McLaren put the Series 3 first and left its tour blade idling. Inventory lands at the end of September.
I suppose there are parallels to be drawn between McLaren’s entry into the world of golf equipment and the Freedom 250 IndyCar race in Washington, D.C., last month. That is to say, it was slower and bumpier than advertised.
While there’s no iron equivalency to running 20 laps under caution, the Series 1 iron has been all but lost since the start.
Moving on from the metaphor, the reality is that after feedback from fitters and the general inventory stuff that every golf brand deals with from time to time, the company prioritized the Series 3 iron. Market realities being what they are (admittedly, blades account for barely a sliver of the iron sales pie), Series 1 … well, I suppose you could say was, in fact, running under a caution flag, or something like that.
Anyway, with McLaren apparently caught up (more or less), Series 1 finally gets its green flag. It will be available alongside the Series 3 offering.
The McLaren Golf story so far
If you missed the McLaren launch in April, here’s a quick recap.
McLaren Golf sits alongside the company’s automotive and racing divisions. The key detail is that McLaren Golf is a genuine part of the McLaren business. It’s not a collaboration. It’s not a licensing deal. These aren’t open molds from some unnamed Asian factory with a McLaren logo stamped on the heads. That’s how a healthy percentage of these “automotive x golf ” crossovers have worked but McLaren operates differently. Yes, the company’s roots are firmly in the automotive space but the ambition is a fully realized golf company with plans to eventually build all 14 clubs.
McLaren first entered the golf conversation with the announcement of two iron models, the Series 1 blade and the more forgiving Series 3, which could rightfully be placed in either the game-improvement or player’s distance categories. If you’re wondering about the incongruity in the model naming, Series 2 is penciled in for early 2027. The rest of the bag is in development which for now is little more than a thing that might be worth knowing.
The part that matters more than the logo is who’s designing the stuff. Ryan Badgero, formerly head of product development at COBRA, runs the operation. JP Harrington, of Titleist and JP Wedges fame, leads iron and wedge design. Jacob Sanborn, previously of Wilson and Callaway, is a senior product design engineer. They work with a team of engineers at McLaren’s Technology Centre in the UK to develop the products that make up McLaren’s golf catalog.
The point is that there’s a legitimate golf resume behind the brand which at a minimum suggests McLaren wants to take a serious run at this thing.
In addition to the guys designing the McLaren line, Justin Rose, Michelle Wie West and Ian Poulter are brand ambassadors. All three are also investors which has become a relatively common path for upstart brands seeking instant validation.
Justin Rose and a bumpy first lap
The day after McLaren Golf officially launched, Rose put the Series 1 in play at the Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral. It did not go well. He opened with 74.
Analyst Rick Gehman promptly posted that it was Rose’s second-worst ball-striking round and his worst tee-to-green round of the season. And with that, the internet did what the internet does.
Photos of Rose’s demo bag made the rounds. Depending on who was counting, he had somewhere between four and 700 McLaren prototypes in there. (For the record, it was a combo set: a cavity-back 4-iron with Series 1 blades from the 5-iron down.) The takes were predictable and, frankly, not entirely unfair. Rose was in the middle of what looked like a genuine career resurgence before having a disastrous showing with the shiny new things that he happens to own a piece of.
To his credit, Rose answered Gehman’s numbers with “Cheers Rick for the stats … will use DRS tomorrow after that info.” If you’re going to switch into McLaren irons and immediately play like garbage, you may as well get a Formula 1 joke out of it.
Rose ultimately finished T65 at Doral, then T45 at the Truist Championship the following week. Two starts, two duds, and plenty of noise. Rose’s line throughout was that the irons had nothing to do with any of it. “The fact I haven’t played great the last two weeks has got nothing to do with the irons either,” he said heading into the PGA Championship. And the blunter version: “if you put a poor move on it, I don’t care what you’re playing.”
Lost in the generally negative noise of the interwebs, Rose went on to shoot 65 in the third round at Quail Hollow to take the lead at two under, picking up three strokes on approach for the day. He finished T10. From there: T12 at the Memorial, T11 at the U.S. Open, T18 at the Tour Championship.
While it’s probably not Player of the Year material, it’s equally a sign of a man who is not fighting a losing battle with his irons.
What the Series 1 actually is
With that, let’s talk about the McLaren Series 1 iron.
The Series 1 is McLaren Golf’s blade. A bit more modern than most, it’s nevertheless built for better players who want control, feel and consistency out of a traditional shape. It’s a muscle-back and so there you go.
What’s perhaps noteworthy about the Series 1 (and the Series 3, for that matter) is how McLaren makes its irons. They’re not forged and they’re not cast. McLaren irons are metal injection molded from a proprietary steel blend. The proprietary part is why McLaren won’t say exactly what its metal formulation is.
Your quick MIM refresher: fine metal powder gets mixed with a polymer binder to create a feedstock, the feedstock gets injected into a mold, and the binder is removed before the part is sintered in a furnace. What comes out is a dense, nearly finished shape that mirrors the mold.
That’s a good bit of the point. Casting and forging both produce parts that need grinding and polishing steps to reach the final dimensions. Each step in the process is an opportunity to produce a bit of inconsistency. Metal injection molding produces nearly finished parts complete with tighter tolerances, less variability and consistency inside a set.
The practical translation is that MIM lets McLaren (and others who use the same methods) cram technology into a shape that traditionally has nowhere to put any.
Under the Series 1 hood
Like most modern irons, McLaren Series 1 irons feature a progressive approach to center of gravity. Internal tungsten bars, each unique in shape and weight (16 to 24 grams) to the loft they’re designed for, let McLaren tune the individual CG location of every iron in the set. Centers of gravity sit low in the long irons for easier launch and higher flight. As you move into the mid and short irons, CGs move higher, which works to lower trajectory and increase spin.
The visible detail in the back cavity is what McLaren calls structural mesh. The honeycomb pattern isn’t strictly decoration. It works to save weight while maintaining strength and stability. As you would expect, the weight McLaren saves with the mesh gets relocated somewhere more useful. It’s also the closest thing McLaren Golf has to a signature look which probably matters more than anyone wants to admit.
Included in the design is vibration dampening silicone. That comes in the form of an injection molded piece that kills unwanted vibration and pulls double duty as part of the weighting story. It’s not a revolutionary concept but the reason you see it so often is because it works.
Lastly, the Series 1 irons feature a progressive offset design. I’d suggest the implementation is fairly aggressive by blade standards. The 3-iron has four millimeters of offset which, paired with some native heel bias, helps get the face square coming into impact. By the 9-iron and pitching wedge, you’re down to just 1.2 mm, providing the clean look better players want when they’re standing over a scoring club.
Series 1 specs
Lofts are about what you’d expect from modern blades. The 3-iron is 20 degrees, the 7-iron is 34 and the pitching wedge is 46. They’re not your grandfather’s lofts but they’re not my T-350s either.
Worth a quick mention: McLaren Series 1 irons are available in right- and left-handed models which isn’t something you can say about most blades, let alone blades from a first-year brand.
The looks
Full disclosure: I haven’t played much golf lately. I’m also not in the camp that believes blades make you a better ball striker. That’s a story we tell ourselves somewhere around the bottom of a range bucket.
Putting the analytical side of my brain in timeout for a moment, these make me want to go find a tee time and do some damage. Probably to my scorecard (but I’m pretty sure I’d have fun doing it).
The look is modern without being offensive. There’s a visible technology story in the cavity and it somehow manages not to be obnoxious about it which is a harder trick to pull off than it sounds. Blades tend to break one of two ways: hide everything in the name of tradition or stamp the back cavity raw with everything you can think of that might convey some kind of tech story.
Series 1 splits the difference. Looks always come down to taste and there will be traditionalists who want nothing to do with a honeycomb in the cavity but for my money this is one of the better attempts at a modernized blade aesthetic.
Pricing and availability
McLaren Series 1 irons are $375 per club in the USA (£360 in the UK, €420 across Europe). The set runs 3-iron through pitching wedge so a seven-club 4-PW build lands at $2,625 and adding the 3-iron gets you to an even $3,000 before you so much as look at a shaft or grip upgrade.
Price is what it is and, to McLaren’s credit, the company isn’t dancing around it. The positioning is premium and there’s no apparent interest, at least in the near term, in running the business the way the rest of the industry runs theirs.
I’m not trying to sell you on the value proposition. I’m just here to remind you that McLaren Series 1 irons exist and you’ll finally be able to order them (albeit with a bit of lead time).
McLaren says inventory arrives at the end of September. Ordering direct at mclarengolf.com currently shows an estimated five- to six-week lead time while Fairway Jockey, also taking pre-orders, lists roughly two weeks.
McLaren Golf products (including Series 1 irons) are sold direct and through custom-fitting channels including Club Champion, True Spec and Fairway Jockey across North America, Europe and South Korea.
For more information, visit McLarenGolf.com.
Leave A Reply