Back when I was in college, I had irons that were +5* upright at one point. They told me I was tall and needed that. Would work for about 1 month and then it would get *worse.* While I’m 6’4” tall, it’s mostly all torso and wingspan. I only have a 29” inseam, which is unusually short for a guy my height. But they kept telling me that I needed these upright clubs.
I eventually was told I needed clubs less upright, about 1 or 2* because +5* is way too much. But in order to counter everything I was told to go to graphite shafts because I could add 1” in length to the shafts and then with the 2* upright, that would make them effectively +4* upright.
Again, good for about a month, went downhill BADLY afterward. Try keeping +1 inch shafts down in the wind…not easy. Try doing it with graphite…really freaking hard. But, I had that 7-iron over a redwood tree shot down =]
Like I said, from my experience…I’ve have NEVER seen a person go on a lie board and have it say they need flatter irons. Those lie boards almost exclusively say you need more upright lie angles. Everybody cannot be that way. So that’s why I find lie boards to be a waste of time.
Whatever somebody wants to do with their clubs, that’s their prerogative. I just want to warn people about *my* experience with this upright garbage.
Put it this way, at the time I was doing all of this upright stuff, I had developed relationships with a few current and former Tour players. Some of them as tall as me and what puzzled me was how nobody at that time had those super long shafts or very upright lie angles.
These days it’s a little different and I mean a *little* different. There are some guys with pretty upright clubs, but I would examine those guys first. One being Mickelson, +1” and 2* upright last I checked. He just did that about a little over a year ago and his swing is quite upright and his iron play was probably the worst it was as a pro last year. From my perspective, Phil’s issues have always been the driver accuracy and his putting inconsistency and he’s always been pretty good with the irons. He started hitting the irons a mile with those longer shafts, but he started missing shots he usually flagged. I think he got shafts more standard.
Dustin Johnson is another one. And he’s quite tall. I think he’s at +3* upright and is, by PGA Tour standards, a poor iron player.
I like Trackman a lot. But it’s far better at clubfitting drivers than it is irons. It doesn’t have to worry about lie angles as much with the driver and it can look at the launch, landing angle and spin and figure things out from there.
My suggestion is to either go with forged irons or cast irons that are made from 8620 steel. That way if you don’t like the lie angles down the road, a simple bend of the lie angle and you’ll be all set. The 8620 carbon steel is pretty soft and I’ve been told it bends really easy even if it’s cast.
Personally, I’ve got 12 sets of forged irons. My swing isn’t where I need it to be, but I think out of the irons I have, there are some iron heads that are good enough to be my gamers. So the question for me is when my swing ‘gets there’, what shafts and what lie angles will I need.
My plan is to just grab a 5-iron of the set off of eBay and try the shaft (which I’ll get from working with the Mizuno Shaft Optimizer) and the lie angle I think will work for me. If it works out great, then I’ve got the club I want. If not, then I’m out $30 for a shaft install. Beats paying $900+ for a set that you want changed in a year or less.
3JACK
