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At
last year’s FBR Phoenix Open the clever engineers of Mizuno weaponry asked two
of their well-known “blade guys”, Luke Donald and Jonathan Byrd, to take a
little blind test on the range.
Like most blade devotees, Donald
and Byrd believe they have the tactile sensitivity of bomb squad technicians
and could never be fooled into loving something other than a sleekly-contoured
hunk of metal behind their ball.
“We didn‚t tell them what we
were handing them,” says Mizuno engineer Chris Voshall, “and they assumed it
was some version of the blades they were using, but it was our new MP-62.”
(Think strong, elegant, but cavity-backed.)
After about three swings, so
the story goes, the tour studs were smiling and working their shots like
Brazilian footballers. Then they asked how soon they could get the mystery
clubs into their bags.
When the chagrined tour stars
realized they were hitting cavity-back irons, albeit very muscular forged
beauties that look just like blades from above, they were shocked.
“It was,” says Voshall,” great
fun.”
However, the MP-62s have huge
shoes to fill.
Mizuno blades have had an
iconic status among many on tour. Seve and Sir Nick, among many, won titles
with them, and Tiger won three US Amateurs using a combination of MP-14s and
MP-29s. No wonder that from 1993 to 2001, Mizuno was the most popular iron on
the US PGA Tour.
More recently, the MP-32, a
“cut-muscle” cavity-back design released in 2005, was rated club of the year by
several magazines in America and the UK. One called it the highest rated club
they had ever tested.
“The 32 was great and still has
a cult following on tour,” says Voshall, who like several Mizuno engineers
plays scratch or better golf, “but we still saw room for improvement. We knew
it could feel better, look a bit more traditional and also its thicker sole
didn’t quite perform like a blade.”
And thus was born the MP-62.
First, Mizuno engineers examined Donald’s MP-32s and saw that like many blade
lovers he had ground the soles to make them thinner. That’s where the 62s
started.
Then Mizuno techs concentrated
on vibration. “Some companies put in dampeners and you basically feel nothing,”
Voshall says. “We don‚t want that. We are all about feel. So we focus about 95
percent of our effort on the forging.”
Voshall says their Hiroshima,
Japan forging plant uses a 1025E pure select mild carbon steel that has a
six-times tighter tolerance with impurities than the industry average,
producing far greater consistency from clubhead to clubhead.
Yet, even with a successful
product that thrills tour stars, the economics of pro golf dictates that you
probably won’t see the MP-62s or any other Mizuno club dominating the tour like
they did in the 90s.
“For a top 30 guy to play them
would cost us in the millions,” says Voshall. “It‚s crazy out there. The
contracts are huge.”
