Takomo 201 Irons…The Truth 4 Years Later!

An honest review of the Takomo 201 irons. Do they still hold up?

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This is the month of finding all the hidden gems, things I forgot to review or I never posted. I hit these clubs a couple of years ago and really like them, but I’ve never done a full review. And this brand is certainly deserving of that. So many people on YouTube love this brand. There’s so many golfers on YouTube playing this brand. This is the Tacomao 2011 in my hand. And I’ve extensively tested the 101 and 101T here on this show. I have played the 2011 as I mentioned, but I’ve never taken it out for nine holes of golf. So, let’s see if these irons that were released a few years ago still hold up. We’re going to play nine holes of golf with an overunder of plus one here today. I will be going irons only. We’ll be playing a forward set of T’s in order to do that. And we’re going to have a ton of fun here. Let’s get to work. All right, here is a closer look at the 2011. It is a beautiful iron, I got to say. Nice clean looks, nice milling there on the back. The sole though, that really stands out to me. Nice and thin. This is definitely a player preferred thickness in terms of the sole. and you’ve got this leading edge relief which should help us out of the turf. It’s going to promote a little bit better turf interaction, especially when you’re in the rough. I always like clubs with that. And if I could have my kicking needed too, I’d put it towards the trailing edge as well, but this one just has it there towards the front. Now, in terms of the overall size of this head, I would call this skewing towards again a more player preferred look. A little bit smaller, but it’s definitely not undersized in any way. Certainly not a blade or anything like that. The top line, I would call that medium. And you can also see there is some offset to these clubs. I was actually surprised about how much offset these have. That is going to lend itself to really help folks that struggle with a right side miss. All right? Cuz it’s going to give you a little bit extra time to get that club through the ball and promote a little bit more of a left or draw type of shot if possible. Now, this is a forged club as we can see on the end. And this is forged from a very interesting steel. In fact, it’s marked S200 steel. All right, that’s one I have not seen. We’re going to see how this one feels, but I imagine it’ll feel pretty good being a forged head. Now, when you look down at these clubs, you’re not going to see the back cavity at all. It’s got a really nice shape there, but there is a lot of mass. You can see they shifted the center of gravity down here and cut it out pretty deeply in this cavity, but it’s nice that you don’t see any of that up at a dress, even with the 4iron in hand. Now, I’ve got this one paired with a KBS Tour Light stiff shaft, and I’ve got it on a standard Lamin Cross line here. Really nice package. Let’s take it out on course and put this to the test. All right, first hole here. A little dog leg left. Gets very narrow the further we go here. And there’s a lot of water guarding the whole left side of this hole. So, I’ve got to aim out to the right. I don’t mind missing right, but I cannot miss left. Four iron in hand. Let’s see how this thing feels. Oh boy, it felt great. Tight little draw. nice high ball flight, which you’d expect from this loft structure. Feelwise, that’s what really caught me, though, and that’s why I made that reaction you heard. There have been a couple of really great direct to consumer clubs in terms of feel here over the years. I think the McGregor MT mil is what this one is closest to. That one stood out to me in terms of just great feel. Of course, the Tora golf irons also have exceptional feel, probably their best of class. I’d put those empty mil right underneath that. And I think this is right in line with the MT mil in terms of feel. Boy, for a sub $600 set of irons, you’re getting the feel of something that you could pay thousands of dollars for. Wow. Yeah, I’m impressed with the feel. 192 is how far I hit that. Now, I would be looking to be about 205 with this particular loft. That’s where my stock standard 4 iron would go. And if I really go after it, 215. We’ll try to go after one here in a little bit, but it looks to be maybe just a little short now. It’s still morning. It’s cold out here as well. The ball’s not traveling like it could. I’ve got 138. I’m going to take a little extra club and I’m going to go eight iron here. Oh, I caught it thin. Let’s see if we get any luck or any help from the club here. Stay there. Stay. Stay. Stay stay. It held. I think it held right on the edge. I’ll tell you what, pretty forgiving for as horrible of a swing as that was. That first shot I took, dead middle of the club face. That one I pretty much half scold it. Again, we’ll continue to test more of the forgiveness, I’m sure, as the day goes on. But so far, so good. At least distance-wise, we were fine. So, hey, I’ll take it. I’ll take all the help I can get. All right. So, I could have gone off into the nether world here, but luckily we stayed up. I’m going to take the putter out here because at the same time that I’m shooting this iron video, I’m shooting a video on this putter. This is the ER10 from Even Roll. But you’ll get the sneak peek of how this one performs before that review comes out. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss anything. Settle, settle, settle, settle, settle. All right, not a bad leave here. I will take that. And this is for our par. All right. Love escaping with a par there. I’m sure we’ll hit some better shots into greens cuz we got lots more to test. I got to test stopping power. I’m a little concerned with to be quite honest with you that when I was testing this in the simulator, the spin looked a little low. It was kind of spin I would expect out of a pressed loft structure, but we’ll see here in real life what happens because again, we could circle jerk to the stats all day long, but it’s real life conditions where these clubs play out. That’s why I love being out here on course. All right, longer par five here. And uh again, we’re going to go four iron. It’s going to be a three shot hole most likely. Now, I like to test workability with clubs. So, we’re going to do that here on this shot. My prevailing shot shape, of course, is that draw, but I’ll see if I can work this one a little more left to right. Love to see a nice cut out of this. Very gentle cut. Now, I didn’t exaggerate it necessarily crazily either, but Tacomao on their website says that you will get more workability out of this club than you’re going to get out of the 101, but you’re not going to get as much as you’d get out of the 300 series. So, that 301 cavity back or the muscle back. That’s going to be their most workable club. But, you’re going to be able to shape your shots with these. I think we’ll continue again to test this and especially if we get into some sticky situations here on the course here today, we’ll see how we can control these clubs. But, uh, I’ll take that. All right. I always love to hit every club if I possibly can in a set because I want to test it from the top all the way down to the bottom and everything in between. And one way or the other, we need to make three shots on this hole to get to the green cuz I’m 276 out. So, I’m going to hit a 7 iron, which should be about 160 yard club. Should put us about 110 115 out for the pitching wedge. I don’t have a gap wedge in this set. All of these sets come through four through pitching wedge from Tacomao with the pin on the left. By the way, I am aiming for the right side of this fairway. Oh, felt great again. Really nice peak height. The only problem with that shot is it might be longer than I thought it was going to be. We’ll find out. All right, it turns out I’ve got 80 yards. I hit that one really, really well. I got all of it. So, I can’t unfortunately hit the pitching wedge here. I’m going to hit a 58°ree wedge. Okay, we got a putted bird. Oh, do it. DO IT. OH MY GOSH. All right, par three here. First chance at an ace. And I’ve had some really good chances at aces this year. This weekend I was playing at this tournament here. This was the Champions Tour World Champions Cup presented by Sketchers. Awesome. Awesome tournament. In fact, we did a video from Feather Sound, which you should check out. I’ll leave that link here. But I got to play in the ProAm. First time playing in the ProAm. I knocked one to that tight. And that’s a few times it’s happened to me this year. Happened to me twice in Scottsdale. Once I hit the pin, second time just kind of ran past the hole. It’s happened four times this year. So, we are due. We are due. I’ve got nine iron in hand. 134 is the number. If you watch the show, you know I’m taking about one extra club with these. So, distance-wise, we’ll see how we do. This pin is in a nasty, nasty spot. Probably not a traditionally ace hole, but I’m trying to go low. I’m going to get aggressive here with the line. And it does suit my shot shape here of the draw. Let’s see what we can do. Ooh, it’s a very aggressive line. It is pretty good if it holds. It definitely wanted to check there. Now, there is like a little bit of a downhill. So, I think it rolled down a little bit more, but we’ll check that pitch mark. The other thing is I did catch that a touch thin. You probably heard the contact there. It wasn’t super crispy. I love that though because right on line of where I wanted. Again, didn’t seem to lose any distance. I took a nice easy nine iron swing there. Let’s see where that one finished. Okay, so we’re on the fringe. Still puttible. I want to check the pitch mark here. I want to say it was very close to this pin. Oh, it’s back here. So, I did hit it thin. Again, that is one little concern I’ve got with these clubs is stopping power. And that is based on just my initial testing before I came out here on the course. I took these into the studio and I was looking at the spin numbers. Usually my seven iron, I’m kind of a low spin player anyways. Lives are right around the low 5,000s, maybe 4,900. But uh the 7ir in this particular set, I was hitting it last night about 3900 to about 4,100. So it was about 1,000 RPM low. Again, once I give you some really nice crispy contact, I can tell you if there’s anything to worry about with these. That is one little concern of mine right now. Let’s see if we can make this putt, though. This is very makeable. Oh, I think I judged it perfectly. Speedwise, perfect. I’ll take the tapins. We’re heading to four. Toughest hole on the course. All right, the clubs are putting us in perfect positions right now. Let’s keep it up. Going four iron again here. That’ll do. It’s another fairway. I kind of came inside on that one again. I’ll tell you what I like about these clubs is the miss is not nearly as bad as some other clubs in this category. When you get into like a player’s iron, a swing like that could have resulted in a pretty nasty hook and it was still like pulled, but it was just a gentle draw there if you look at the shot trace. So, forgiveness wise in this category of clubs, we’re right up there at the top for sure. Now, in terms of workability, that’s always the balance. That’s again where you’re probably not going to have as much as other players irons, but hey, I just need a little bit generally. I don’t need a ton. And I would sacrifice some shot shaping capability for straight shots and forgiving shots nine times out of 10. So, I like what I’m seeing here early of the 2011’s. We still got this hole and then five more to play after this. So, we’ll continue to test everything. Right now, I’ve got 189 in. This is going to be a tough shot. Five iron is going to be the club. Nowhere to miss on this hole. That’s why this hole is so difficult. Well, I got a bunker left after I carry a ton of water. I got water all along the right. And the green is very bold. So, if you miss the green, you could run off into one of those areas very easily. Now, we talked about that offset in the closer look section. I haven’t mentioned it yet with the four iron, but here with the five iron, you’re getting for a player’s iron maybe a little more offset than you’d normally expect, but I don’t think it’s egregious. The top line also being kind of that medium top line, I think it’s a forgiving look down at a dress. I need the forgiveness right now because this is a imposing shot I’ve got. It’s the hardest shot we’ve had by far. Oh, struck beautifully. Oh, baby. I think it’s up there or really close. And when I say struck beautifully, it just came off the club on the perfect line. It wasn’t really struck beautifully. It was struck right there. So, again, these clubs continue to impress me with their forgiveness. I’m so glad I had it right there cuz I don’t know. I just did not feel confident on this shot. Many a round has been ruined on this hole for me and all the members here at Carolwood. It’s a really, really tough one. And we did come up a little short. A little short, but uh I’ll take that. It was right on line. And again, you miss right or left, you’re dead here. So that was the perfect miss. You got to know where to miss on a golf course. That was it. And we weren’t super short, but we’ll call it 10 yards short. So, interestingly enough, I mean, this loft structure, I’d expect a little more out of, but whatever it’s lacking in a little bit of distance, it’s certainly making up for in that forgiveness as we talked about. See if I can chip this one close. I’d love to get out of here with a par. Oh, sit. Okay. Oh. All right. So, another par there. Escape again. The irons are not putting me into any trouble right now. That is huge. huge. We’re headed to maybe a slightly easier hole, at least the T-shot, big open fairway here. I’m going to really take a rip. Let’s keep the party rolling here with the four iron. Haven’t missed a fairway yet. And this is the widest one. So, I don’t expect to miss this one unless it’s a really poor strike. But let’s put the positive thoughts in our heads. Looking for uh nice little draw on this dog leg left. No. Drew it more than I wanted to, but it was nice to see a little bit more workability here on the clubs. Now, they mowed this fairway in and they cut a lot of fairway off here. Sneaky green keepers were actually in the rough, but that’s fine because there’s something else I want to test here. Now, I mentioned in the closer look that there’s some nice relief towards the leading edge of these clubs. What that always helps is turf interaction. Now, our rough is not grown up super high anyways during the winter. It’s a little thinner here at Carolwood, but we’ve got a 131 shot. A little touch of wind behind me. So, I’m going to go pitching wedge here. And we’re going to test a bit of the turf interaction of these clubs. Oh, bad swing. Very bad swing. Little loose there. Distance-wise looked fine. I’m off the green chip in though. That was all me. One thing that again the trailing edge will help is in thicker rough a lot of times you come through the ball and the club wants to turn. All right, if it turns then I usually miss them left. I’ve actually missed that one right. That was more to do with the swing. I will say the club had no turn in it in this rough at least. All right, so putting the wedge game to the test here. I guess this is a testament to the clubs and just how forgiving they are because my swings have not been great. We still have not had a chance to check pitch marks and stopping power. Now five holes in, but also even par. Let’s see if we can keep it up. I got to hit a good chip shot here to do that. Woo! Oh, beautiful. 148’s the number. I’m starting to loosen up here. I’m going to go 9 iron and see if we can take this one on. Hopefully make a pitch mark on the green. Oh, decent swing, but pulled it. I think I’m going to miss the green again. Plenty of distance. In fact, I kind of oversw results, but again, it could be worse. So, I do find these clubs to be extremely forgiving. All right, this is going to be my landing spot. I’m on like a kind of a side downhill here. This is going to be a very difficult shot. I’m not going to have much of a stance either. Oh, came out sideways. That doesn’t surprise me, honestly. Saddle, don’t go in the other bunker. I think it did. Oh my god. Oh my god. Well, there’s the end of our real steady golf. But this is where I’ve got to just bear down and hopefully come out of here with a bogey. All right, we’re not in, which I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing cuz this isn’t that easy of a shot either. I might have wanted the bunker shot. I’ve uh clubed down to a 54°ree wedge because on this big slope, I’ve actually got to deloft a little bit or else I go way up high in the air. So, boy, it’s going to have to take a real good shot here to save a bogey. It’s as good as I can do, I think. All right. Lucky to escape with a bogey there. That puts us on the number, and that means no more bad swings. I’ve got to make good swings if we’re going to hit the plus one or better number. I think these irons are more than capable of producing a lot of birdies for me. I just got to put some good swings in the ball. Let’s do it right now. We’ve got a par five. Well, I can’t say we’ve hit every fairway now because we did miss that last fairway by about two, three inches. That is another fairway, though. Call that four out of five. I’m really happy with the T-shots with these clubs. Four irons are something that I’ve been considering big time taking out of my bag and replacing with a hybrid. In fact, if you look at my current setup here, I did just that for the first time ever. I played around on Saturday in that ProAm that I was telling you about and I replaced the 4iron with a hybrid because it’s a tough club to hit for us amateurs. And if you’re not striking a club well, why keep it in the bag, right? Again, that just goes to show you how good these clubs are performing. Four iron’s been pretty deadly. All right, doing the mental math here. I’m going to go five iron cuz I really want to put a pitching wedge in my hand. I don’t want to do what we did on the second hole, that other par five where I end up having to hit a 58°ree wedge. I really would like to hit a a club here in this set, the pitching wedge. So, I’m going five iron. Just need to put a nice strike on it. Don’t need to kill it. Just smooth. And that was exactly what I got. Beautiful. Nice turf interaction. Love the feel. Love the sound. I haven’t talked sound with these irons, but the sound is exceptional. Goes right along with that feel. Usually goes hand in hand with clubs. And no different here. All right, 115 is the number. I got pitching wedge in hand here. Just a nice smooth swing should do it cuz I do have again a little touch of wind behind me. So, I got plenty of club. I just want to hit the middle of the green. Honestly, I’ve done that. We’re going to hit a green, guys. How about that? Maybe it’s going to stay and maybe it’s going to roll off the back out of the rough. I expect to lose a little bit of spin, but that’s honestly surprising. Searching here for my pitch mark. This is a mark. I don’t know if it’s mine. I kind of doubt that’s mine. Maybe that was mine. Either way, I’m way back here. Disappointing, honestly, from 115 out. Not going to lie, a little disappointing, but let’s make the best of it here. I need a good chip to stay on track for our overunder. Go, go. Well, that’s short. Woo! I got four feet coming back here. Three putt hurts. Hurts the soul. Should have been an easy par, but when I couldn’t hold the green there, that spelled disaster right from the get-go, but I should have done better. Either way, we need two birdies now if we are going to hit that overunder. So, I need some good swings. Four iron to start. Oh boy, I’ll tell you what, the four iron has not let me down today. That’s five out of six fairways. Now, the fog is rolling in here. The conditions are getting a little stickier and uh two tough holes here to finish. So, we’re going to need some good swings. I’ve got 161 to the pin, which seems to be about a middle of the green pin. A lot of wind into me, though. I’m going to take more club than I normally would. Normally, you would be hitting an eight. If it was like calm conditions with the wind into me, I’d probably be hitting a seven with my own set. With this set, I’m actually going to hit a six. But, I’m going to put a nice hopefully smooth swing on it. I did that. That’s a really good strike drawn in there. And we got a birdie putt. Man, these clubs feel great. They’re just not completely stopping like I’d like to see them. We’re going to see that pitch mark, but you can see it on the camera already. That one definitely rolled out a little bit more than I would have liked to have seen. And I’ve been waiting to show you this the entire time as well. I’ve got to I got to pitch a little mere mortal gear. We’ve got our new gift sets. All right. And if you really do love the show and you love honest independent reviews, I’m not getting paid by any of these club manufacturers. Then one thing you can do to support us is to purchase some of the things that we’re selling. And this is a really nice gift set here for the holidays. You’ve got a two-way ball marker and a beautiful ceramic. And you’ve got a nice divid tool with another smaller ball marker. So this four piece set in a beautiful gift box available on our website. I’m going to finally get a chance to actually use my tool here. It has been uh a long time coming on the eighth pole to really fix a good pitch mark. All right, here it is. Now, a few things you got to know about this green and about the conditions here today in order to really give you good information is we are on an ups slope. Okay, so that would also stop spin a little bit more than normal, but it’s also moving this way. We saw that ball move right to left, so that definitely comes into play. But it hit right here and we finished over here. A little bit longer of a walk than I’d like to take. I think it’s going to be acceptable, but the spin is not going to blow you away with these irons. If you need more spin, the 301’s going to be the move. I’d say these are much closer to the 101’s than they are to the 301’s in terms of the spin that they’re going to generate. I’m already a low spin player, so I generally need an iron that gives me a little more help. But we got a birdie putt here. Uphill, right to left. Oh, do it. Do it. Do it. Oh, you got to hit it. I got a little tentative on a birdie putt. It was right on line. All right, last hole. Tough one to finish. Going for one more time. This has been my money club in the whole set for sure. But after I hit this drive, we are going to rank not only the clubs of my swing here, but we’re going to come up with a score here for the 2011’s based on our five grading criteria. If we were just going off four irons, these would be very, very high. That’s how good I’ve been hitting it. There we go. So, every fairway except one that I missed by two inches today. Really nice. All right, so we rank on five criteria for all clubs. It’s really important that you stay to the end of these reviews to see this number because, you know, there’s things I could really love about a club, but there’s things that they somehow fall short. And if you don’t watch all the way to the end, you don’t really have a good comparison against all the clubs. I get so many comments from folks. Do you like club A or club B. If you look at the comments of any of these videos, you’ll see a lot of those. Well, if you stick around to the end, you look at the score, you’ll know the categories these clubs do well in and how they compare against everything else. So, it’s really important you stick around to the end. So, thanks for doing that cuz you’re watching this, you are here. The first category here is going to be distance. I’m going to give these clubs a four out of five. They’re certainly not the longest in this category. I think there’s other things these clubs do better than distance, but I think it’s ample. I did have to hit a little bit more club there on that last hole. If you take into account the extra roll out these clubs going to give you though, especially in the fairway and things like that, I think it’s going to be very sufficient for most people. So, four out of five is a score there. Now, when it comes to forgiveness, that’s where these clubs to me really shine. I’m going to give it a full five out of five for forgiveness in this category of club. It’s about as forgiving as it gets. Now, when it comes to workability, I thought it was pretty good. Pretty good. And I think four is probably the right score there for workability. You’re going to be able to shape your shots. Not going to be as much as you can with some real player clubs. Blades, things like that are going to be a lot more shapable. But in this category of clubs, I think these are pretty good. I’m going to call it a four. When it comes to aesthetics, looks, feel, and sound. Another place I really think these clubs excel. And for me, they’re going to get a full five out of five for looks, feel, and sound. Really clean looks at this price point. The sound and feel are I can’t say second to none because I do think the Torah golf clubs probably beat it out by a touch in terms of feel, but they’re right up there again with the McGregor’s and soundwise excellent and looks wise excellent. So, five out of five for sure. When it comes to value, I’m going to again give this a full five out of five. Tacoma does a great job with their pricing structure. Even with the tariffs and everything that’s happened this year, they’ve done a really good job of keeping prices consistent. little touches you get with these clubs, you might not get to see on reviews that I get to see. For instance, when I unbox these clubs, a lot of times direct to consumer companies will just they’ll nicely package them, but they’ll kind of throw them in the box. Nothing else. These actually come cushioned. There was a hat and a towel Tacomao branded inside my box. It was a little bit of an extra touch that you don’t necessarily get from some of the other direct to consumer brands. And I don’t think they did that for me as a reviewer. I think they do that for everyone. So, value-wise, really excellent. It’s always been excellent from Tacoma. They’re the brand that really burst on the scene and put direct to consumer irons on the map, at least here on YouTube, and they continue to price things really well. So, kudos to them. So, a great score here for the Tacoma Irons. There are a few places where these are going to fall short for me. And maybe I wouldn’t put them in my bag personally. I think stopping power is the one concern that I would have, but it depends on the conditions that you play. So, if you play fast and firm golf courses, they’re going to be different from courses that are going to have a little bit more moisture on them. I’m going to stop balls a little bit easier anyways. We’re playing in the winter time. Uh there’s going to be less spin out here. But I think these clubs maybe don’t suit my game perfectly in that respect. But like I said, the reason we test all these clubs is so you can see what’s important to you. All right? And I think these things have done pretty darn well, and the score reflects that. Now, the other thing is who are these clubs best suited for? I always like to give you that advice as well. So, I don’t think these are for the extreme lower handicaps. Again, I think you’d be looking at the 301 series if you are maybe 7 and below. I see these as more of like an 18 to a 8. All right. I think that’s the sweet spot for these particular clubs. For me, it’s nice that Tacoma has this entire range from the 101’s all the way down. There’s definitely going to be a little bit of overlap here between the 101’s the 2011’s in my opinion. And it may just come down to looks for a lot of people. I got one more shot here. But we’re not going to hit the overunder unless I hold this one out. But it’s going to be a heck of a shot to do that cuz I have 199. I got to go four iron again. The wind’s into us, so I don’t honestly think I can get there. But we’ll try to put one more nice swing on this. I pulled it. That was all me. Get down. Could have been worse. That as bad of a swing as that was, it could have been worse. Oh, it was not the way I wanted to finish this video. I’m on a rock. I mean, I could hit it, but I’m not going to destroy the clubs here on the first round. So, unfortunately, I got to take a drop. We’re hitting four from here. Good distance, bad direction. Downhill, right to left. Got to get the speed right. Oh, baby. I got a little tentative there. That was me, though. I hope you’ve enjoyed this review. I’ll catch you back here next time on another edition of Let’s Play Through.