be able to shape shots, change windows and feel like a shot-maker. The faster ball speeds we produce, with less spin and more height, the more control gets lost. So for a player who can still hit the ball out of the middle but may be on the lower end of swing speed, something like the T would be a perfect compromise. Even a combo set of CB in the bottom and T in the top could make these players feel very comfortable.

Speed throughout the set

Speaking of combo sets, with PXG’s Gen8 lineup being very combo set-friendly, we need to discuss the concept of ball speed gapping in a set of irons, and why a combo set could be necessary.

Typically we’re looking for about 5 mph of ball speed in between irons. If you notice in the video with Johnny and Knapp, he hit each 7-iron iron with about a 5 mph gap in speed, while hitting the ball higher with each progressive model getting more forgiving. He started with about 135 mph in his ST irons, as a super-high-speed player, and up to 154+ in the better-player XP irons toward the end.

This speaks to loft and CG packages, but it’s also a great way to look at your entire set. If you find a really comfortable 7-iron at 115 mph of ball speed for example, you’d want your 5-iron to live around 125 mph. If you go to hit the same iron model in the 5-iron and you find yourself being a couple miles an hour short, that’s when it’s logical to move up into the next model.

PXG 0311P GEN8 Custom Irons

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My favorite combo sets are actually for higher-handicap players at lower speeds. Something like the Gen8 P and the Gen8 XP would be a great option for players who can still strike the ball well, and who don’t want to jump into hybrids or fairway woods too soon.

By playing a set of P in the bottom of the set and maybe switching over to the XP at the 6- or 5-iron could be a great way to ensure consistent speed gaps through the set. This will usually result in about 10-12-yard carry gaps between irons, but the beauty of focusing on speed is that the speed wont change with loft. So if you need to bend the irons 1º weak or strong for the sake of height and carry, you’ll still be getting everything out of those irons that you’re looking for.

If you’re looking to get fit for a new set of PXG irons and see what ball speed you’re comfortable living at, head over to our friends at True Spec or find a PXG fitting center near you.

As he stares down his 46th birthday this summer, Justin Rose is the oldest player in the Official World Golf Rankings top 50 — and that experience isn’t lost on him.

In fact, his past experience is part of the reason he feels so comfortable becoming an investor in McLaren Golf, the new venture of the F1 and Supercar juggernaut.

Rose was announced as the company’s first global ambassador on Monday at this week’s Cadillac Championship in Miami. On Tuesday, at a pre-tournament press conference, he was asked about the new partnership, with the brand is set to officially announce its new clubs at an event on Wednesday.

“McLaren Golf has been something that’s been on the back burner for a good number of months,” Rose said Tuesday at his pre-tournament press conference, his first comments since the announcement. “Obviously, to launch a brand out of the ground obviously has been going for a lot longer than a year. It’s something I’ve been involved with from the outset, really helping the engineering team, really testing the very first editions of the club. So yeah, I’ve been kind of working with the project for well over a year, probably.”

Rose himself brought up his past experience with making equipment changes. After spending the first 20 years of his career with TaylorMade Golf, he shocked the golf world when, at the beginning of the 2019 season and as the reigning World No. 1, he left the company to sign with Honma.

Although Rose won early that season at Torrey Pines — like he did this year — the partnership quickly soured and all of the Honma clubs were out of his bag by early 2020. Both parties exited the deal shortly thereafter.

Since then, Rose has been a gear-free agent and one who tinkers frequently from using lead tape on his driver shaft to using split brand set of irons or gaming seven-year-old fairway woods.

On Tuesday, Rose was asked if that freedom was worth giving up given how well he has played of late, winning twice on the PGA Tour since last August and finishing in the top-3 in the last two Masters.

Without being directly asked about it, Rose brought up the 2019 situation with Honma.

“From my point of view, no, I’m actually looking at what can be better. I’m looking to mitigate risk,” Rose said. “Yeah, I’ve done this once before as well in 2019, obviously, and I kind of learned a lot from that process. So I feel a bit better place now to kind of go down this path.

“I think yeah, I think there’s some best practices that we’re kind of, we’ve sort of put into development really that I think are giving me what I feel are a fantastic set of golf clubs. I’m looking at some of the performance data that I’m getting on the range and places like that and outperforming what I have.”

The main differences between 2019 and now are that Rose isn’t signing on with an established brand looking to push into a new market. McLaren is starting their golf business from scratch, and Rose has been along from the start. That’s why he’s also not just an ambassador; he’s an investor in the company.

He added that while he enjoyed his years as a free agent, he didn’t think what he was playing currently was the best thing for him, but he was able to form ideas about what exactly he needed.

“I think when you’re not with an equipment manufacturer, there’s a little bit of temptation just to bounce around anyway, there’s so many good options out there,” Rose said. “But at the same time, I’ve learned so much from being brand agnostic for a while that I kind of have my own preference list now. I feel like I’m in an environment where I can take all my preferences to one place where they can execute on that for me.”

For now, Rose confirmed the company’s initial offering will be two sets of irons, a blade and a cavity-back, which Rose was still contemplating the exact makeup of his set this week in Miami. He acknowledged that there will still be some growing pains as he puts the clubs in competition for the first time.

“Obviously, there’s going to be a refinement process,” he said. “You can test all you want, you got to get the clubs in play, and there’s going to be little mini situations out there, different lies, all sorts of things, just getting comfortable. But in the long-term, no, I don’t see there being an issue at all.”

But this will just be the beginning and he looks forward to building out a complete bag with McLaren.

“I got lots of ideas on every part of the game,” he added. “This is a good place for me to be able to put my ideas down and let the smart engineers go figure it out. But yeah, it’s a fun process to think of it all.”