Golf Views

“Modern Technology meets classic design”, is the tag line used to describe the new TaylorMade Tour Preferred Irons and I’ve had the opportunity to test out the latest offering from TaylorMade to see if the Tour Preferred irons live up to their billing.

Look and Feel

The Tour Preferred irons is the latest addition to the TaylorMade product line, aimed at a wide-range of golfers who prefer a club that has a classic look, but the forgiveness of a cavity back iron.  The first thing you’ll notice when you sole the TaylorMade Tour Preferred iron is the thin topline and shorter blade-length from heel to toe for a compact clean look at address. What you will not see at address, is the sole and the cavity features built into this club that make it a very forgiving and high performance golf club. This is a feature you don’t see in a lot of irons today, especially in a cavity back iron.  The tour configured sole was shaped based on the feedback from the TaylorMade Professional Tour Staff professionals, and features a thinner sole that will promote less digging and better turf interaction. By softening the leading and trailing edge, the sole of the club glides effortlessly through the turf for better ball striking. The face of the TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons do not feature an alignment line, like you have on most golf clubs, so this could be a problem for some golfers. The face of the Tour Preferred irons does feature the same Inverted Cone technology that is used in the TaylorMade drivers to promote a larger sweetspot and more forgiveness on off-center hits. The cavity back of the TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons also feature a shallow undercut design to push the weight of the club to the outer perimeter of the clubhead, to create a very high MOI and forgiving golf club. In the cavity, you’ll also notice a vibration management sound badge over the Inverted Cone, to fine-tune the club’s pitch and resonance, ensuring that sound at impact is solid and satisfying. This is what gives the TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons their forged iron like feel. It’s amazing how this club does give you that forged iron feel, I was quite impressed to see a cavity back replicate that. The Tour Preferred irons come equipped with True Temper Dynamic Gold steel shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips. The Dynamic Gold shafts are a little bit on the heavy side in my opinion for a stock shaft offering, and aimed at golfers with a higher swing speed. I did like the fact that they used Tour Velvet grips, which are my grip of choice on all my golf clubs.

Performance

Do the new TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons live up to the hype of having modern technology blended with classic design? The answer to that question is, Yes!
What I really liked about the Tour Preferred irons, is how solid they felt at impact. I noticed immediately, how the club would respond, in terms of sound and feel at impact, just like hitting a forged iron. The next thing that really made this club stand apart, is how easily the club would just glide through the turf. During my tests, I used these clubs on both the fairways and moderate rough, and had no problems with the club’s sole digging into the ground during my swing. As mentioned before, this was due to the softening of the the trailing and leading edge of the sole of the club. The results were purer ball striking. You’ll really appreciate this in the moderate rough. The other nice feature of the sole design, is the minimal offset of the club, which makes the Tour Preferred very playable. The Inverted Cone technology used in the face of the TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons, really expanded the sweetspot on the face of the club, which made it so forgiving. The face was very resistant to twisting on mishits and provided a consistent shot to shot distance on all my shots. Couple the Inverted Cone technology with the shallow undercut cavity, which redistributes the weight to the heel and weighted toe pockets, you have a club that is going to have increased MOI and all around forgiveness. I was very impressed how easy it was to hit these irons and really pleased with my results, even on off-center hits. The trajectory on my shots using the Tour Preferred irons was more neutral biased and on the low to mid launch angle, which is what you would expect from a high performance iron.

Overall, the TaylorMade Tour Preferred irons are able to mix both modern technology with classic design to produce high performance irons that have a tour look, with the forgiveness of a cavity back.

TaylorMade Tour Preferred Irons are available in 2 through 9 iron, pitching wedge, attack wedge, and sand wedge and retail for $899