TaylorMade is promoting their new AeroBurner irons as the new performance package. What they call unsurpassed playability meeting explosive distance.
Like their metalwood namesakes the AeroBurner irons promise easy to hit, playable, distance.
Sounds good. So how have they put this package together?
Firstly they have come up with a new face design that maximises the COR, or co-efficient of restitution, to the legal limit. What this really means is that the club transfers as much energy as is allowed from the face to the ball, generating as much speed and therefore distance as possible.
Of course, in this category of iron impacts aren't always going to come from the centre of the club, where COR is naturally at its greatest, so club designers have to try and maintain as much as that speed as possible across the face.
TaylorMade do this through the use of the now familiar Speed Pocket that you can see in the sole of the AeroBurner irons. This allows the club face to flex more lower down the face, and this in turn means that shots from this area, the most common mishit for higher handicap players, maintain as much ball speed, and therefore distance, as possible.
The speed pocket in the AeroBurner irons has also been configured for a higher launch. By lowering the centre of gravity the club generates a higher ball flight which adds total distance to the shot. Low CG also makes it easier for players to get the ball in the air making the irons more playable, and TaylorMade say that the placement of the CG in the AeroBurner's makes for powerful and consistent shot-making.
Finally in the distance stakes we have the shafts that TaylorMade has matched to the AeroBurner irons. Both the Reax 88 High Launch steel shafts and the AeroBurner Reax 60 graphite shafts have been engineered with a low kick point that also helps to generate a higher launch for more distance.
So what about playability?
The AeroBurner irons feature a high MOI head design that increases both forgiveness and stability, minimising the effects of mishits.
They also feature a longer blade length and the thicker top lines that golfers needing a little confidence boost at address prefer. This is backed up by the progressive offset through the set, from 6.8mm in the 4-iron down to 2.5mm in the SW, which again builds confidece and helps to minimise any tendency to slice with the longer irons.