TaylorMade Qi Irons

The new Taylormade Qi irons prompt a rather obvious question.

If TaylorMade’s new driver is the Qi10, why aren’t their new game-improvement irons also Qi10?

We’ll tell you the answer in a bit. But for you non-TaylorMade fans out there, it might just jolt your long-held beliefs.

And jolting long-held beliefs appears to be a theme with 2024 iron releases. After years of using raw distance and forgiveness as game-improvement iron talking points, OEMs appear to be pulling in the reins ever so slightly. They still love their distance but messaging is shifting towards – gulp – accuracy.  

And TaylorMade, long considered by online warriors as the key culprit in wacky distance claims to the point of it becoming a cliché, is actually leading the accuracy charge.

And its battle cry for the new Qi irons?

Straight Distance.

Can the TaylorMade Qi irons deliver on that promise?

TaylorMade Qi Irons: Following a Legend

Well, maybe not a legend but you can’t deny the TaylorMade Qi irons have a pretty tough act to follow. The 2022 TaylorMade Stealth irons were the first to ever cop back-to-back titles in MyGolfSpy’s game-improvement iron testing.

And the first rule in product development when you’re replacing a top performer?

Don’t f**k it up.

In our 2023 testing, the Stealth was tops in forgiveness (edging out, interestingly, the bargain-priced Ram FX77 irons) and fourth in accuracy. You might be surprised to learn it finished seventh overall (out of 11 models tested) for distance.  From a design goal standpoint, if you’re TaylorMade, you want to maintain forgiveness and maybe tighten up accuracy while giving the irons a little more juice compared to the field.

In TaylorMade’s 2024 universe, it’s called Straight Distance.

Making Long Irons Straighter

Ask any golfer what the hardest club to hit consistently is and they’ll tell you it’s the long iron. Ask any fitter or teaching pro and they’ll tell you the same thing. I know, it’s not exactly breaking news, but it is the hook TaylorMade is hanging its Qi hat on.

And if you ask game-improvement golfers what their common long iron miss is, they’ll tell you it’s to the right. Again, that’s not news.

Part of that is on the golfer but TaylorMade says virtually every OEM’s game-improvement iron has a right bias built into it. Especially the long irons.

“Why build in a right tendency that will only make the most common miss worse?” wonders Matt Bovee, TaylorMade’s Product Creation Director for irons. “Why make it worse? It doesn’t make any sense.”

You’d think that with all the offset and modern AI technology, GI irons would, if anything, have a left bias. But according to TaylorMade, geometry and physics say otherwise.

“Look at an iron face,” says Bovee. “The toe is longer than the heel from top to bottom. At the point of impact, which side will flex more? The long side.”

So if the toe area flexes more, logic dictates it will rebound more. And if the heel is shorter top to bottom, it flexes less and, therefore, rebounds less.

“That rebound pattern puts cut spin on the golf ball,” says Bovee. “That creates the right bias.”

And if you’re an out-to-in long-iron swinger with a leave-the-face-open tendency, that right bias doesn’t help one damn bit. It doesn’t matter how forgiving a club is.

Just a Jump to the Left …

If all this is true (and it does check enough of the boxes), why is it that no one’s figured out how to fix it? 

Well, face-flexing in GI irons, at least to the extent they flex now, is a relatively recent phenomenon. OEMs have been chasing maximum face flexification (I know that’s not a word. Work with me, folks.) for years like it was water in the desert. And this excessive right bias seems to be simply an unintended consequence.

TaylorMade says it has figured out how to mitigate if not correct excessive right bias by controlling the face flexibility profile from heel to toe. The company says it’s the result of what it calls its New Integrated System Design.

“Our technologies are now able to talk to one another during the design process,” says Bovee. “The face technology can talk to the Speed Pocket and both can talk to the mass distribution inside the club head.”

TaylorMade never once uttered the words “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning.” But unless those technologies are empathic, there must be a supercomputer hiding in the woodshed somewhere.

“When you change one thing, like your face design, your Speed Pocket may need to perform differently,” explains Bovee. “Where you want to position the mass inside the clubhead may need to be different.”

TaylorMade is taking a club-by-club approach to face design. The variable-thickness face on those troublesome long irons will have more mass on the toe area and little less in the heel to balance flex. The new face pairs with a new Speed Pocket design that stiffens up the lower leading edge to help solve another long-iron problem – getting the damn ball up in the air.

And a Step to the Right …

TaylorMade is quick to say the new Qi irons aren’t going to turn your average 18-handicapper into a baby draw-shooting machine. The ball may still go right, just not out of control (or out of play) right.

As mentioned, each club in the new TaylorMade Qi irons set is designed for optimized performance, a concept that TaylorMade started with its new P790 irons. To further that cause, TaylorMade is introducing FLTD CG™ to the new Qi irons.

As a concept, FLTD CG™ doesn’t sound all that earth-shattering. As the irons get shorter, the CG gets higher to control launch and promote spin. The TaylorMade spin, however, is they’re strategically placing the CG in concert with each club’s unique face pattern.

“We’re controlling that flight window and adding spin where we need it,” says Bovee. “That’s allowing players to hit shots with more success more often because we’ve thought about how performance can be crafted into each individual iron.”

The new TaylorMade Qi irons are also getting a bit of an extension. The blade itself is one millimeter longer than Stealth. That may not sound like a lot but TaylorMade says that one measly extra millimeter increases the Qi’s sweet spot size by 14 percent, up to 165 square millimeters.

In theory, that should make Qi even more forgiving than Stealth, which is no small trick.

TaylorMade Qi Irons: Cap Backs and Toe Wraps

Two key technologies that worked so well with Stealth are being carried over to the TaylorMade Qi irons. The first, Cap Back, actually dates back to SIM2. It’s a low-density polymer cap that creates a kind of hollow body. Most GI irons will have a badge of some sort attached to the back of the club face. It’s not just there for decoration or branding. It dampens noise and vibration.

It does, however, come at a cost: it limits how much the face can flex.

“Anyone bonding a badge to the face is slowing the face down. That’s just physics,” says Bovee. “(Cap Back) allows us to deliver the fastest face we possible can and also the largest sweet spot we possibly can.”

The Cap Back polymer is also eight times lighter than steel and, in club design, every gram counts.

Toe Wrap Construction is also about mass. That polymer cap extends high on the toe, from where TaylorMade has carved out up to 10 grams of steel. Toe Wrap pushed down the CG, which again helps launch in the long irons.

The new TaylorMade Qi irons maintain the clean, streamlined looks of Stealth. That’s an industry-wide trend that’s more than welcome, as game-improvement irons are getting less blinged out every year. Another nice little tidbit: the Qi irons are getting a polished chrome finish instead of the dull, brushed satin look of years gone by.

Look, game-improvement irons may not be your cup of tea but you can’t deny they’re getting better looking.

TaylorMade Qi HL: Higher and Lighter

TaylorMade is following another industry trend by offering a lighter, weaker-lofted game-improvement alternative: the Qi HL. You might think HL stands for High Launch. It’s a good bet on your part.

But it’s wrong.

“HL stands for higher and lighter,” says Bovee. “It’s designed for players who need a little extra help getting the ball in the air.”

Specifically, the TaylorMade Qi HL irons are lighter all the way around – in the head, shaft and grip, up to 26 grams lighter than the standard Qi model. And the lofts are two degrees weaker across the board. Every OEM, it seems, is doing this with their GI irons because (as we check our notes) an awful lot of golfers are getting older and slowing down. And there’s a growing segment of golfers who are women who don’t have the same swing speed as some men.

It’s a game, after all. And games are supposed to be fun.

Hey, You Were Gonna Tell Us Why These Aren’t Called Qi10!

That’s true, I was. And, no, I didn’t forget.

According to TaylorMade, this was intentional for one very good reason. Starting with the Stealth iron release in 2022, TaylorMade has decided to go with an every two-year life-cycle for its game-improvement irons.

For those out there parroting that outdated and very tiresome new-club-every-six-weeks nonsense, that’s newsworthy, don’t you think?

For years, TaylorMade, along with Callaway and COBRA, have released GI irons every year with the same overall branding as their new metalwoods. But Stealth was TaylorMade’s horse for the past two years and now we’re on to Qi. I’m guessing that means next year’s TaylorMade driver will be Qi11 or something but the irons will stay current as Qi.

On a practical level, it does give Bovee and his team an extra year to develop technology that’s going to be a meaningful improvement over the previous generation. Testing will tell, of course, if that’s the case with the Qis.

TaylorMade Qi Irons: Specs, Price and Availability

The TaylorMade Qi irons will be offered in seven-piece sets (5i-AW) with an optional 4-iron, sand wedge and lob wedge available. The men’s option will be available for righties and lefties except for the lob wedge which will be right-handed only.  

The standard Qi men’s set comes stock with the KBS Max MT 85 shaft in steel (S- and R-flex) or the Fujikura Ventus Blue in graphite (7S, 6R and 5A). Stock grip is the 47-gram Lamkin Crossline. The TaylorMade Qi HL comes stock with the KBS Max Lite shaft in steel and the 40-gram Fujikura Speeder NX TCS in graphite. Stock grip is the 42-gram Golf Pride Tour Velvet.

The women’s models for both sets will come in right-handed only. The 40-gram Fujikura Speeder NX TCS is the stock shaft and the 40-gram Lamkin ST is the stock grip.

The TaylorMade Qi irons will retail for $1,099 in steel and $1,199 in graphite.

They’re available for pre-order starting today. The standard TaylorMade Qi irons hit retail on Feb. 2 while the Qi HL irons will be available starting March 15.

For more information, hit up the TaylorMade website.