To help us all get into the spirit of Masters Week, Mizuno has released 1,000 sets of special-edition “Azalea” irons – and we’re going to take a punt and say they’re not going to last long.

Just 50 sets of these beauties will be available across Australia and New Zealand. “The Azalea” is a limited-edition release of the recently introduced Mizuno Pro 241 muscleback irons.

“Grain Flow Forged in Hiroshima, Japan, these irons are a testament to form and function,” Mizuno said in a media release.

The Azalea Edition boasts a striking PVD finish that shimmers in hues of pink and green, reminiscent of the delicate Azalea flower, its beauty enhanced by the interplay of light.

Each Azalea head is meticulously paired with a coordinated ferrule, shaft band, and grip, ensuring a harmonious, elegant, and distinctive aesthetic.

“Whether gracing the golf course or adorning a collector’s display, these irons embody craftsmanship and sophistication,” added the company. “Welcome to a world where excellence meets exclusivity.”

AVAILABILITY/PRICE: Available for order now / RRP: $4,799

SPECS:

• Specs: 3-PW RH 
• Shaft – (True Temper) Dynamic Gold Tour Issue Azalea S400
• Grip – (Golf Pride) MCC Azalea
• Ferrule – (BB&F) Azalea
• Built in Melbourne

Order yours at  http://www.mizuno.com.au

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The Mizuno ST-Max 230 line-up of driver, fairway woods and hybrids makes the commitment to the largest footprints in company history in their respective categories. Of course, with that size also comes a commitment to forgiveness with a deep centre of gravity and a high moment of inertia (stability on off-centre hits). The extreme sizes come about with the use of lightweight crowns and other shaping changes designed to keep the CG also low for easier launch.

OPTIONS & PRICE: Driver: 9.5, 10.5, 12 degrees (with eight-way adjustable hosel); fairway woods: 15, 18, 21 degrees (with eight-way adjustable hosel); hybrids: 19, 22, 25, 28 degrees (with eight-way adjustable hosel). Stay tuned for Australian and New Zealand pricing.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Making bigger better. Like tennis racquets in the 1970s, the idea of simply making clubs bigger is driven by the idea that bigger means more forgiving, or in other words, more stable on off-centre hits for better distance potential on mis-hits. Fair enough. But making drivers, fairway woods and hybrids larger, like this latest Mizuno ST-Max 230 line-up, required a whole lot of not simple changes in shape and materials and construction.

First, making a driver or fairway wood bigger while just using the same titanium or steel throughout the body would make them too heavy. And making a hybrid bigger without stretching the limits of how thin you could make steel would have caused the same difficulties. So the ST-Max 230 driver and fairway wood cover a broader area of the body and sole in lightweight carbon composite, compared to the standard ST-Z options. The sole section on the ST-Max 230 driver is 40 percent larger than the ST-Z 230, and that left room for a 55 percent heavier back weight. On the fairway woods, the carbon composite crown even wraps over the edge of the toe for more weight savings.

Second, since the goal was forgiveness and the idea behind that forgiveness was to stretch the front to back measurement, that led to slightly lowering the face height to help keep the volume of these heads either within the rules for drivers or within a reasonable size for fairway woods and hybrids. A slightly flatter crown also facilitates this much larger overall footprint throughout the line.

Meanwhile, the ST-Max 230 hybrid employs a lighter, thinner crown with a waffle thickness pattern inside to save mass that allows the overall shape to get larger. It also reduces mass at the top of the club to keep the CG lower for better launch.

Those combined efforts pushed the forgiveness of the ST-Max 230 woods to new levels. Mizuno uses a metric it calls “sweet area”, which essentially is a gauge of the stability of these heads from heel to toe and crown to sole. The ST-Max 230 driver features a sweet area that’s more than 20 percent larger than the ST-Z 230. The sweet areas on the fairway woods and hybrids is also larger than those of the ST-Z models.

Of course, ensuring all of that forgiveness is the fact that they are still bigger than any previous models. The driver’s front-to-back and heel-to-toe measurements barely fit within the five-by-five-inch box required under the rules and is bigger than both the ST-Z 230 and ST-X 230 in both directions. Meanwhile, the ST-Max 230 3-wood has a volume of 178 cubic centimetres and even the 7-wood head is wider heel-to-toe than the ST-Z 230 3-wood head. The same is true on the ST-Max 230 hybrids, where even the 28-degree 6-hybrid is wider heel-to-toe than the ST-Z 230 3-hybrid.

Mizuno new releases for 2024

2. Power centre. Of course, the dirty secret about MOI is that you can have a very high MOI but still not have the ball travel as far. The face needs to be built for better speed, too, and Mizuno’s ball speed-enhancing efforts with the ST-Max 230 drivers, fairway woods and hybrids traverse two paths: materials and construction.

First, here’s what’s not immediately obvious. The driver uses a stronger, thinner, more flexible titanium alloy than the previous SAT2041 in the ST-Z and ST-X drivers. The Ti-LFS alloy is less dense than SAT2041 yet has a higher tensile strength. (Tensile strength is a measurement of the maximums stress that a metal can resist before cracking.) The new alloy allows the face also to incorporate a new variable thickness pattern that is thinner in the heel and toe regions to stretch the area of the face that produces the highest ball speeds. The fairway woods also feature an enhanced variable thickness design on the high-strength maraging steel face insert for better all over flexing.

Second, these woods all use a larger slot in the sole that stretches from the extreme toe all the way into the adjustable hosel port at the extreme heel. Known as the “CORtech Chamber” and introduced a year ago, the widened slot still contains a five-gram steel weight encased in the polymer filling. The filling allows the face to give more at impact while the weight further lowers the CG for decreased spin and higher launch. Also, by widening the channel from heel to toe, it brings the cut-through area of the slot more in line with face centre for better flexing in the highest ball-speed area.

3. Glide pattern. One natural deterrent to making fairway woods and hybrids bigger is how that can make them harder to hit off the ground. Mizuno’s also attacked this issue two ways. First, with extra mass placed down low, relative to the rest of the body, the lower CG should aid higher launch. Second, a bevel on the leading edge of the channel in the sole on both the fairway woods and hybrids is designed to smooth the way that larger opening glides through the turf by reducing the surface area on the sole that contacts the ground.

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Looking to learn what you need to know about the latest new products from Mizuno? These handy thumbnails will keep you up to date on the company’s new releases across all club and ball categories.

Mizuno T24 Blue Ion wedges (2024): Mizuno typically has included a blue ion finish in its wedge line, so it was only fitting to ask where that offering was when the company launched its T24 line last September. Ask no more – Mizuno has added a blue ion finish offering.

The blue ion models are available in lofts from 46 to 60 degrees (right-hand only) and feature all the tech of the standard T24 wedges. That includes a more compact shape with thinner toplines and more of a straight line look on the lower, full-swing lofts (for easier transition from the short irons), and more of a rounded look on the higher lofts to emphasise shot-making.

The grooves feature narrower, deeper grooves to channel debris and boost spin on full shots. Higher lofts use a wider groove to assure better grab on the partial shots that are commonly played by higher lofts. On the T24, that specificity goes a bit further, with the lower lofts featuring 17 grooves and the higher lofts utilising 15.

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The new Mizuno ST-G driver features the compact pear shape and deep face that better players naturally gravitate to, but it expands the range of appeal through enhanced adjustability, the increased flexibility in the face fuelled by a new beta rich, lighter and stronger titanium alloy and the low-spin effects of a weighted through-slot in the sole.

PRICE: $999, 9.5 and 10.5 (adjustable). At retail across Australia and New Zealand from today.

3 COOL THINGS

1. A lighter, faster, stronger face. The new ST-G driver makes use of a new heat-treated Ti 412 alloy that is lighter density than the company’s SAT 2041 used in its recent ST-X 230 and ST-Z 230 drivers. That means the face is lighter, but the heat treatment makes it even stronger so it allows more potential face deflection for better ball speed across the face. The lighter, stronger alloy allows for a more intricate variable face thickness design.

“Because it’s lighter and stiffer, we can reduce some weight in the face to use elsewhere,” said David Llewellyn, Mizuno’s director of research and development. “But we’re also able to design it for better flexibility because we can make it thinner. You want that combination of higher strength with better elongation because it will stretch more before it breaks.”

Boosting the way the face flexes is an updated version of the company’s weighted, sole slot technology that debuted last year with the ST-X 230 and ST-Z 230 drivers. Known as the CORTECH Chamber, the slot is cut through the front of the sole to allow the face to give more at impact. The slot is filled with a thermoplastic urethane, which in turn is embedded with a four-gram stainless steel weight slug. That combination both allows the face to flex better while pushing the head’s centre of gravity low and forward. That reduces spin for a more efficient launch and better distance.

“Yes, it’s a smaller head to make it more workable, but that C.O.R. area is pretty large for this category of driver,” said Llewellyn. “By using a new face material and tweaking the CORTECH geometry, we’re able to get more stability and consistency for off-centre hits.”

2. Less leads to more. The new ST-G, which is first and foremost positioned as a low-spin option in the Mizuno driver line-up, utilises more carbon composite than in Mizuno’s past low-spin drivers by not only covering a wider area of the crown but also extending the carbon composite to wrap around the toe section of the sidewall. That helps to create a more neutral CG location (because taking weight out of the toe section balances the extra mass from the toe-side sliding weight). But it also allows for the two tracks on the sole for the sliding weights to angle to the extreme back of the sole where they converge at a central point.

That creates not only the option for greater heel and toe weighting like in the dual track system of the ST-G 200 driver but also the extreme rear weighting option of the ST-G 220. The two 7-gram weights can be pushed forward for an extreme but balanced low-spin setting, but they also are designed to produce a higher flight with the two weights positioned at the back of each of the converging dual tracks. The weights can be positioned in any combination of heel or toe bias and to provide a range of spin settings from low to mid-low. Internal ribbing within the head around the weight tracks is designed to improve the consistency of sound across all settings, particularly in the rear-most position.

3. A player’s shape. Make no mistake, the new ST-G driver targets that group of better players who prefer a compact, more workable head, what Llewellyn calls “a squattier profile”. It will check in at 440 cubic centimetres but also features a taller face and is designed to sit square at address. But unlike past versions the line now includes more than a 9.5-degree option, adding a 10.5-degree and a left-handed 9.5-degree as well. The addition of the 10.5 means the loft range on the adjustable loft heads stretches from 7.5 to 12.5 degrees. While adjustable, the standard lie angle on the ST-G is flatter than the ST 230 drivers to provide a more neutral flight, as well.

The post Mizuno ST-G driver (2023): What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: As Mizuno’s director of product Chris Voshall likes to say, “Mizuno is working at its best when it goes smaller, faster, better.” With the company’s new T24 wedge, that means a more compact overall look with a thinner top line and a shorter distance from heel to toe to accentuate a player’s ability to control these essential scoring clubs. Two new groove designs and patterns for is specific to higher and lower lofts to provide more opportunity for the groove edges to interact with the ball for better spin, while the tapered shape to the upper portion of the blade adds stability so that spin is more consistent across the face.

PRICE & LOFT-BOUNCE OPTIONS: $339 each. T24 is offered in 17 loft-bounce combinations (46 to 60 degrees), five sole grinds, three optional looks (raw, soft white, denim copper).

3 COOL THINGS

1. A distinctive, player-focused shape. Larger wedge shapes have become sort of ‘a thing’ as manufacturers looked to find ways to shore up average golfers’ unreliable short games. And while Mizuno offers the slightly more full-sized S23 wedge in its line-up, the more compact T24 line makes a case that a wedge might be no less helpful (and even more useful) when it’s slightly downsized. Or, more accurately, specifically sized.

For the T24, while that means thinner toplines and shorter, more compact blade lengths, it also means a head that transitions in shapes. There’s more of a straight line look on the lower, full-swing lofts (for easier transition from the short irons), and that moves to more of a rounded look on the higher lofts to emphasise shot-making finesse (open-face shots in particular). Throughout, though, the T24 maintains a low toe and heel shaping for a classic teardrop shape.

2. The new specifics on loft-specific grooves. Mizuno was at the forefront of the idea that grooves should be designed distinctly by loft. That means lower lofts would feature narrower, deeper grooves to channel debris and moisture away and thus accentuate spin on full shots, which of course is how lower-lofted wedges are typically used. Higher lofts use a wider groove to assure better grab on the partial shots that are commonly played by these wedge lofts. On the T24, that specificity goes a bit further, with the lower lofts featuring 17 grooves and the higher lofts utilising 15.

The groove itself, relatively unchanged since 2011, gets an upgrade, too. A more precise manufacturing process allows the shoulders of the grooves to get a sharper edge for better grab. That also allows the grooves on both the wider and narrower platform to get just a little closer together for more effective interaction between clubface and ball.

“We’ve done a lot of robotic testing to see how we could optimise the different grooves even more,” Voshall said, pointing to a subtle geometric shift by designing the angle where the walls of the groove meet the surface of the face with a conic section rather than just an aggressive single radius. “It gives you more control of the angle entering and the angle exiting that section of the groove for an ever so slightly sharper shoulder,” he said. Voshall also said the precision in manufacturing of the groove means Mizuno is changing the cutting tool on grooves two and three times as often as was originally recommended by the vendor.

3. A new grind. The T24, which again is a forged design made of boron-infused 1025E carbon steel, adds a fifth sole grind that grew from the R&D team’s work with tour players. Increasingly, there’s a desire for that difficult mixture of a lower leading edge, smooth turf interaction and the challenge of tighter cut lies on courses played on tour and increasingly everywhere else. Enter Mizuno’s new V-grind. In the V-grind there’s a very high bounce near the leading edge and then extreme relief on the trailing edge side. Across all the grinds, there also have been subtle tweaks, as well.

“We’ve touched the heel transition on all of them,” Voshall said. “We got more aggressive on how the heel transitions to make them softer just to remove any potential for grabbing the turf on that heel side.”

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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The new Mizuno ST-Z 230 fairway woods and hybrids build on the ST-230 driver technology for more ball speed and lower spin. The distance-enhancing formula is driven by a cut-through opening in the front of the sole filled with a thermoplastic urethane polymer that houses a steel weight.

PRICE & AVAILABILITY: Stay tuned for Australian pricing and availability.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Front loading. Many efforts in the fairway wood and hybrid category over the past decade or so have focused on some sort of work on the front part of the sole. Those include both the external, like slots cut through the sole to provide extra flexing, and the internal, like distinctive weight pads pushed forward to drop the centre of gravity for lower spin and better launch.

The new Mizuno ST-Z 230 fairway woods and hybrids combine both of those ideas in one to extract more distance through the formula of more ball speed and lower spin. The key is how a dense steel bar is embedded within a flexible polymer that fills the cut-through opening in the sole. The cut-through opening and TPU insert combine to enhance the way the front part of the sole flexes, contributing to better ball speed especially on lower face impacts. The steel bar pinpoints mass low and forward to push the centre of gravity more in line with the centre of the face for a more efficient transfer of energy and a more powerful strike.

“The primary reason was for the spin reduction and the optimal place to put a higher density material was in the TPU because it’s very low and forward,” said David Llewellyn, Mizuno’s director of research and development, noting that the company refers to the TPU/steel-bar combo as the “CORTECH Chamber”.

That weight and its placement in the fairway woods combine with a lightweight composite crown and a back weight to provide better launch and more forgiveness on off-centre hits. On the hybrids, the weight saved by a variable thickness “waffle” crown design allows for the CORTECH Chamber, as well as a thicker weight pad in the sole, to help shots launch easier.

2. Faster steel in the face. Both the fairway woods and hybrids use a high-strength steel alloy (MAS1C) that’s been part of the company’s metal woods for some time. On the fairway woods, that multi-dimensional thickness pattern gets as thin as 1.6 millimetres, the thinnest face ever on a Mizuno fairway wood. On the hybrids, it’s 1.9 millimetres thick.

3. More woods than meet the eye. The line-up of ST-Z 230 fairway woods and hybrids is serviceable at first glance, but it’s actually larger than the sheer number of heads because both feature adjustable hosels. The adjustability means the two fairway woods of 15 and 18 degrees turn into two heads that cover seven separate lofts from 13 to 20 degrees. Adjustability also allows the four hybrid heads to accommodate a loft range from 14 to 27 degrees.

The post Mizuno ST-Z 230 fairway woods, hybrids: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: The three new Mizuno ST230 drivers make a big push forward towards improving ball speed and optimising launch conditions with a lot of light carbon composite and a little bit of heavy steel.

The key is a five-gram bar of steel encased in polyurethane-filled cut through slot in the front of the sole of these drivers. The steel lowers the centre of gravity while the opening allows better flexing of the face.

The STZ-230 uses the rest of the saved weight from in the centre rear perimeter for maximum stability. The STX-230 pushes that extra mass towards the rear and heel side for increased workability and a slight draw bias.

The STX-230 PLTNM uses a lighter overall construction (by 30 grams) to provide more potential swing speed for moderate speed players.

PRICE: STZ-230 ($999): 9.5, 10.5 degrees; STX-230 ($999): 9.5, 10.5, 12 degrees; STX-230 PLTNM (TBC): 10.5, 12 degrees. Available in February.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Forward thinking. You can talk forever about any number of material attributes behind the latest drivers, but the simple truth is they’re all largely on this quest to do two things: Maximise ball speed and minimise spin.

In practical terms, to do the former you have to figure out some way to make the face propel the ball better, while to accomplish the latter, you have to find a way to lower the centre of gravity, usually by pushing weight forward. The team at Mizuno believes they’ve found a way to accomplish both by doing one thing. That one thing is a five-gram bar of steel.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s all about where it’s placed. With a cut-through opening in the front of the sole, the new Mizuno ST-230 drivers create a more flexible face. But when you fill that opening with a flexible polyurethane and then embed that heavy steel weight within that polymer, you get it all, said , director of research and development for Mizuno.

“By placing this weight low and forward in this polymer, we were able to get the effect we want, more ball speed and a nice reduction in spin, with a minimal amount of weight,” he said of the “CORTECH Chamber,” what the company calls that region in the sole. “It really gave us another lever to pull. Remember the idea is to reduce spin, add speed and maintain stability.”

That last idea is not trivial. While it’s certainly possible to have put more weight forward, it would have come at the expense of having less weight to push to the perimeter. That extra available mass is made possible by a large carbon composite crown and sole sections. It’s able to be redistributed to the deep centre on the STZ-230 and slightly towards the rear heel on the STX-230 and STX-230 PLTNM. By having another 14 grams that can go to those perimeter sections, the ST230 drivers maintain high forgiveness on off-centre hits, Llewellyn said.

The polymer also plays a role in increasing ball speed. Its flexibility allows the sole to flex more, which contributes to better ball speed lower on the face. Meanwhile, at impact, “the weight itself adds momentum to the way the face is flexing,” Llewellyn said. In other words, the weight and the polymer together are creating both more speed and less spin.

2. Face facts. Not to be overlooked in all this speed talk is the makeup of the faces on the ST230 drivers. As it has in the recent past, these drivers use 2041 Beta Titanium, which helps produce a face with variable thicknesses that increase performance on mis-hits, Llewellyn said.

“It allows us to be very aggressive in terms of a multiple thickness face design,” he said. “And Beta Titanium has a faster strain rate recovery so it can snap back faster than other titanium alloys.”

3. Draw bias isn’t just for slicers anymore. Perhaps the most interesting development in the three Mizuno drivers is how the so-called draw bias version might just find its way into the bags of elite players. Certainly the STZ-230 with its high forgiveness and neutral to slight fade bias might be the first options for better players, but Mizuno’s testing with better players has shown that the slightly heel-biased STX-230 is resonating with some better players because the centre of gravity is closer to the shaft.

“ST-X 230 is a complex character,” said Chris Voshall, Mizuno’s director of product. “Although in the higher loft option it’s a higher flying draw-biased option, the 9.5 for many of our tour players was more workable and faster from the face.”

The post Mizuno ST230 drivers: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Mizuno’s latest wedge offering is forged from mild 1025 carbon steel and features a back-cavity area designed to move the centre of gravity more towards the centre of the face. Doing so not only creates a more pleasing sensation at impact but can enhance spin as well as mitigating ball speed loss on shots hit off the toe.

PRICE & AVAILABILITY: Stay tuned for Australian pricing and availability.

3 COOL THINGS

1. Move it to the middle. Because wedges often feature long hosels and lots of mass towards the heel, the centre of gravity on them tends to lean towards the heel a little. That, however, does not make for a very efficient wedge, particularly for everyday players who tend to hit out on the toe fairly often.

Mizuno’s new S23 addresses that problem by employing a shorter hosel and a cavity in back that stretches from just right of centre all the way to the heel, leaving more mass out on the toe area in the rear.

This creates a more centred centre of gravity, as opposed to a heel-biased location in many conventional wedges. According to Mizuno, having the sweet spot more centred contributes to a longer dwell time between the ball and the face at impact, leading to more spin.

“That check and spin you see from the pros isn’t purely because of newer grooves – most of us don’t have the consistency of strike to get that kind of action,” said David Llewellyn, director of R&D for Mizuno. “For the vast majority, a central sweet spot makes it much easier to find and get that repetitive action.”

2. Going with the grain. Mizuno, of course, is known for its quality forgings, using a grain-flow forging process since 1998 in which a billet of carbon steel is stretched into an angle that matches up with the hosel and clubhead shape, producing a tighter grain structure. In 2017, however, it improved the process to reduce the excess material outside the perimeter of the forged clubhead, concentrating more density in the hitting area to improve feel. The company called the new process “grain flow forging HD”, for high density.

The S23 wedges undergo that process in the company’s facility in Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in a better-player’s preferred, versatile look at address with stronger lofts featuring a teardrop straight edge while the lob wedge is more rounded. The process, however, doesn’t just improve the look, but the feel as well.

“By having this very uniform flash material around it, that shows we’re capturing long uniform grains in the middle, grains aren’t being cut off,” Llewellyn told Golf Digest in 2017. “The material is actually flowing out of the mold very uniformly. So that’s the grain continuity that leads to longer vibration and better feel.

3. Spin city. It’s nearly impossible to talk about wedges without getting into the grooves and Mizuno has done a solid job here. The company uses its quad-cut grooves which are CNC milled grooves cut into the face with the design of the groove dependent on loft. The carbon steel is infused with boron to help durability, effectively creating a longer lifespan for the grooves. To help ‘dew sweepers’ and those playing in damp conditions, microgrooves are laser etched between the grooves to help reduce spin loss in damp conditions.

The post Mizuno S23 wedges: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Mizuno’s JPX923 collection represents the company’s broadest iron launch ever. It includes five new models that run the gamut from tour-level one-piece forgings to new uses and forms of its high-strength chromoly steel that has highlighted its game-improvement “Hot Metal” distance irons. But Mizuno’s also built in a super-game-improvement model – the JPX923 HL – that extolls the benefits of slightly weaker lofts for slower swinging players.

PRICE: JPX923 Tour (one-piece forged carbon steel, shallow cavity back; $339 per club); JPX923 Forged (one-piece forged, thin-faced chromoly steel; $349 per club); JPX923 Hot Metal (cast chromoly steel; $269 per club); JPX923 Hot Metal Pro (compact, thinner topline cast chromoly steel; $269 per club); JPX923 Hot Metal HL (wider soled, cast chromoly steel; $269 per club). The JPX923 Tour and Forged models will be available in Australia from February 2023.

THE DEEP DIVE: While there has long been a perception that Mizuno makes irons only for shotmakers and elite players who use forged irons, it simply isn’t true. Indeed, the company’s hottest iron in terms of sales for the past four years has been a cast game-improvement iron.

Mizuno’s latest JPX923 family of irons perhaps takes the boldest step in expanding that perception. The line stretches from the tour-played and so-named JPX923 Tour, a compact one-piece carbon-steel forging with just the hint of a cavity back and supreme focus on ball control, to the JPX923 Hot Metal HL, a new entry in the family in the super-game-improvement category, with a wider sole, higher lofts and an emphasis on easier launch.

So what is the JPX923 family? The short answer is it’s five distinctly different performing irons targeting five different player types. There are different metals being used, different sounds being sought, different flights being achieved, different emphases being placed on distance versus control. And yet there’s an overriding symmetry to the line, even beyond the obvious aesthetic.

David Llewellyn, Mizuno’s director of research and development calls it “an ethos,” but as a scientist he’s not going to settle for that. He just as quickly points to the structure of the frame of the irons, a notch in the perimeter that’s more distinct than in past versions to distribute more mass high and low in the toe.

“It adds rigidity and stabilises the frame,” he said. “It appears like it’s coming to a point there but what it’s really doing is making those two areas bigger and strengthening those corners of the head for better performance and better feel.”

Called the “V-Chassis,” that structure is made possible by saved weight from new steels or thinner toplines or even more precise manufacturing at the company’s Chuo forging house in Hiroshima, Japan. It unifies the entire lineup behind Mizuno’s long-standing attention to modal analysis, its understanding of how to control the vibrations of a clubhead to produce a particular desired sound and feel. For the JPX923 lineup, those differences are both subtle and significant. Here are the five models:

JPX923 TOUR: This compact players cavity is forged from the company’s 1025E Pure Select carbon steel using the company’s “grain flow” technique that concentrates the steel’s grain structure in the hitting area. A copper layer underneath the satin chrome finish, first introduced in the company’s MP-20 irons, further enhances feel. Based on tour input, the shorter irons are more compact than in the JPX921 Tour. The thinner topline and rounded trailing edge enhance the look at address and aim to improve the efficiency exiting the turf.

JPX923 FORGED: The other head in the JPX923 line that’s forged, the JPX923 Forged, is the next iteration of the mid-sized cavity back that brings the thin-faced added power of Chromoly steel to a one-piece forging. On the 4- through 7-iron, the use of Chromoly 4120 steel allows the face to get just 2.2 millimetres thick, the thinnest in a forging in company history and down from 2.6 millimetres on the JPX921 Forged from two years ago.

The thicker sections in the high and low toe in that V-Chassis frame are the keys to the sound and feel, Llewellyn said. “We are really working on fine tuning the head shape and what performance gains we could get,” he said. “By reinforcing the cavity frame, it helps get us closer to that thump sound you like on a traditional one-piece forging.”

But that thump gets a little extra distance potential on the 4- through 6-iron, which feature a wider back-milled “micro-slot” deep within the sole cavity. The extra-thin face also yields a deeper centre of gravity for easier launch. The micro-slot is slightly narrower on the 7-iron.

Built with more playability, the short irons in the JPX923 Forged are billet forged from the same 1025E Pure Select carbon steel. “You always want to talk about the distance technologies, but to me, the 8- through gap wedge is a very compelling reason to buy this set,” Llewellyn said. “It’s still a fairly deep cavity back design.”

JPX923 HOT METAL: Despite Mizuno’s heritage in forged irons for better players, perhaps the most intriguing part of the collection are the three cast irons bearing the “Hot Metal” moniker. The “hot metal” in question has been Chromoly 4140M, a special lightweight high-strength steel alloy that’s had a history in roll cages on experimental cars and the landing gear of jet fighter planes. But the new JPX923 Hot Metal irons, which include the standard game-improvement version, the more compact players distance JPX923 Hot Metal Pro and a new super-game-improvement JPX923 Hot Metal HL, signal a new era in materials for the company’s most successful iron, a shift to Nickel Chromoly 4335.

“Going into this design cycle we had pretty much maxed out what we could do with the Chromoly 4140M,” Llewellyn said. “We were bumping up against some strength limitations so we really needed to find a new material. Nickel Chromoly is really a pretty amazing material. Nickel moves it into a slightly different class. It’s an extremely strong material that’s used in other industries for critical parts that can’t fail.”

The new alloy allows the thinnest face ever on a Mizuno iron at 1.75 millimetres, or slightly thinner than a 10-cent piece. Llewellyn said the one-piece design creates ballspeeds that might be reserved for a special face insert, and he believes it might do it more consistently across the face because there are no weld beads to join the parts.

“This is really a seamless cupface geometry,” he said. “We’re getting pretty close to a metalwood in terms of everything being so completely thinned out so that mass can be concentrated low and back.”

That lower CG means the JPX923 Hot Metal iron can get especially aggressive with lofts. Example: The 7-iron loft is 29 degrees, which is right in line with industry trends, or basically the same loft as a Mizuno game-improvement 6-iron from a decade ago.

“One of the big advantages of the seamless clubface is that it is well-suited for a deep centre of gravity,” Llewellyn said. “We think six millimetres back from the face on a 7-iron is pretty far back.”

The JPX923 Hot Metal Pro shares the same metal and the same lofts as its big brother, but it does so with a more compact shape and a thinner topline to fit the eye of a better player who’s still seeking distance at least as much as workability. Both faces feature a multiple-thickness design to maximise the high flexibility area for more distance.

Still, for all the forgiveness and distance the standard JPX923 Hot Metal provides, it might not be ideal for all players. Llewellyn’s team researched more than 500,000 swings captured through the company’s Swing DNA and ShaftOptimizer fitting tool and found that as lofts continue to push lower and lower, average swings have increasing difficulty in launching even 5-irons successfully. The estimate is close to half of all golfers might be flying a 7-iron farther than a modern, low-lofted 5-iron.

The solution is found in the JPX923 Hot Metal HL, the first super-game-improvement iron in the Mizuno’s lineup in the Hot Metal era. Rather than discovering a new alloy or some other means of further lowering the centre of gravity, Llewellyn’s team chose a more practical and effective solution. It weakened the lofts by 2-3 degrees compared to the standard JPX923 to provide higher launch.

“When we looked at our research we found about 70 percent of players needed launch assistance,” Llewellyn said. “These are the conversations we have all the time, to do something about it and that’s where the High Launch came from.” But it is, after all a Mizuno iron. “One of our design goals was to not make it look like a super-game-improvement iron,” he said.

The idea of launch assistance goes one step further with the JPX Fli-Hi hybrid option. Designed to work with the same shafts as a player’s irons, the hybrids stretch from a 20- to a 29-degree model, or a 4-iron through 7-iron replacement.

The lighter crown and a wave structure on the sole lower the centre of gravity for an improved launch angle compared to the iron loft being replaced.

Also enhancing the JPX923 Hot Metal and Hot Metal Pro irons are newly designed set matching wedges. They are constructed of a softer X30 steel with the same kind of milled grooves as the company’s specialty T22 wedges.

The post Mizuno JPX923 irons: What you need to know appeared first on Australian Golf Digest.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Swing full speed with Mizuno Enerzy – the company’s softest and bounciest midsole. Fresh from a 2020 introduction to Mizuno’s running shoe line, Mizuno Enerzy is 17 percent softer and 15 percent more resilient than any prior midsole material. All models are fully waterproof and come with a one-year warranty.

PRICE/AVAILABILITY: $299 (Wave Hazard Pro Boa); $239 (Wave Hazard Pro); $179 (G-Style). The new models will be available via Mizuno stockists from Friday, July 8.

THE DEEP DIVE: Starting with the Wave Hazard Pro and Boa models, Mizuno’s new Enerzy golf line boasts the dual impact of intensifying ground forces for enhanced clubhead speed and reducing walk fatigue, combined with the company’s spikeless GM technology, which is tested to give incredible grip force on both firm and soft ground. 

Wrapped in full-grain leather with a Zero Glide shoelace for easy, secure fastening and precise fit, the Wave Hazard Pro comes with a one-year warranty and a size range from US8-13.

For those wanting to take a more relaxed approach to the game, walk wherever you want in the new G-Style model. Comfortable and stable, with a durable “Sangfang” upper, this lightweight (320 grams) model comes with a derby profile and new colour options in 2022. 

For more information, check out mizuno.com.au

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