The Green Fee The JPX line up from Mizuno has been know its entire life as the game improvement line up. The MP line up on the other hand is always known as the better players line up. Thats until Brooks Koepka went off at majors and brought the JPX line up to the tour market.
JPX 921 Tour
When you win a major with an iron it can be really hard to change it too much. The player wont want many changes and the company wont want to rock the boat too much. Well this is exactly what has happened with the JPX 921. The tweaks you will find on the iron are fairly minor. We are talking some small stuff like a thinner sole for improved turf interaction. They have also refined the support structure on the club to provide some more forgiveness. The 919 was weighte dout towards the toe and Mizuno decided to take some of the toe weight out and move it towards the center which should help increase the feel. More mass behind the sweet spot equals better feel.
JPX Hot Metal and JPX Hot Metal Pro
This is when we venture into a side of Mizuno they used to not be known for but people have really taken notice of. Lets talk about Mizunos cast line up. The Hot Metal has been wildly successful for Mizuno and just like with the Tours why change up a good thing? Well for one the market demands new irons at least every two years. We can all complain about release cycles being too short but if you dont release at least every two years you are WAY behind. Since they were so successful how did they improve it? Well first off Mizuino has modified their support structure to provid emore forgiverness. In addition to this you can expect more distance thanks to a thinner face. This thinner face increases ball speed. Also due to the changes in the support structure they were able to lower the Center of Gravity. In laymans terms what does this mean? It means Mizuno was able to strengthen the lofts without sacrificing launch conditions like launch angle and spin.
In my personal opinion the Hot Metal Pro was damn near a perfect iron. It went a mile, landed soft and felt great. I loved it. The only big change I would have made was to just tighten up the whole package. I think this clip from one of my favorite movies sums it up perfectly. So far it does seem that Mizuno has listened to my calls. The club is bigger overall but it is tighter. The short irons have been packed into a better over all package. They didnt have much to change and frankly they didnt change much!
JPX 921 Forged
If you were expecting major changes the JPX 921 Forged is the iron that you satisfy that for you. Mizuno has always been known for their Tag line “Nothing feels like a Mizuno”. The feel comes from two places, the metal they use and their system of forging the clubs. Well Mizuno is changing the metal used to forge the clubs and I have to admit it could change how things feel. Moving from 1025E to Chromoly is a big risk. Its a risk that Mizuno says keeps the feel and increases durability. The other thing the switch to chromoly does allows Mizuno to make the faces thinner and increase the ball speed. According to MGS, Mizuno had really begun to fall behind in distance to other irons in this category of irons. Mizuno has never been one to make the lofts stronger so they needed to find a way to increase the distance. It is a one piece forging of the Chromoly and requires an extra strike to get it finalized.
Of all the clubs announced this is the most intriguing from a performance standpoint. Mizuno is taking a huge risk with the metal change in an effort to keep up distance wise. Mizuno has always been known as the best feeling iron out there. If they lose that it, how big is the loss going to be for Mizuno?
Final Thoughts
Overall its a bunch of small changes for most of the line up. Were talking some small weighting changes and some support structure changes. It will be interesting to see if the Chromoly “feels” like a Mizuno. For Mizuno’s sake I hope it does. For more information pricing, check the lineup here