Golfers arrive asking which iron head they should buy. It is almost never the question that matters. What matters is whether the nine clubs in the bag are consistent with one another: even length steps, a smooth frequency progression, swingweights inside a point of each other, and lofts spaced so that each club has a job nothing else is doing.
Sets fail that test constantly, and not only cheap ones. Manufacturing tolerance on lofts and lies is wider than most golfers imagine, and a set can leave a factory with two clubs a degree and a half apart from their stamps. Add a few seasons of practice-mat contact, which quietly bends lies flatter over time, and the ladder that looked orderly on the shelf has holes in it.
Most iron complaints are set-consistency problems wearing a head-model costume.
So the iron block on our sheet is arranged by club rather than by category. Every iron gets its own row: length, loft, lie, frequency, swingweight, and the carry number it produced. Reading down a column is how a gap becomes obvious.
Static charts convert height and wrist-to-floor into a lie recommendation. They are a useful place to begin testing and a poor place to finish, because lie is about how you deliver the sole at impact, not how you stand at address.
We put tape on the sole and a board under the ball, and read the mark. Two golfers who measure identically on a chart routinely need lies three or four degrees apart, because one of them drops the hands at impact and the other does not.
The consequence of getting it wrong is directional and it compounds with loft. A short iron two degrees upright will start noticeably left of target for a right-handed golfer; the same error in a 5-iron shows up much less. That is why the sheet lists lie per club and why we bend to a progression rather than to one figure for the whole set.
Bends cost $8 a club, or $60 for a full set check with the gauge report included. It is, by a distance, the cheapest meaningful change available to most golfers.
Every carry figure on the sheet is measured over a run of strikes and recorded with the sample size beside it. A number derived from one well-struck shot is not a yardage, it is an anecdote.
| Club | Length | Loft | Lie | Carry | Step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 iron | 37.75 in | 25.0° | 61.0° | 168 yd | — |
| 6 iron | 37.25 in | 28.5° | 61.5° | 157 yd | 11 |
| 7 iron | 36.75 in | 32.0° | 62.0° | 146 yd | 11 |
| 8 iron | 36.25 in | 36.0° | 62.5° | 134 yd | 12 |
| 9 iron | 35.75 in | 40.5° | 63.0° | 122 yd | 12 |
| PW | 35.50 in | 45.0° | 63.5° | 110 yd | 12 |
Even steps are the goal, and an eleven-yard gap beside a nineteen-yard gap is the defect we look for. Where a set cannot be bent into an even ladder, the answer is usually a change of set composition rather than a change of brand.
Half-inch steps are conventional, but a golfer who strikes long irons poorly and short irons well is often better served by a shortened long-iron end. The step size goes on the sheet because a replacement club built years later needs to know it.
Steel from 85 to 130 grams and graphite from 55 to 95 sits on the rack. Weight is chosen before flex and matters more, particularly for golfers past sixty and anyone with a wrist or elbow history.
Not everyone should carry a 4-iron. Replacing the top of a set with hybrids, or blending two head models across the set, is a written decision on the sheet rather than an afterthought at the till.
A full set loft and lie check with the report is $60, and it settles whether you need new irons at all.