MORE of us should be playing super game improvement irons. Sure, they sometimes look like garden implements but they make the game so much better for the rest of us. The Bridgestone JGR Hybrid Forged irons are a great example of the genre.
The JGR Hybrid Forged irons are up front with their intended purpose—to make as super game-improvement club that makes it a cinch to hit a golf ball as far as possible without the harsh feel at contact like many of its competitors.
What a concept; a club that has that soft, forged feel that simply doesn’t exist in the SGI category, and one has the lowest and deepest center of gravity of any forged iron on the market. The JGR Forged Hybrid irons are a home run.
To accomplish this, the sole of the Forged Hybrid irons is impossibly wide. The wide sole lowers the center of gravity and pushes it backwards, far behind the clubface. This added a lot of height to the initial trajectory of the golf ball that it necessitated strengthening the lofts to give golfers familiar trajectories with each iron. However, the stronger lofts lengthen the distance each iron flies the ball.
The look is somewhat of an acquired taste, but the ball flight, distance and trajectory that you can eke out of these clubs will make all that much more palatable. One need mind the lofts of the individual clubheads though; the pitching wedge has 38-degrees of loft on it, making it essentially an eight-and-a-half iron. Bridgestone supplies a second pitching wedge with 44 degrees of loft and an approach wedge with 50 to round out the set. You’ll need the whole caboodle to cover the distances closer to the pin.
The stock steel shaft is the 85-gram Nippon NS Pro Zelos 8, while the stock graphite offering is the UST Mamiya Recoil, both with Bridgestone’s stock grip. Unfortunately for you lefties, the JGR Forged Hyrbrid irons are available in a right handed version only.
To give the golf ball as much initial velocity as possible, Bridgestone used their Ultra Strong Metal for the clubface; an ultra-thin steel that wraps around the sole for more forgiveness on thin hits. They then used their proprietary Turbo-Rubber insert to dampen harsh vibrations resulting from the high rebound face. We’ve seen this before with other super game improvement irons—the more the face flexes at impact, the more ball speed and distance you’ll get. For most golfers, that’s seldom a bad thing.
The feel isn’t quite as soft as a touring pro’s blades, but it’s certainly a huge improvement over others in this category. The feel is nice and dense, but with a hint of slightly sharper vibrations from the thin face. The results make that one compromise exceedingly easy to live with. The JGR Hybrid irons fly the ball a good 30 percent further than your irons. They do it with ridiculous ease and are more tolerant of mishits than most of us deserve. More of us should play clubs like this.
The game would be so much easier if we did.
The Bridgestone JGR Forged Hybrid irons are available at Pacsports proshops everywhere.