Lucas Herbert is used to the confused looks from fellow pros and caddies when he pulls a TaylorMade P7TW 6-iron from the bag. The recent PGA Tour winner isn’t the only one playing the Tiger Woods-designed irons, but he’s without a doubt the only pro walking around with a set that immediately jumps from 4-iron to 6-iron.
“It’s pretty funny when I hit a 6-iron into a par 3 and you watch the other caddies look into the bag and they only see a 4-iron and a 7-iron and they see a big gap in between and they have no idea,” Herbert said.
No, Herbert’s P7TW 5-iron didn’t grow legs and walk away. Unlike most golfers, Herbert doesn’t put much weight into the numbers stamped on the head of each iron.
“Just because it says it’s a 4-iron that doesn’t mean that’s what it is,” he said.
In a move that’s reminiscent of Webb Simpson’s decision to alter several club lofts — along with removing the 6-iron — to get a fourth wedge in the bag, Herbert found the 5-iron to be non-essential after doing a loft-gap deep dive.
“I’ve always been a great long iron player and we found when we used to carry a 5-iron we might have a 7-iron at 190, a 6-iron at 206 or 207, a 5-iron at 215 and a 4-iron at 225 or 226,” Herbert said. “The 5-iron was this weirdly gapped club where when you looked at it there was maybe a 10-yard gap either side to the other clubs where you were looking at 13-15 yard gaps in the other irons.”
Instead of sticking with the status quo iron setup and working around the odd 5-iron gapping, Herbert chose to jettison the 5-iron and make loft adjustments to his 4-iron and 6-iron to fill in the gap.
Winner’s Bag: Lucas Herbert at the 2021 Butterfield Bermuda Championship
“We were playing around with it one day and we thought what if we strengthen a 6-iron and weaken a 4-iron?” he said. “It kind of just happened like that. I wanted to try it straight away. It was one of the best things I ever did. It meant that I could play a driver, a 3-wood, a 5-wood and a 3-iron. You get that flexibility at the top of the bag.”
Removing the 5-iron also allowed Herbert to retain the four-wedge setup that’s served him well, and keep roughly 16-yard carry gaps from the 4-iron through pitching wedge.
“I’m a long player so you want to keep as many options at the bottom of the bag as possible because you’re going to have a lot of wedges into par 4s and third shots into par 5s as well,” he said. “That was why it came about and to me it doesn’t really feel like a gap because you can play a 5-iron and bend the 5-iron to a 4-iron loft and you get the same effect.
