Unless you’re an elite ball-striker wielding a set of musclebacks that absolutely have to hit a certain speed threshold, adding some velocity through the bag is generally a good thing.
More speed means more distance, and more distance means a shorter club in your hands on a 150-yard approach. That’s a scenario every golfer wants to encounter during a round.
Tracking down an iron with plenty of ball speed in the tank is one way to shorten those approaches. But it’s not just speed out of the middle. Unless you possess a tour card, it’s generally good to have something in the bag that generates strong ball speed numbers across the entire face.
As expected, the five fastest models were in the game-improvement category, which makes sense considering these offerings are usually loaded with ultra-thin faces, tungsten weighting and high-tech cavity badges. Let’s check out the numbers.
(How we calculate: Each 7-iron is tested at 80 mph using three-point face mapping. We hit six balls from each location on the face — heel, toe and geometric center — and then came up with an average based on the 18 strikes.)
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Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke | 117.7 mph
Callaway ’23 Big Bertha | 117.3 mph
Cleveland ZipCore XL | 116 mph
Cobra Darkspeed | 116 mph
Ping G730 | 115.5 mph
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