Robot testing confirms these 5 irons greatly improve heel misses

Go ahead and pick up the 7-iron in your bag and take a look at the wear pattern on the face. Unless your name is Tiger Woods or Moe Norman, there’s a good chance you’ll find some marks out on the heel or toe. Of the two locations, a heel strike is less common and comes from an inside path generally attached to better players.

We’re not saying a heel strike is the calling card of all better players but as you’ll notice from the list below, the Golf Laboratories swing robot highlighted several iron models geared for elite ball-strikers who miss it in the heel, including the impressive Mizuno Pro 241.

Of course, not every model on this list is a blade. For the game-improvement crowd, Ping’s G730 and XXIO’s 13 saw minimal distance loss on heel strikes when compared to geometric center impact. So, too, did the Blueprint S, a cavity-back model geared for the better player who still needs perimeter weighting for those mishits.

And if you’re wondering whether it’s better to miss it out of the heel or toe with your irons, the clear answer is the heel, according to the robot data. Across the 40-plus models tested, heel strikes averaged just 6.5 yards of distance loss versus 12.3 yards for toe misses. Now you know why better players tend to live in the heel when they don’t pure it.

(Methodology: All testing was conducted with a 7-iron at 80 mph — using the same shaft and attack angle — with six shots recorded from the geometric center and toe. The carry numbers below compare center and heel distances to achieve a carry delta.)

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