The Titleist T-Series irons cover a wide range of playing strengths and requirements, from the Players iron to the Game Improvement segment. Tom Fisher, head of the iron and wood product line at Titleist, reveals what exactly is in the various models.
Titleist T-Series Irons 2024: Golf Post interview with Titleist product experts
Golf Post: Let’s talk about the T Series starting with the T 100, all the way up to the T 350.
Tom Fisher: Obviously our products are absolutely superb. We have four new models coming out. So T-100: First of all, it’s our tour model. It’s still the number one model played on the PGA Tour. And there’s a reason why. When you look to try and change this iron, you really can’t change it too much for these guys.
But what you can do is, improve the things that really mattered to them and the things that matter to a tour player. And this type of golfer is feel right. So the team have done a magical job improving the feel of this, whether it’s through improving our back bar, which runs through the middle of the golf club.
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So we’ve reinforced that back bar. We put the tungsten in in a different process. So people don’t realize that all of our T-Series irons have the average of 80 grams of tungsten in all of our irons. And what tungsten does, it allows us to strategically place weight where we want it to help with feel, to help with trajectory, and to help with forgiveness, MOI, right?
So in the T100, we strategically placed it to help with that feel aspect. The other thing is how a club feels is through the turf. This is something that we’re very fortunate to have, you know, Mr. Bob Vokey just across the corridor where we work together. We’ve actually taken learnings from his Wedge sole design.
We’ve given a lot more relief on our trailing edge than prior gen. We want a fast iron in and a fast iron out. By having more relief on the trailing edge is allowing that club to just slide and get through the turf a lot easier.
And then we’ve also added our CNC process to our face. So all these faces are milled, which obviously helps with the feel, but more importantly helps with consistency. That’s what tour players want. They want to know consistent distances. They don’t want balls spinning with a wide range of deviation. They want consistent spin, consistent ball speed, consistent launch, because these irons are tuning weapons.
They need to know exactly how far it goes every time. So the summer changes we’ve made to the T 100 from prior gen have been very well received. Our teams did a wonderful job on the new T 100.
Golf Post: Whats special about the T150?
Tom Fisher: As we move into the T 150, this is a brand new naming convention. The prior generation was the T100S. That was basically the T100 two degrees stronger. We just needed it two degrees stronger to help that golfer get a bit more speed, a little bit more distance, but we decided to change it a bit more. Hence why a new name. So the T150 is a little bit bigger, so slightly larger than the T100 in terms of the sole width. But you know, all of the same ideas.
T100 is in the 150, you know: the CNC face, the relief on the sole. The one addition, the changing to the 100 is, like I said, slightly larger. It is two degrees stronger and it also has a through the muscle channel. Through the back here and you can kind of see it there.
That just helps to preserve ball speed and forgiveness across the face. If you look down at the golf club, this looks like the T100. But it just gives that goal for just a little bit extra right out of the gate. This has been our most popular iron out of the lineup, right out the gate.
A fantastic iron and we’re thrilled with it. Some of the tour players have actually put longer irons of the 150-series in their bag, because they see the extra ball speed. It can give them a little bit more forgiveness. Again, all about feel and performance.
Golf Post: Let’s get to the game improvement irons, the T200 and T350.
The next two irons, there’s been some significant changes. What I mean by that is not only obviously in the performance, but the feel as well. Nothing feels better than a Titleist iron when you hit it straight, when you hit it just so pure. Certainly when you hit the 100s and the 150s.
But then as you start getting into like what we call player game improvement irons and game improvement irons, you kind of have to wrestle a little bit with all the performance you put into an iron. It is kind of going against sound and feel but that’s one thing the team have done. To try and crack that code of how do we make all of our irons sound and feel like a forged product. And the team have done it with the T100 that we’ve talked about here. So again like i said before CNC face on here as well, sole design on here as well.
But the subtle changes to help with the sound and feel is again, we strategically placed tungsten in the right spot. But what we’ve got underneath this hood is an improved max impact. What we’ve got in there is a technology that helps to really dampen vibration and also at the same time, give you preserved ball speed of the off center hits.
And then last but not least, the biggest change is the badge at the back. This has been inserted a lot differently than the last version. It limits vibrations. Sound is vibration, right? And it has a frequency. So we’d run thousands of simulations to make sure we get the frequency exactly where we want it and how we actually, you know, adhere this badge to the back and the design language.
If you turn this badge the other way around, it’s a different shape behind it. There’s some different patterns on it. And that is by design. So it actually helps us give us a sound that we’re looking for. So this is our player’s distance iron with tons of forgiveness, tons of speed. And with a low CG (center of gravity), really easy to get the ball up in the air.
And then lastly, but not least, T350. It’s our game improvement iron. It’s got everything that I just talked about in the T200. The improved maxed impact, CG low, even lower though than the T200 because we want this to launch higher. Um, it’s got obviously the new sole design, the CNC milled face and then the badges on there, but it’s a different shape.
It’s a slightly larger than the T200. So guess what? The design language on the back of that badge is different, because this iron did a different frequency that we needed to tune. Super, super easy to hit! And again, this has been received really, really well, as being, you know, a fantastic, beautiful sounding playable performance in the game improvement sector. It’s really unique in terms of that design.
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And then we’re really obsessed about fitting. These irons were all designed, as you can tell, in different shapes, they have different loft packages. They have different CGs that give you different ball flights. But believe it or not, they all have the same offsets.
So when you transition from one iron into the other, it’s an easy transition. And 90 percent of our tour players play a blended set. And why do they play a blended set? Well, there’s a point where what we call the 3Ds break. What are the 3Ds? The 3Ds are distance, dispersion, and angular descent. And what we want to make sure is that you have a consistent distance every time your standard deviation is really tight.
Your dispersion is tight and your angle of descent is at least 45 degrees or greater of the ball coming down onto the green. So there’s a point where as you transition from a seven iron to a six iron, maybe to a five, you’re going to lose those numbers. You’re going to break at some point. Your ball speed is going to drop or not be consistent because we want five miles an hour ball speed between every iron.
Let’s say your seven iron is 120 miles an hour ball speed. Your five iron needs to be 130 miles an hour, right? So we’ll test you. We have long iron kits out in the marketplace, and we’ll then know what seven iron you want, and then we’ll get you to hit our five iron. And if your ball speed isn’t 130 miles an hour, and your angle descent is not at 45 degrees, we know it’s broken.
That’s when we’ll introduce you a different model. So for example, I’m a T150 player, but I break at the five iron. So guess what got me back? The T200. So I play a T200 five iron. Guess what? It broke it before I played a T 350 iron. We have this really cool process and a really easy fitting philosophy.
And these irons allow us to do that. So it’s been incredibly successful. We’re looking forward to a great 2024 with these new T series, and we recommend everyone go get fit for them.
Golf Post: Let me add one question because, obviously, Titleist is famous for those players irons. But those game improvement irons, the T200 and T350, have taken off so well. Will we see more in this segment in the future?
Tom Fisher: These are sneaky. These are really, really good. Llike I said, 150 came out of the blocks fast. But do not underestimate the 350: performance, feel, looks – it doesn’t look like a game improvement iron, but it has all the performance of a game improvement.
This has been received very well when we’ve done independent player testing. it’s tested off the charts. It’s phenomenal. Will Zalatoris is playing this on tour. He’s got it in his bag right now as his four iron. Why? Because it hits the 3Ds that we just talked about. Don’t underestimate this or any other iron. Go get fit and you’ll find which one’s for you.
Are we going to see more game improvement in the future? I would say watch this space. I think there’s obviously a certain amount of golfers there that, like anyone, seek forgiveness. There are opportunities out there for the slow swinging golfers, certainly for juniors.
And also, as golfers are losing speed, as they get older, losing club head speed, we could do more potentially to help to get their speed back, help them play better golf, help them be more functional with their trajectory. So yeah, watch this space. We got some things in the hopper. We’re not done yet.