PING Announces iBlade Irons

It’s been 3 years since PING released the S55 iron. That release gap has given the company both the time to make the improvements you’d expect from a three-year evolution, and a fresh opportunity to remind better golfers that PING still makes blades.

iBlade – It’s right there in the name.

The iBlade Player

The iBlade is designed for better players who can create shots, and who don’t want an abundance of technology to correct their mistakes. That said, the enhanced forgiveness (by blade standards), suggests the iBlade is an excellent choice for those who might want a more compact iron than their ability would otherwise allow for.

For those interested in iBlade’s performance details and nothing but, feel free to skip ahead to the data. For those who want to know a bit more of iBlade’s story…keep reading.

An Iron of Opposites

If the baseline is the status quo and business as usual, then it’s fair to describe iBlade as an iron of opposites.

Instead of cramming as much technology as possible into the new offering, PING challenged itself to remove anything unnecessary, defy convention and ultimately our expectations.

The industry as a whole thrives on visible technology; movable weights, shiny sole plates, and elaborate cavity badging, but PING is gambling that the iBlade player is more interested in quantifiable performance.

That’s not to say the iBlade is a tech-free iron, but PING has gone out of its way to simplify, and to no small degree, that simplification actually obfuscates some of iBlade’s technology.

Just because you can’t see it, however, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, so let’s quickly run down the list.

Weight Savings

To save weight, PING moved from 17-4 to 431 steel (softer with a higher strength to weight ratio). In addition to the total weight savings, it’s a change that allowed PING’s engineers to reduce face thickness by nearly 50% compared to the S55.

This is usually the part where manufacturers start talking about massive distance gains. Not PING. Not today. Not with the iBlade.

The face-thinning was done to improve feel (PING added 1.6 times more dampening elastomer to the tuning port) and save weight. It has almost nothing to do with more yards for bragging rights.

PING took its weight savings and used it to put a massive amount of high-density (Specific Gravity 17 for the science nerds) tungsten in the heel and toe of the iBlade – and then it went out of its way to polish and blend it in with the rest of the iron such that you can barely see that it’s there.

I suppose you might call that invisible technology.

All that mass leads to a 15% increase in inertia (forgiveness), and that higher MOI is achieved without increasing the blade size. This is no small detail. The industry has successfully used workability as a euphemism for unforgiving. PING challenged itself to decouple the two and create a better player’s iron that is actually both workable and forgiving.

To put all of this in perspective, while Jertson acknowledges that iBlade isn’t as forgiving as the i Iron in the 3 through 5 irons, in the 6 through PW the inertia is nearly identical, despite iBlade’s workability advantage.

Precise Gapping

It’s true, PING did lengthen shafts by ¼” on average to bring its stock spec more in-line with the rest of the industry, but it also weakened the short iron lofts. While PING is saying the longer irons are longer, this isn’t a distance story. It’s about creating more consistent gaps throughout the set.

In what could be seen as a nod to the new(ish) Ben Hogan, PING took a precision first approach with the iBlade. Any distance considerations were a distant 3^rd behind consistent performance and improved feel.

Refined Aesthetics

Jertson describes the iBlade as offering vintage form with modern technology and that’s evident in the shaping and subtle details in the overall aesthetic.

While sole widths are unchanged from the S55 (although bounce angles have been refined), the top rail has been thinned slightly, sole camber has been reduced so the iron sits a bit squarer, grooves have been shortened to expose more of an unfinished toe. A bit of extra heel relief adds to the workability. All of the above combined with a longer ferrule contributes to the vintage look that PING believes will be a hit with better players.

Several of PING’s PGA Staffers, including Louis Oosthuizen, Miguel Ángel Jiménez and Hunter Mahan already have the iBlade in the bag. The expectation is that Bubba Watson will eventually join the list.

Other refinements include subtle, yet modern, iBlade branding on the back cavity and sole. The sole stamping in particular provides a modern twist to the vintage details. For what it’s worth, Jertson says the new design not only looks good, it helps to protect the paintfill a bit longer.

Quieting the Chaos

The iBlade takes the lessons learned with the Glide wedge (remember hydrophobicity) and incorporates into an iron. The iBlade’s hydropearl chrome finish actually feels slippery than other iron finishes. According to PING the finish not only helps with turf interaction, its moisture repelling properties help prevent those chaotic fliers out of the rough that can add an unexpected 20 yards to a 9-iron shot.

The word of the day is consistency (and also vintage).

Finally, while it might go unnoticed by anything other than most discerning eye, hosel lengths throughout the set are graduated to help optimize CG location for each iron in the set.

PING’s Claims

While PING isn’t nearly as much for bravado as some its competitors, it has made some specific claims about the relative performance of iBlade. Those include:

• Longer long irons
• Equivalent distance in mid and short irons
• Better gapping
• More forgiveness
• Better feel

Launch Monitor Data

We hit the iBlade side by side against the previous model (S55) to see how PING’s claims hold.

• The data shown below was collected using a Foresight GC2 Launch Monitor
• All shot were hit using Bridgestone B330-RX Golf Balls

Observations:

• With the exception of the 4-iron where the iBlade was 5 yards longer (Carry), performance between the two irons is remarkably similar.
• 7-iron and PW performance is nearly identical.
• The significant difference in Yards from Center could be attributable to differences in lie angles between the clubs tested.

Shot Area and Dispersion

The following chart shows the shot area of a 90% confidence ellipse centered on the average of total yards and yards offline.

Observations:

• Dispersion (shot area) slightly favors the iBlade with more significant differences at 4-iron distance.
• The iBlade produced fewer outliers (most notably at 7-iron distance). Superior forgiveness is further supported by our data which shows more consistent ball speed with the iBlade.
• Not clearly represented in the chart is the difference in gapping between the two sets.
  • The S55 showed a difference of  35.30 yards (carry) between the 4 and 7 irons and 40.10 yards between the 7 iron and PW.
  • The iBlade showed a gap of 41.80 yards between the 4 and 7 irons, and 41.90 between the 7 iron and PW, which suggests PING did, in fact, achieve more consistent gapping between clubs with the iBlade.

Sound and Feel

PING believes the iBlade is a step forward in feel. Obviously there’s a tremendously subjective element to that. We found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. Our testers actually preferred the feel of the S55 to the new model -most notably on off-center hits, however; we also preferred the feel of the iBlade to the i iron.

Your actual mileage may vary.

PRICING, SPECS, AVAILABILITY

The PING iBlade will be available in 3-PW. The stock steel shaft is Dynamic Gold S300 or X100. No charge steel upgrades include PING AWT 2.0, Nippon Modus 105, Project X, and XP 95. Stock Graphite options include: PING CFS 65G Soft R, CFS 70G Regular, CFS 80G Stiff.

The stock grip is Golf Pride’s New Decade Multi-Compound (black/white).

MSRP for the PING iBlade is $162.50 per club steel and $177.50 per club graphite.

Pre-Orders begin immediately.