I’m going to start out this post by saying I LOVE my new irons. The FG Tour 100 blades by Wilson are one of the finest clubs I have ever swung. The seem to be a bit forgiving for a blade, but still have all the workability and power of them as well. They look clean at setup and feel like butter when you hit them. The FG Tour 100’s are great clubs. What has been troubling me with them is this strange yardage difference that I am seeing throughout the set. It’s not giving me a standard “gap” like my previous sets. For those that are a bit new to the game or just have never heard the term gap before, it’s the yardage difference between two different clubs. For example, my standard yardage gap on the FG 49’s was 12 yards. So my 9 iron went 12 yards further than my pitching wedge. They were pretty well programmed at that.
My issue with the 100’s is that I am having some real issues figuring out the gap on them. My round from Riverbend on the 11th gave me some starting numbers, like my pitching wedge travelling 139, 9 iron 147, 7 iron at 165 and so on… They were a bit wonky, which I could try and place a bit of blame on the weather and some ball testing, but honestly, I just don’t know it I had any solid data off that round at all. This led me to borrow a Voice Caddie SC-200 unit and take it to the range for some measurements. The results were quite stunning, but they didn’t really help me with my issue. The table below charts how far I thought the clubs should go, how far the Swing Caddie estimated they went on average (followed by a min and max yardage) and how it measured my 5 shots. The last column is my GolfPad GPS data from Riverbend last weekend.
Club Estimate SC-200 Avg SC - Min/Max SC 5 Shots GolfPad 3i - 21° 235 232 – 234.5 219/240 231,233,234,240,n/r 4i - 24° 220 215 – 225.2 216/228 228.228,221,228,216 215 5i - 27° 205 205 – 207.6 192/212 208,205,208,205,212 6i - 31° 190 195 – 200.6 176/203 200,200,200,200,203 7i - 35° 178 171 – 171.2 165/177 177,170,170,170,169 165 8i - 39° 166 158 – 158.4 156/161 156,161,158,158,159 9i - 43° 154 142 – 148.2 136/150 150,145,151,150,145 147 PW - 47° 142 135 – 137.4 129/142 134.140,137,139,137 139
For the most part, I’m pretty close to where I want to be. I believe the slower club heads may have reacted differently to the “limited flight” range balls that were being used at the range where I was testing, but I’m still trying to confirm that. When I look at the yardages, my PW is about where it needs to be, maybe a touch shorter than I wanted, but not far off. The 9 iron continues the shorter trend, but actually falls in pretty close to a 12 yard gap with the wedge. If I use the 137 average for the pitching wedge, the 148 for the 9 is 11 yards off. That should work out close enough in the real world. Moving up to the 8 iron, the 158.4 average with the Swing Caddie is a perfect 10 yard gap, or almost ideal for most players. The 171 average on the 7 iron continues the gap with a 12 yard space. Between my lower clubs, I have a beautiful 10, 11, 11, 12 spacing. It’s very close to perfect. Then I get into trouble.
The 6 iron decided to mess everything up for me and become a 200 yard club. In all honesty, 185 would have been about perfect for this one, but it’s playing a solid 10-15 yards longer than that. This is creating a huge hole in the center of my approach shots. Now, maybe the SC-200 unit isn’t 100% accurate, or maybe it was just one of those days where I was crushing my 6 iron. The bottom line is when you have two clubs that are gapped so close together, it’s not a good sign. In my case, it was the 5 and 6 irons. The 7 yard average gap it a bit tight on two irons, but the 26 yard gap between the 6 and 7 iron is far too much. That is definitely one I am going to have to dial in before competition season begins next year.
Other than the strange gap in the 5-6-7 irons, I’m pretty content with my bag. I’m happy to say that my iron swing is in the mid to upper 90 MPH range and my driver speed is right around 110 MPH. As my fitness level increases, I plan on seeing those numbers come up just a touch, but I’m very happy with the initial results. I learned about a new term while I was demoing the Swing Caddie as well, the Smash Factor… I’ll get more into this one later, but with a Smash of 1.25 on my irons, I felt pretty good about things and even better when I saw the 1.44 on my driver. Apparently I want to try and increase that to a true 1.5 SF, but for now, I’ll take the 303 yards that this one generated for me and run with it.
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