...then why do these irons get no love....?

i've yet to see any top players use them......i've played in a ton of amatuer events and have seen only a hadful of players use them.......i know the argument about "its a small compnay and they dont pay players etc..."

i guess my question is, if they are the ultimate forging....wouldn't at least top amatuers play them more....????


just wondering......

Most top amateurs will get their Titleist/TaylorMade/whatever stuff for free when playing in stuff like US Amateur etc.

A LOT OF TOUR PLAYERS irons were forged by miura - also they might be labeled by a "top brand"

I just quote from another blog:

"In terms of Tour irons, most manufacturers will have their heads forged by one of the premium facilities like Miura or Endo for the Tour product, but go with a large mass forging facility in China for the production heads. TaylorMade for example uses Miura to forge the Tour sets, Titleist uses Endo, and Nike has used both in the production of the Tour heads. Tour irons are generally dead on spec in terms of weight. You will not get a Tour set of irons with swingweights all over the board like you do with retail sets. This is because of the quality control at the high grade forging houses. These heads are also nearly free of imperfections both external and internal, and generally have an entirely different feel than their retail counterparts. These forgings are, obviously, higher quality accross the board, and MUCH more expensive to have done than the retail line."

Thanks for a terrific post. I've hardly ever heard it explained better.....

I think, its all marketing, preferences and perceptions. One say welded hosel rocks, another say One piece design rocks. Just a piece of metal and the design is much more important.Scratch Golf have much much better versatility, bringing High End- Custom Designs to Average Joes, I think they would still rocks even if their wedges are Cast iron purely from their designs.

I remember, Scratch got banned by the other site, and the other site are Hyping the Miura. Why? because they sell them. thats why. They would hype anything they can sell and make it untouchables by average joes. Exclusive . Well, they did a good job really. I learn a lot from them to apply in my own little business and see through BS better.


Ping is very successful with their cast, so does callaway. Callaway's forged + wedge did not catch on. Plastic inserts putters are used by more people . Quality, Exotics are just way over hyped. Taylor made uses Cast in their TP line. Gasp, TOUR CAST... thats so exclusive ..

So, the answer I think is.. its all marketing.. and preferences. If you enjoy it.. use it. If you can get money using it. use it . If you like Exclusive stuff. Use it .

My 2 cents.

Don't spend your 2 cents unless you've tried what you're commenting on...there's rarely anyone I've come across who'll say Miuras don't feel better/different than other forgings. Whether or not they are worth the money -that's more the subjective issue & decision one has to make.

BS!! did you get that quote from BS g?

After reading some some articels that say in blind test pros couldn't tell the difference between cast and forged I am not sure if there is a real difference. I assume that much of it is in one's mind. IF you think you are playing the ultimate in forged irons you are going to percieve them that way, which is fine since the mental aspect of golf is so important. Perception is just as important as reality, hence peoples love for high end forged irons. I will not argue with the fact that miuras have very accurate machining and quality which is a separate issue.

After having torn apart and rebuilt numerous sets of Japan-forged irons (Srixon, Tourstage, Miura, etc) I can tell you that weight tolerance are SPOT-ON. No need for lead weights to get the SW correct. In addition, if the spec states it's 62.5 lie---it is. It's for this reason many companies contract with JDM houses (Endo, Miura, Kyoe (sp)) to forge irons in limited quantities for their tour players.

Many members here can confirm that Nke, TM and others have 'tour' sets of irons that were NOT forged in the mass-forging plants of the retail versions. Does this make all tour-issue stuff better? Nope. But if you know what your buying (and your source), there can certainly be a difference between tour and retail. Sorry, that's just a fact, so please don't argue the merits of Tour vs Retail---there's plenty of threads, posts, time, and effort already dedicated to that topic.

Hang out here a GolfWRX for awhile (avoiding some other sites that hype products) and I'm sure you'll learn a bunch. Glad to have you here!

I would like to be one of those testers. I would be able to tell the difference between a mizuno forged and a callaway X-20 I guarantee it. I have heard the article and I'm guessing they had never hit forged before. I played with Ping irons for the first 10 years I played golf they offer some feedback but nothing compared to a quality forged iron when you hit the sweetspot. there are also other reasons most pros and some others prefer forged besides the feel. Cast clubs are molten steel poured into a casting, there are some small air pockets that naturally occur with this. A good friend of mine had a set of tommy armour 845's and if he hit the pw in a certain spot on the face it would fly 20 yards farther than it should. Im sure this was an air pocket in the casting. With forged you get alot more consistency on yardage, that is a fact. It kills me to see some company's sell their TP line of irons for high$$ when they are cast heads from China which costs next to nothing to produce. Just my 2 cents

You are basing your opinion on older cast clubs not the highly soft cast modern clubs. I am highly skeptical that you could tell the difference when numerous pros could not. Also you have to compare similar designs. The design i.e. blade vs cavity has much more to do with feel than whether it was cast or forged. I would put my money on a blind test of a forged blade and cast blade with the same exact specs you couldnt tell the difference.

I used to play Yonex ADX Tour irons (forged) went to Adams ATour Reds (cast) and there is a difference. The Yonex when hit on the sweet spot feels like butter the Adams although nice has a slightly harsher feel. The quality of cast has definitely improved but if you've played forged you will be able to tell the difference.

I have played forged and did for years. Titleists, and most recently x-tours. My point is that you and I percieve a difference in feel when you know there is a difference. If you were to do a blind test I don't think it would be the case, as the study indicated. The majority of people, myslef included have never done such a blind test, so in my mind a pure shot with a forged club probalby feels better since I am expecting such a result. There are numerous studies in many fields of psychology and neuroscience which support this. I like the feel of forged blades but I am also willing to accept that it is mental.

I think that is one of the most honest and open minded remarks I have seen posted on this site from a forged fan. Kudos.

Not to hijack this thread but the psychology of golf is one of the things about it that fascinates me. Had a lesson yesterday... previously I was working on some drills he gave me and found myself squirting it right (I mean at about a 45 degree angle), which I had NEVER done before.

Tried to show him yesterday... couldn't get it to go right even if I tried. (c;

Are we all out of date??

Miura no longer forges for OEMS -- they've gone with their own brand. At least that is the official word.

bsg doesn't tout Miuras any longer -- and never have touted the Miura Brand of Irons -- they have touted the Miura forged TM irons. bsg now touts Callaway woods and irons - I guess Callaway is their tour junkie now.

Yes -- Miura is tight to specs and is a great choice. I think you don't see more people playing them because they are $150/club (at least) and they have a low profile -- website and clubmakers sell them.

Having said that, you need to try their woods - I got my hands on some when in California at a shop demo -- and they are sweet.

Thank you Solutions for the kind words.

I could care less about forged or cast for my game. I assumed for years that cleveland wedges were all forged since they were by far the most widely used on tour. It was strange to see that most were cast. If you were super-duper anal about distance control a sand wedge would be the place to be most picky - yet most are cast. Go figure.

Years ago (many), forged clubs were indeed more consistant than most castings. But in recent years technology in castings has actually caught up with and surpassed the consistency of forgings.

This is not only in club heads but firearm parts, engine parts, etc.

I wonder if all the tour vokeys are forged, or are they cast like the vokeys off the shelf??

No Vokey wedge is forged. All are cast. I think that the metal mix is even the same for tour. Differences:
- grinding
- loft and lie checked and correct (I've seen retail Vokey 56* that had 60* of loft)
- more aggressive groove profile

Miura is by far one of the best forgers. But there are so many great Japanese clubs that nobody is playing (Tourstage, PRGR, Fourteen, Yonex, Gold's Factory, etc.). Miura gets mentioned because they used to make clubs for other OEM's so they have some pre-existing notoriety.

Forged vs. Cast, Retail vs. Tour, it's a dead horse any way you look at it.

i've tried practically every kind of iron out there(what can i say,im a club whore) and i finally settled on the miura cb-202's...to me the miura's felt the best out of all the irons i've tried...again this could be subjective because of my previous experience with irons forged by them, but as far as i can tell i havent hit a better feeling iron than theirs...one of the best tests ive ever done was put ear plugs on and hit a cast iron and a forged iron...couldnt really tell the difference...but when i hit the miuras i definetely felt the difference...incase some of you dont know...feel in golf is mainly sound(thats why i put ear plugs on)...ahhhhh...miura's

How the hell does that happen? Not calling you a liar, but that is wayyy off. You can pick 56 and 60 degree wedges off the rack and see the difference in loft. I can't see a club going out of a titleist facility that far off (I couldn't even see a $180 set of dunlops being that far off). I wonder what the quality standards are for loft tolerance? If I had to guess I'd say something around 0.1 or 0.5*. Any chance the club you saw had either been bent purposely, or accidently, for it to be that far off?

I love all the comments about when Miura says the loft, lie etc. is XXX they are spot on. Anyone that has spent anytime building clubs know this isn't possible to confirm unless you have your equipment calibrated by Miura and use the same equipment. I've rarely had anyone's set including Miuras stuff that agrees with the specs they publish (or send with the clubs) when I check it on my equipment or others equipment. Yes they are much closer in weight tolerances than standard OEM (but you are paying for it also). The typical good golfer can't tell the difference anyway until they have a 6+ gram lead plug. I've found nobody that could tell a Mizuno, Titleist, TM iron had any weight adjustments in them until they got in the 6-8 gram range and that was usually in Mizunos. I've also had sets of Taylor Mades and MacGregors that were forged by Miura (PCB Tours and X-300s) that had weight adjustments in the shafts or hosels---so the specs that they forge to for the OEMs aren't necessarily the same as their own house brand.



I'm amazed that we haven't had the required insert that Tiger's irons are forged, ground, and finished by Miura-San himself in this thread.

Ding! We have a winner folks.

Heck, I thought Tiger forged his own irons.........



Ya know, he is a hands-on type......

I've played/hit every brand of cast irons out there and was previously of the above thinking--i.e. "how can they be that much better"...but BELIEVE ME, there's A HUGE DIFFERENCE!!!

I played the Forged 300 from Taylor Made, and they felt good--there was a nice difference that I could see from my Ping i3 blades...but now, after a 3 year run with the Ping s59 irons, I'm swinging the MacGregor FORGED M685, and the feel is FREAKIN INCREDIBLE!!! Granted I'm a much better ball striker than when I played the 300s or some of my previous irons, but from the FIRST BALL I STRUCK with the M685 vs. the s59, I've been COMPLETELY SOLD on forged!!!

Folks this is a great post.
Aren't we talking about a piece of metal? Anyway most if not all MAJOR OEMS will eventually go to cast. It's just cheaper to produce. It's all about profit margin. Forging is a lost art (dead in my opinion). You will NOT see any major technological advances in forging metal. Cast is were it's at and will be until something else better comes along.

I thought you were going to tell us he could walk on water while forging his own irons.



UMMMMM, No.
Most good players I've run into will not touch a cast club; they are too inconsistent. I had one set of cast irons and they were from the Titleist tour dept back in the early 90s. Loved em, but I switched within the year.

The same arguments for forged vs. cast irons can be said for Walmart's vs. Tour's clubs. Choose the weapons of your choice , gents!

The reason for double blind testing is that people cannot make accurate judgments about subjective qualities, like feel, if they know which club is forged and which is cast. They think they can but they can't. In double blind tests the best golfers in the world do no better than chance in distinguishing cast from forged. It seems that only people on equipment forums have that ability, or think they do.

Steve

I keep seeing posts about these tests...where are they? Who performed them? I'd like to see that info. It's not that I agree or disagree, but I am curious to see the results, who was in the test, what clubs were tested, etc.

SHHHH don't tell Lorena Ochoa and Angel Cabrerra that or they might give their major trophies back now that they know they are playing with inconsistent clubs.

When you make statements about cast clubs being too inconsistent you apparently know nothing about metallurgy. Each can be made very consistent through the manufacturing processes but a cast club requires much less metal manipulation than a forged club to achieve this "consistency".

http://www.thegolfchannel.com/15100/23326/

even in the seventies with the not so great casting they couldn't tell. not exactly the study but frank thomas is pretty reliable considering his former position with the USGA

You don't really consider the MacGregor M685s a true forged club do you?? 3-6 have that horrible feeling hollow "technology". Hopefully the new management will dump this japanese game improvement junk and return to real forgings.

Again, it's somebody talking about a test that was performed. I'm curious as to the specifics.

The best of the very best player in the world use forged blades. Enough said!

Feel free to drop Frank a note. Please post back here if he gets more specific. For now I'll settle for the conclusions of metallurgists.

Even gunsmiths that would only use pre mid sixties barreled actions for building custom target machines have come to the conclusion that modern day castings are as good or better than any forgings. So have racing teams, ship builders, and mechanical engineers in general.

Look... back in the day, forgings "were" superior. Castings were flawed with bubbles, layering, crystalline deposits, and other impurities and inconsistencies introduced by old technology. That is where this myth propagated from. Back then it wasn't a myth. Today, it is fiction... but handed down from golfer to golfer.

Golf has as much tradition as any pastime, and if you feel better playing more traditionally fabricated equipment, that's your right and privilege... but recommending forged as being more consistent (or better in any measurable parameter) is not being completely truthful at best. But as with anything, myths and old wives tales die hard. (c;

I hope that was sarcasm because otherwise it has no bearing on the matter. Also, Tiger is extremely picky and resistant to change. He likes his irons to feel exactly how they have felt his whole life and back then all blades were forged so if someone wanted the playability of a blade it was default forged, so he continues to play them.

The test I actually read about was reported in Golf Digest about 30 years ago. PGA Tour testers, including Ray Floyd, were given otherwise identical muscle back irons, some case, some forged, asked to hit them and say which were cast, which were forged. Their ability to identify cast from forged was 50%, that is the same as just guessing. I can't recall who else was in the study but Floyd had a pretty good pair of hands.

If there has been a subsequent blind test I havn't seen it.

This result is contrary to legend but not surprising if you think about it, In a collision between a golf club, any club, and a ball, what is the primary determiner of feel? Why the ball of course which is orders of magnitude softer than the club, any kind of club that is.

Steve

Just out of curiosity...

How many of you playing forged irons are playing forged drivers?

There was big difference in feel between the Miuras and a set of 300Forged I recently bought and sold. Nippons vs. Rifles obviously played a part as well though.

Think about it, the amount of good and not-so-good golfers that were sure of Vokeys being forged when they came out shows that there is little difference in feel between the 2, it's down to what your head thinks is a good feel, what your hands get and what your ears hear.

I've played both, and honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. I've never done any testing of my own. There's no question cast clubs have come a long way...there's also no question that the processes are totally different...so it doesn't surprise me that people think they can tell a difference.

I've listened to the same debate about stainless vs. carbon putters. I generally prefer carbon...that said, I've putted with stainless putters that I thought felt like carbon, and vice-versa. I think you really have to be more specific, i.e. which two clubs are you comparing. That's the reason I'm curious about the test every body seems to know about except me. I'd just like to know how it was conducted, who participated, and what clubs they were using.

Cast vs. forged. I have played both. Having grown up with forged irons I have played Wilson Staffs, MacGregors, Titleist and Hogan forgings. I have also played cast clubs including 3 vintages of Ping and Taylor Made. All I know is there is a certain feeling you get when you hit a forged club in the center of the cluface that I have never felt with any cast club. I can't speak for you or any of the tour pros referenced in this thread. All I know is what I have experienced and that is what I'm stating here.
I do have to admit that I'm not comparing identical irons. I'm comparing, for example, a Hogan forged blade to a TM casting. Maybe if I could compare identical forged and cast heads as described in some posts I would feel differently. But I've never had the opportunity to do that, just as I'm sure most of you have not.

.02 and I probably owe you change.

Neither currently. But I had a Mizuno Forged T-Zoid driver a few years back and it was the crappiest driver I've every had. Probably the only driver that didn't serve me for at least 2 seasons. But then again it was 9* with a shaft that was geared towards hitting it low so I was probably set up for failure right off the bat!

Well I do have forged Nike SV tour wedges. But I can't tell the difference between a Nike forged wedge and a Cleveland cast wedge really.

Sorry, but I gotta call BS on this one. This was hardly a scientific test to detemine the metal properties of the pw iron. If an air pocket really made the ball fly 20 yards farther then manufacturers would find a way to put the bubbles in on purpose. And if forged was so much better for yardage accuracy then why are so many great clubs cast (think of Volkey, Ping, etc)?

From Tom Wishon,
"If you have a cast iron and a forged iron of exactly the same shape and weight distribution design, the same loft, the same center of gravity position in the two heads, and the heads are built with the same shaft, same length, same grip and same swingweight/MOI, hitting the same ball, the shots will fly identical distances."

I think it might be true that cast iron has "hot" spots. You might only be able to measure them in the lab though. And I think an air bubble would be a dead spot, not the opposite.

As to hot spots, people once complained about Callaway or other cast clubs as being inconsistent -- pointing to hot spots. These complaints seem to have dissipated over the last 7 years or so.

Ping uses their own casting method to ensure that they don't have hot spots.

It seems as if quality irons these days have fewer inconsistencies.

That was not my quote so I think you should go find the actual poster and quote them, and edit the post. I prefer to not have others speak for me.

This is the most misunderstood "test" in the history of golf. The test was done by Ping fyi. They took identically designed STAINLESS STEEL heads and had one cast and one forged. They took them to 10 Tour players. Only Jeff Maggert said he felt a difference but he didnt know what it was. The FACT is that forged clubs feel softer because of the metal that is used in their construction. Other than Titleists larger CBs pretty much all Forged clubs are made from much softer carbon steel that is why there is such a difference in feel. The FACT is you cannot cast this Carbon Steel so you cannot make a cast club feel like a forged club unless you use stainless steel for both (which defeats the purpose entirely)
Now before you go telling me that I am wrong and you CAN cast carbon steel, witness vokey, cleveland etc with 8620, another FACT for you. 8620 is NOT carbon steel. It is a Steel Alloy. 8620 Carbon Steel is a made up golf marketing term. It does not exist. It does rust like normal carbon steel but that is pretty much all the have in common. It is just another way for the big companies marketing departments to trick you into buying clubs that are much cheaper for them to produce. The FACT is if you want the best feeling irons and wedges that you can get you have to go with a soft carbon steel forging.