Review – Ben Hogan FORT WORTH 15 Irons

Written By: Tony Covey

Precision is Back.

More to the point, Ben Hogan, or at least the equipment company bearing his name, is back.

The return of the once-iconic equipment brand is perhaps the golf equipment story of the year (Feel Good Division). Longtime Hogan enthusiasts celebrated its hopefully triumphant return, while modern independent-minded golfers welcomed a potentially viable alternative to the mainstream.

Me, I’ve been skeptical from day one.

By now you should know the story. Terry Koehler who’s responsible for the Scor Golf short game brand (and the Eidolon brand before that) licensed the Hogan name from Perry Ellis who acquired the brand from in Callaway 2012.

Koehler assembled his team, including some former Hogan original employees, set to work on a design he felt would be true to Ben Hogan’s standard. Earlier this year the FT. WORTH 15 iron was launched along with the TK Wedge and the declaration that precision is back.

My enthusiasm remained tempered.

Guys, Mr. Hogan has been gone a long time. Let’s not get too excited over a good story and a matching logo.

The Ben Hogan Difference

The main selling point of the new Hogan FT. WORTH 15 is this idea of precision. While precision is exactly the type of nebulous term the golf industry loves to throw around, the most recognizable real world manifestation of the concept is that Hogans are manufactured in discrete lofts from 20° to 47°.

If it hasn’t been made clear to you by now, what that means is that a 37° FT. WORTH 15 iron was made to be 37°. It’s not a 36° bent a degree weak, or a 39° bent two degrees strong.

Gimmick, sales hook, point of differentiation, whatever you want to call it, the reality is that Mr. Hogan never needed 28 lofts. It’s something to talk about, but is it necessary?

Frankly, I’m not sure how much the average golfer concerns himself with such things, and I suspect many will find the breadth of options Hogan offers overwhelming. That said, when you couple those discrete lofts with Hogan’s ½° tolerances (both loft and lie), the end result is a level of precision uncommon to the mass market.

That alone is worthy of note.

Individually Numbered Lofts in the Wild

The new Hogan way of stamping lofts rather than iron numbers on the sole has been the topic of much discussion. I get it – it’s a point of differentiation and plays to the larger message of precision – but initially I found it a bit unwieldy.

Eventually pulling by loft instead of number should become second nature, but if modern loft-jacking, as Koehler contends, has made the number on the club meaningless, so too does stamping the loft. It doesn’t matter if the iron is stamped 8 or 34, for me, it just needs to go +/-155 yards.

Neither number is actually any more or less meaningful than the other.

Initially it’s fair to say that loft stamping contributed to a bit of a pace of play problem. For the first few rounds, each shot required me to establish a baseline, covert to Hogan-speak, and do whatever other math was necessary to find the right club for the shot.

145 is a 9 iron. I know my (old) pitching wedge is 45 degrees. So let’s see…

I found I had to establish a baseline and do conversions and other adjustments. The shot is 145…145 is a 9-iron. My pitching wedge is 45°. 4 degrees of off my pitching wedge is 41°…yup, I’ve got one of those, let’s see how it goes.

Pulling a 9 iron…excuse me, a 45°…is quick enough, but get to a 7 or a 6 iron (something in the middle of the set) and that math gets complicated. 45 is a pitching wedge. 3 clubs off of that…minus 12 degrees… equals 33. Perfect…ready to hit.

The point is it’s an adjustment, even an annoyance. Over time it gets easier – and Hogan supplies a bag tag to help you remember your distance. With enough reps I’m sure it becomes second nature.

As Tiger would say, “it’s a process”.

Aesthetics

From a strictly visual perspective, the FT. WORTH 15 most closely resembles the Hogan blade on blade designs from the late 60s and early 70s with a perhaps a bit of Mizuno MP-32 in the mix.

The blade is, by modern conventions, compact. The toplines thin-ish, but not overly intimidating. To a large degree, they look like the natural extension of the Scor Wedge franchise. There’s unquestionably some refinement, but the distinct and appealing shaping remains.

The progressions between irons are gentle and seamless. There is an art to blending the transitions from one iron to the next, such that no iron looks out of place next to any other, and in this first release, the new Ben Hogan appears to have already mastered it.

From a purely visual perspective, the most recent incarnation of Hogan’s iconic blade on blade design is nearly flawless.

For those wondering about feel. The FORT WORTH 15 isn’t a Mizuno. A bit clicker than soft, but it’s not out of line with most other forged blades on the market either.

Hogan vs. Modern Statistics

We frequently call out larger golf companies for hype over substance, and so it’s only fair to take a closer look when smaller companies make similar claims.

At the heart of the Hogan design philosophy is the notion that because golfers hit such a high percentage of their shots from short iron distance, Hogan has “re-aligned the length differentials” between clubs, which allows you to carry one less longer iron and an additional higher lofted club.

To me that’s an argument on the wrong side of cause and effect. Why are such a disproportionate number of shots hit from so-called scoring distance? It’s because golfers aren’t particularly good from longer distance.

That’s especially important in the face of statistical analysis from Mark Broadie (author of Every Shot Counts) who found that proficiency (or lack thereof) in the long game is what has the greatest impact on your golf score.

Adding more short clubs at the expense of long ones treats the symptom while ignoring the underlying cause. Perhaps that’s the best path forward, but quite frankly, I found that my personal Hogan prescription didn’t give me all the tools I needed between 190 and 220 yards.

Certainly, the Hogan Fit system gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want to do – and in fairness, to get a sense of how Hogan Fit will work for the average consumer, I simply went with the Hogan Fit recommendations, but my advice would be to pay particularly close attention to the longer clubs. It’s much easier to hit a 57° a few yards shorter than it is to hit a 29° 10 yards farther.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the long game.

Performance

Beyond its gapping philosophy, Hogan makes some bold statements, perhaps the most compelling of which is the assertion that the FT. WORTH 15 is just as long, more accurate, and more forgiving than – based on the preceding text about iron design and robot testing – most modern iron designs.

Not only are the FT. WORTH 15 irons billed as being the most accurate and forgiving Hogan iron ever, Hogan claims the FT WORTH 15 is the most accurate iron you can play.

Bold talk. How would we react if Callaway or TaylorMade made a similar assertion?

That statement is where, over several rounds of golf, I focused my attention.

I normally play what most would describe as game-improvement irons. My pitching wedge is 45° (blasphemy, I know), but because I play 125 gram shafts, they’re built off a 37.75” 5-iron, which most closely translates to what Hogan would call a 4-iron (although the Hogan is ½” longer at nearly equivalent lofts).

The default Hogan spec doesn’t align well with much of anything, and that’s perfectly fine, but it makes any sort of apples to apples comparison with modern irons even more difficult than usual.

Despite differences in length, what I found was that distances were roughly equivalent (within a handful of yards) when matching loft for loft with my set. All of that should be prefaced with on well struck shots, but I experienced nothing that would lead me to label the Hogan FT. WORTH 15 as short. If anything, I’d tell you that they were marginally longer than expected (same disclaimer as above), which isn’t something you’d likely expect from a blade.

Where I take issue is with Hogan’s claims of accuracy.

Well struck (near-center) balls there’s nothing inherently inaccurate about the Hogan. What we’ve seen in years of iron testing is that on pure strikes, more compact iron designs, particularly those with center-concentrated mass, generally show tighter dispersion patterns. And certainly, that would seem true of the FORT WORTH 15. Good shots are generally really good.

There’s actually quite a bit I like. On-center and near on-center performance is outstanding and unlike many modern designs, I didn’t find any evidence of hot spots on the face. As a guy who generally hits his irons higher than he’d like (frankly I don’t understand you guys who struggle to get the ball in the air), I quickly came to appreciate the lower, and at the risk of being cliché, more penetrating trajectory I get with a blade.

If you’re a consistent ball striker, which you should be if you’re buying a blade (even one billed as being more forgiving), I believe you’ll be very happy with the new Hogans.

A Blade for the Average Golfer?

For the rest of you, the average golfer, or more aptly the average internet golfer…you guy’s with handicaps between 7 and 14, it’s time to get real.

Iron accuracy is strongly influenced by forgiveness. It’s not simply about hitting the ball straight. If you lose distance, you’re not going to be consistently close to the pin. You will find sand. You will find water. You will drop shots.

On a typical mishit, the kind of contact average golfers make multiple times each round, the forgiveness of the Hogans, has been, I believe, overstated.

In the interest of full disclosure, my personal philosophy is that all but the very best golfers would be better served playing the most forgiving iron that we can stand the sight of. With allowances for necessary trade-offs to get launch and spin in the ballpark of where it needs to be, for most of us, forgiveness should be the single most important attribute in an iron.

I get that everyone wants great feel – time and time again the surveys bear that out, but frankly, I’ve never felt particularly good about a shot that comes up short, particularly if short means wet.

The Maybe shot is consistently short

For me, true distinction between irons can be found in the maybe shot. If you’re like most golfers you hit it…often. It’s the shot where despite less than perfect contact, you think maybe you’ll get away with it.

You swing, you hit, you watch, you twist, and you wince. You scream go…go…go.

Maybe the ball clears the bunker. Maybe it catches a piece of the green. With the Hogans the maybe almost always comes up short, and more often than not, significantly so (*compared to most modern iron designs I’ve tested).

After having multiple maybe shots fall short, the deal-breaker for me came on the 17^th hole at McGregor Links Country Club in Saratoga, New York. Down 1, sitting 156 from the center of a sizable hidden green. Plus or minus a yard or two it’s a shot I’ve faced a literal hundred times over the past 6 years.

I took out my 8-iron…more accurately, I made the conversion from my irons to Hogan, and pulled out my 37°. The strike wasn’t flush, but it wasn’t horrible…just a bit out on the toe. The irons I had pushed aside for the Hogan FW15 get there. Maybe this shot finds legs, maybe it catches a piece, maybe I’m still in this thing.

Not even close. I halved the hole (with a bogey), lost the match. The final straw – I drove home and put my old irons back in the bag.

Forgiving for a given design isn’t the same as forgiving PERIOD, and it’s certainly not enough to justify even the suggestion that the FORT WORTH 15 are among the most forgiving irons you can buy.

Final Thoughts

When you strip the Ben Hogan FORT WORTH 15 down to its most basic form what you have is a blade (more accurately a blade on blade) design that’s longer than you’d expect, extremely accurate (near center contact), and is as forgiving as any blade, and even some cavitybacks designed for better players.

For the better player, it’s an intriguing option, especially for those who eschew modern designs in favor of traditional looks and sensibilities.

What you don’t’ have is an iron forgiving-enough for most average golfers to play and expect great results.

For the majority of golfers, the Ben Hogan FORT WORTH 15 is one between precision and forgiveness, and over the course of a round, over the course of a season, the latter probably makes more sense – even at the expense of aesthetics and feel.

Another Perspective

Before we pass final judgement on the Ben Hogan FORT WORTH 15, we wanted to get an additional perspective. We found an excellent ballstriker; a mid single-digit handicap golfer who just happens to still play a set of 2001 Ben Hogan Apex Plus irons.

How do the new Hogans measure up to the iconic designs so many of you love?

As coincidence would have it, his name is Ben. You’ll hear from him in the coming days.

The retail price for Ben Hogan FORT WORTH 15 irons starts at $150 per club. For more information visit the Ben Hogan Golf Equipment Website.