TaylorMade’s CEO, Mark King, said it changed the dynamics of the iron business. The company’s Executive Vice President of Product Development, Sean Toulon, said it’s the biggest advancement in golf equipment since woods became “metal woods.”
Say what you want about TaylorMade’s speed pocket, a slot in the sole of its irons that the company claims makes “all other irons inferior.” But there’s one thing you can’t say — that TaylorMade executives aren’t betting the farm on it.
TaylorMade’s newest iron, SpeedBlade, was announced Monday night at the BMW Championship in an event that felt more like an iPhone launch than a golf equipment event. In attendance were the usual golf equipment writers, but also veteran PGA Tour scribes, who would have likely taken the night off had it been any other golf equipment company’s event. But with PGA Tour superstars Sergio Garcia, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose in attendance, the SpeedBlade event slipped past the realm of golf equipment and into that of golf culture.
Maybe that’s why King, Toulon and iron guru Brian Bazzel spent little time on head-to-head comparisons between the RocketBladez and SpeedBlade irons. Instead, TaylorMade executives chose to discuss what Toulon called the “mind-blowing,” “myth-busting” performance of the speed pocket itself.
In a round table, Garcia, Rose, Johnson and Day discussed how TaylorMade’s previous iron model, RocketBladez, had changed their attitude toward technology in irons. Garcia, who was the first golfer to win with TaylorMade’s RocketBladez Tour irons, talked about how their larger sweet spot nullified slight mishits, helping him hit shots closer to the pin more consistently.
Rose discussed the process he went through of individually testing each RocketBladez Tour long iron in the spring of 2013. He started with the 3 iron, which impressed him enough to put that club in the bag. Then he went on to the 4 iron, the 5 iron and finally the 6 iron.
“I didn’t want to change,” Rose said. “Because I was hitting it really good [with my old clubs].”
But Rose said the speed pocket in his RocketBladez Tour irons allows him to hit higher, more consistent long-iron shots, like the towering 4 iron he hit into the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open at Merion that sealed his first major championship victory.
It’s Johnson’s and Day’s experiences with the clubs that are more typical of most Tour players, however. Johnson put RocketBladez Tour irons in play in the first tournament of the 2013 PGA Tour season, the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. He went on to win by four shots, but then benched the clubs for the rest of the season.
Day used a strong-lofted RocketBladez Tour 2 iron in both the U.S. Open and British Open, ripping 1 iron-like shots in excess of 300 yards at Merion and Muirfield. He said that the slotted long iron allowed him to do what similarly lofted hybrids simply couldn’t, keep the ball under the wind. But his runner-up finish at the U.S. Open and T32 finish at the British weren’t enough to convince him to keep the club in the bag. Like Johnson, he was intrigued, but not ready for an iron makeover.
All four Tour stars spent the evening in Lake Forest, Ill., demonstrating just how game-changing the SpeedBlade irons can be. Garcia hit a SpeedBlade 7 iron over 200 yards. Rose hit a SpeedBlade 4 iron nearly 256 yards, while Johnson crushed one 271 yards and Day hit a SpeedBlade 3 iron 280 yards. And it was no tomfoolery. According to Bazzel, the SpeedBlade irons were built to the same specifications as their current irons.
The fact remains, however, that there’s almost no chance that any of the four superstars will put a SpeedBlade iron in their bag until TaylorMade releases a smaller, shorter-flying version.
Above: Dustin Johnson celebrates his 271-yard shot with a 4 iron, which bested the drive of former Chicago Bears Defensive End Richard Dent.
Yes, the SpeedBlade irons are more compact than their predecessors, RocketBladez. They also fly higher, are more forgiving, better looking, better feeling and more consistent on mishits. But golfers like Garcia, Rose, Johnson and Day simply don’t trust an iron that flies two-to-three clubs farther than the forged blades they grew up playing.
It’s not that the SpeedBlade irons are worse than the irons they’re playing. According to Bazzel, the SpeedBlade irons are the most technically advanced model TaylorMade has ever produced. They’re just different.
But different is good. Different is what changed golfers from woods made of wood to ones made from metal, and from wound golf balls to solid-core models. It’s also what gets average golfers out of bed early on weekends, hoping that today’s round might be different.
With the SpeedBlade irons, TaylorMade’s executives proved to the golf world that they’re committed to distance irons for the foreseeable future. They’re convinced they can change golfers’ minds, and in turn change their games.
Not everyone will agree with them, of course, but no drastic change has even been without skeptics. Often, the kind of exceptional criticism hurled at a product like RocketBladez and SpeedBlade irons can mean something else. That a company is onto something.