Mizuno

What it does: Mizuno has drifted in and out of the super-game-improvement category but jumps in here like a swimmer authoring a bomb. This is the first Hot Metal line super-game-improvement iron. It focuses less on ball speed (though the cast chromoly steel brings enough of it) and more on helping launch it with a wider sole and higher lofts (more on that below). The True Temper Dynamic Gold 95 steel shaft is about 25 percent lighter than the standard Dynamic Gold, encouraging a slightly faster swing.

Why we like it: We’ve been advocates of Mizuno’s Shaft Optimiser fitting tool for more than a decade. During that time, it not only helped golfers narrow shaft choices, it gathered data on the swing DNA of certain types of golfers. Mizuno has captured more than half a million swings and found that as lofts get stronger, average-to-slow swings have increasing difficulty in launching even a 5-iron successfully. Mizuno estimates close to half of all golfers might be flying a 7-iron farther than a low-lofted 5-iron. That led to a change in thinking: the way to increase distance in this club is to make the lofts weaker by 2 to 3 degrees compared to others in the JPX923 line.

7-iron loft 31 degrees; pw loft 45 degrees