Welcome to Fully Fit 2026, GOLF’s new platform for providing you with real-golfer insights into what 2026 gear might be best suited for your game. To this end, we assembled six GOLF content creators of varying abilities and ran them through the gauntlet of six full-bag fittings (driver to putter!) at six major club manufacturers in Phoenix and Carlsbad, Calif. Our hope: that you might see shades of your own game in one of our panelists and take some learnings and inspiration from their fitting experiences. In this installment (below), Johnny Wunder details his iron journey around Fully Fit 2026. You may browse each of our panelists’ full 2026 dream bags here:
Jake Morrow (+0.3 handicap) | Jack Hirsh (1.0) | Wadeh Maroun (1.1) | Johnny Wunder (2.8) | Maddi MacClurg (5.7) | Sean Zak (7.6)
MORE FULLY FIT: Fully Fit hub page | Why we’re ‘testing’ golf clubs differently this year | Inside 6 days of fittings and testing | Browse 2026 drivers | Browse 2026 irons | How 5 days of club fittings changed my mind on golf equipment
The quest for the perfect iron set is never really a straight line.
As mentioned in my opening analysis during Fully Fit, I’m getting older (49), my game is a mess due to lack of playing and practice and I’m just at that point where my eyes are looking for comfort and fun VS precision and responsiveness.
I’m that guy who wanted a Porsche 911 for years, and now, at 49, vibed-out minivans hold more appeal. Make sense?
But what’s the end game? Why can’t I just find one set of sticks?
Well, the answer is actually quite fun… I found a bunch of them; they all work, and I’ll explain how and why.
Set 1: Cobra 3DP Tour, my unicorns.
The journey started with a fascination for a genuine new idea: the Cobra 3DP Tour irons.
Cobra’s utilization of a 3D-printed lattice structure inside the cavity wasn’t just a gimmick; it completely altered how they distributed weight. By using a lightweight structure in the center of the clubhead, they saved substantial weight and pushed it to the perimeter, creating an incredibly stable head in a relatively compact footprint. And looking into the future, they have the ability to make any iron your imagination can dream up.
Cobra Tour lead Ben Schomin fit me into a set that is still my favorite top to bottom. They look and feel INCREDIBLE, ball speed/launch/spin, all there. I put these in play at the Battle of the Beach down at Hammock Beach in March, and they were absolutely on point.
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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore, Cobra
On the coastal terrain, these irons were exceptionally stable. Total distance consistency was remarkable because the strike didn’t need to be dead-center to maintain ball speed. But while they served their purpose beautifully, this gig provides new gear to be tested and new fitters to learn from.
They still remain the gold standard of what I tested, so many good shots and a user experience to get excited about.
The Push for one shot shape: PXG 0311T Gen8
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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA Tour Superstore, PXG
Next came a shift toward a more compact, tour-inspired shape with the PXG 0311 T Gen8. The Tour profile is arguably one of the cleanest shapes they’ve engineered—thin top line, minimal offset, and a short blade length that just looks right at address. The magic here is their updated weighting system that allows you to create nuanced “bias” in an iron head. This (like Cobra 3DP) is a new form of customization that really speaks to me.
I took them out to the Morris County Golf Club Member-Guest. I hit them great overall, but I ran into a persistent left miss on off-speed shots. Why? Because, against the advice of counsel, I overshot the heel weighting while trying to chase a specific shot shape and mitigate ANY right, which threw a heavy, long left miss into the setup.
Even with that left miss, two great things stood out from that week: first, the sheer level of customization you can achieve with their perimeter weights is unmatched; second, the technology actually works exactly how they say it does. Change the weights, change the flight—I just proved it a little too well.
The Comfort Correction: Callaway X-Forged Max
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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore, Callaway
Seeking a return to a true one-piece cavity back feel with a bit more structural footprint, the transition moved to Callaway and the X-Forged Max. The X-Forged line is a nod to classic Japanese forgings, featuring a pre-worn leading edge that prevents the club from digging too aggressively.
I LOVE THESE IRONS!
Going through this phase underscored how much a sole design impacts delivery. The feel of a pure, single-piece forging is hard to replicate with multi-material construction. Ball speed stayed incredibly tight relative to swing speed, and the spin characteristics were exactly what you want for holding firm greens out of the rough.
The flight was stable and predictable. But the pursuit of optimization never truly stops when you’re searching for that ultimate balance of speed and control. I also appreciate the fact that optically, although this is a player’s distance iron, they look like any tour cavity-back on the market. Compact shape, great lines, and a long iron to short iron progression for launch.
The cool kid set-up: Srixon ZXi5/ZXi7 Combo (Testing)
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ALSO AVAILABLE AT: PGA TOUR Superstore, Srixon
This brings us to the present workspace setup, where two options are going head-to-head. The Srixon ZXi combo approaches performance by blending a multi-piece forged face in the ZXi5 long irons (5-6) with a single-piece forging in the ZXi7 scoring irons (7-PW).
Its primary traits are massive ball speed and spin consistency driven by its i-FORGED and MainFrame face technologies. We all know how well these things feel and get through the ground in any condition, and to be fair, I played them for a while last year when I started with Golf.com. I loved them, actually, just hadn’t tried them with Nippon 120X, so here we are.
This is an ongoing experiment to see if this type of platform works best for me, like X-Forged Max the Srixon combo has that “it” factor of look and feel, and it doesn’t hurt that on Tour they still remain one of the alpha irons out there.
The Play Your Best Matrix i540 / i240 / Blueprint S Combo (Testing)
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On the other side of the bay sits the project we’ve been dialing in, and it’s a completely different animal. This isn’t off-the-rack; it’s a highly planned blending of three distinct Ping platforms to build a progressive matrix. We started with the i540 in the 5-iron to give me that high-launch, high-ball-speed floor where my speed typically drops off. From there, it transitions into the i240 for the 6- and 7-irons, offering a perfect bridge of mid-iron forgiveness and stability, before moving into the pure, fully-forged Blueprint S for the scoring clubs (8-PW).
To make this mix work seamlessly, we bent the entire set to Power Spec lofts, creating a perfectly linear gapping progression: a 23.5° 5-iron, 28° 6-iron, 32° 7-iron, 36° 8-iron, 40° 9-iron and a 44° pitching wedge. Built 1-degree upright with Nippon Modus 120 X shafts at a D3 swingweight, the build feels incredibly unified. This set is built around problem-solving mis-hits.
