Forged blades are now made with shallow cavities to improve accuracy, and cavity backs are being made that provide increased feel and maneuverability. The once-clear divide between blades and cavity backs is vanishing as the two join and form new easier-to-hit irons. North Carolina native Mike Southern has been writing since He is the author of the instructional golf book "Ruthless Putting" and edited a collection of swashbuckling novels.
Southern was trained in electronics at Forsyth Technical Community College and is also an occasional woodworker. Home » Golf Clubs Blades vs. Clubmakers have redefined irons to meet the needs of all handicap level golfers. Once upon a time, there were simply… irons.
The thinner profile and less forgiving design aspects to forged, muscle-back irons may make it harder for amateur players to see the early improvement needed to continue practicing golf, especially when first starting out. While there is merit in this thinking, it neglects the crucial fact that golf is an extremely hard game to learn — so, why make it any harder than it needs to be?
Only a small percentage of golfers worldwide will ever achieve a single figure handicap, with the remainder likely to play off a marker in the mid-to-high teens or above — in large, due to inconsistency with their ball-striking, and especially iron play.
For that reason, would it not make sense to equip most players with clubs that will make it easier to hit the ball straight, more often like cavity backs or game improvement irons do rather than clubs that are more difficult to control by design which blades are?
Not only will this motivate you to practice and keep improving, it will keep you interested in golf long enough to actually get better — and give you the option of upgrading to blades later, if you so wish. Blades are certainly harder to hit than cavity-back irons.
Because most cavity-backs have a larger club head, manufacturers are able to move the weight around easier than they can with forged irons. This enables them to redistribute the weight to the perimeter of the club, which prevents the face from twisting with off-centre strikes. Any poor strikes using blades are likely to be felt far more by the golfer. In , the then year-old popular Korean-American shared his views on why he had swapped his blades for cavity-backs — and the benefits of doing so.
However nothing in life is perfect and for every pro in anything there is always a con and blades are no different. So here are the cons when it comes to using blades. Because of all these pros and cons blades therefore tend to work better for lower handicapped golfers who typically are much better and more consistent strikers of the golf ball. Many golfers also just think they look and feel better to play with however any golfer who today picks between blades and cavity back irons based solely on their looks needs their head examined.
Because as with blades there has been a huge amount of development in cavity back irons over the years which has only served to add ever more shades of grey to the debate over which irons should choose.
This casting system involved pouring molten metal into a mould and as a result Ping discovered a way of not only making clubs more affordable but also making it easier for players to hit and control their iron shots. Golfers no longer required the perfect strike to hit an acceptable shot and poor mishit shots stopped going as far offline as they did with the old blades.
At the same time cavity backs made it easier for the average player to get the ball airborne and for longer which then led to them hitting the ball further as well as straighter. And as with blades the golf club manufacturers have continued to evolve the design of cavity backs and have worked hard to improve the elements players lost when giving up their blades such as shot-making capabilities and feedback on the strike.
The gap has never quite been closed on these elements entirely however which is why you will still find some of the very best golfers in the world, including Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy continuing to use traditional blades.
Therefore there are clearly pros and cons to cavity backs also compared to blades and the con of one is almost always the advantage of the other. While the differences between blades and cavity back irons were once clear the huge advancement of golf technology over the years has resulted in the clear line between the two becoming much more blurred. Golf club manufacturers today are consistently developing irons which aim to join the benefits of the two types of clubs to such an extent that it can difficult to tell the difference.
If a person wants to play blades they will justify it however they see fit. Most people end up pounding the table and saying "It's my choice and I'll play whatever I want and you need to mind your own business. I personally don't think it is that hard. I play the Mizuno 37s, and have since I believe in the mid's maybe '94 I bought the Titleist s, then I think I had the Titleist s for a couple of years.
Here is why I switched. My personal belief is that if I am going to mishit the ball, it doesn't matter what I club I am using, it is still a mis-hit. Yes, it is true, I may get an extra 15 yds out of a forgiving cavity back but it will still be short.
On the other hand, I don't fear that "trampoline" effect I would sometimes get out of the more forgiving clubs I was using. I simply feel more confident that if I do hit the ball well, it will go as far as I intend.
I believe this is generally the reason why many club manufacturers have mixed sets with cavity backs in the longer irons more length than distance and blades for the shorter irons distance is more important than length. I also come from the school that what I am hitting is less important than what I am hitting looks like. I simply like the look of the blade when I am standing over the ball.
I like the way my 37s line up. I do not like wide topped clubs, remember those first Callaway irons or the Lynx Parallax way back when, these clubs did not fill me with confidence. The 37s for some reason give me confidence even though people who know say, "If anything blades should make a player less confident in the result, and subsequently my logic is faulty.
Play what you like, and if you think you'll like blades, hit em regardless of feedback of those in the know. I can tell you my ball striking has improved over the years and my HCP has dropped, whether this is attributable to the clubs or not I don't know. Everyone is different. I can play either. I have MP58's at the minute. I personally like the look of blades and feel my golf benefits from them. That is really all it comes down to. If they work for you then great.
I have had plenty of cavity backs. MX 's and JPX's. Played well with both. Ball flight a tad high but easy to hit targets.
I have played blades when I was a 15 handicap and now I'm a 2. So really doesn't matter what handicap you are in my opinion. Newer blade designs are somewhat forgiving compared to what I learned with. My current irons are just blade like, still difficult for most uses. However, my other irons are custom MacGregor M butter knives that take a good swing. When it comes to distance, and nutted, they fly a tad longer; but miss hits are approx 10yds shorter then my club norm.
Swing mechanics need to be grooved to realize results. That said, IMO from a learning perspective, blades are great instructional tools, but require patience, as they give immediate feed back as to whether or not what you hoped for at impact, was actually accomplished.
There's nothing in golf like the feel of a properly nutted ball off a forged blade either. Its not about SS as much as hitting the ball with the sweet spot. Do that and you're realize your expected distances. PS - whether some one chooses blades or not has everything to do with how they approach the game and what they see as important.
Ball striking, least to me, is 1. Playing with game Improvement irons doesn't make the user a better ball striker, all it does is saves a few strokes. So, if score is what your about - go with CB's, if developing ball striking skill and swing mechanics is 1, then maybe blades with make the golfer.
CB's will save some strokes, but as the users swing mechanics improve, scoring results equal out. I Honestly, if I use game improvement heads, my score will be pretty much the same.
The variable over scoring any given day is what swing shows up on the 1st tee. Take it from someone that likes fast "driver" oriented cars and road race bikes Most people play blades or other player's clubs because they prefer the way a smaller club with a thin top line sets up to the ball at address.
If that's what suits your eye better, play them. If not, play something else. What really cracks me up are people who rag on blades but who also have Vokey or Cleveland wedges in their bags and hit full shots with them.
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