Following close on the heels of the latest additions to its better player P700 range of irons TaylorMade has announced a new set to help golfers in need of more forgiveness and speed.
The TaylorMade M CGB irons are some of the longest and most forgiving irons the company has created and they are packed with technology to maximise performance from every iron.
I caught up with Tomo Bystedt, Senior Director of Global Irons to talk through the design, construction and new technology behind the latest TaylorMade irons to enter the game improvement market.
Hi Tomo. What was your thinking in creating the new TaylorMade M CGB irons?
The M CGB iron is an extremely forgiving product. One of the cornerstones of the design for us was to create a full set of max COR clubs through the bag. When you look at clubs like the M2 it is a very forgiving an easy to play product, but it is more of a progressive design where we designed the long irons to be very forgiving and as you move through the set the heads get slightly smaller and the COR goes down to get more workable in the shorter irons and down into the wedges where the SW and the LW are blade style wedges.
We designed the M CGB with a different philosophy with the target player being somebody who wants to hit it higher and wants to hit if farther with every club in the bag, whether it is an 8, 9 or a PW. Also on the 4, 5 and 6 which are hard clubs to hit for the higher handicapper of the slower swinger we have added more loft to them as well.
So it was really a ground up design in terms of looking at the bag and looking at the kind of swing speeds our irons would appeal to and the M CGB will definitely appeal to the players with a mid-to-low swing speed.
In terms of forgiveness we have also extended the blade length versus the M2 irons.
The M CGB has about 15% more inertia in terms of heel and toe weighting. We have tungsten weights in the toe and the heel to really spread out the mass as much as we can.
We have also brought the centre of gravity further back, hence the CGB name which stands for centre of gravity back, and we have also used geocoustic technology to improve the sound and the feel by going back to look the damper we used in the PSi irons and we have incorporated it into this product because when you have such a large face it is very important to control the sound and the vibrations and the damper that we put under the badge really helps the sound and feel of the M CGB. In our testing it sounds much better than previous irons in this category.
Is the 15% improvement in MOI on one particular club or for each club in the set?
It varies slightly from club to club and the benefit is biggest in the shorter irons where the M2 heads start getting smaller, but the 15% is an average across the whole set.
The tungsten weights go through the set to the PW and the clubs also have speed pockets and face slots on all of the clubs through to the PW. So from a COR perspective the clubs are Max COR on every club from the 4 iron to the PW.
In previous clubs you have said that speed pockets and face slots don’t have as much impact in the shorter irons so you haven’t included them. Is that different here?
Yes. If you look at the M2 set for example the faces are really thin though to the 6 and 7 irons, but then the 8,9 and PW the face gets thicker and thicker and that is why the slots don’t have much effect as there is not much flexibility in the club anymore. The reason we have kept the slots in the M CGB is because we have very thin faces all the way through the set to the PW, between 1.5 to 1.8 mm, and so the face slots still give a good improvement in performance.
What has allowed you to have thinner faces here than you have had before?
We have been able to have thinner faces before but we have chosen not to with previous irons. With irons like the M2 it is designed to appeal to a broader audience who are looking for short irons that are more workable clubs with shorter blade lengths and less offsets.
So with the M2 you are looking to appeal to players from a 10 handicap through to a 25 handicap and as our number 1 selling iron model it is important that it has that broad reach. With the M CGB we are trying to target it more specifically to the higher handicapper and the player with a slower swing speed.
How has the centre of gravity been moved back?
From the cutaway image of the club you can see the back CG design of this iron where we have carved away a lot of weight from behind the speed pocket with an accordion slot on the sole which is something new for one of our irons. We also have the tungsten weighting and the other technologies we brought in for M2 with the fluted hosel, 360 degree undercut and the off centre inverted cone design.
How does the accordion slot differ to other slots?
The speed pocket design itself is the same but the area behind the speed pocket has been removed so there is more flexibility in the whole sole of the golf club as a result. In other irons like the M2 the area behind the speed pocket is a big mass of metal so all of that has been removed.
What is the set configuration?
The M CGB is available in 4 iron through to SW and there all new shaft offerings with a Nippon N.S. PRO 840 steel shaft and UST Recoil 450 ES graphite. So a little lighter weight shafts than we have had even in irons like the M2, these are 5-8 grams lighter, and they are definitely one of the better performing lighter weight shaft options and are available from a stiff through to a ladies flex.
Thanks for taking us through the M CGB irons Tomo.