Mizuno Pro Irons 2024 – Review

By Carl Bianco
Head PGA Professional, Woking Golf Club

Wow that feels amazing they do say nothing feels like a mauno and I can assure you that these new range of mauno pro irons feel every bit as good as every Muno I’ve ever hit if not better in some regards today I’m just going to introduce you to the three models I’ll

Go through them one by one show you what each of them are meant to do then we’ll have a look to see if they actually do it um uh and then at the end uh I will tell you which model of I have already ordered for my bag for this year and I

Can’t wait for them to arrive they’re absolutely fantastic let’s get stuck in so the first model is the mauno 241 the first part of the number 24 is just the year 2024 so the model 241 is their bladed most neat and compact blade that Mauna have ever made so it’s a touch

Smaller uh in overall head size uh giving it more maneuverability the smaller the head the better the feel as well so you’ll every bit of mauno feel is in this head here I’ll just show you it in closeup form there’s the back of it the very thin bottom Edge and just

Beautiful mauno looks all around this year the changes that have been made the weight has been a little bit more centered behind the impact area of the club again increasing feel and the sole width is the same but the bounce angle is slightly greater now for you and me

Means that it’s going to interact better with the turf there’s less chance of a fat shot which is great news but like any blade there’s no other bells and whistles there’s no Hollow compartments no tungsten weights nothing at all and if you do not hit the middle of the club

Or very close to it you’re not going to get a lot of help from this club it’s not that forgiving some people like that some people love to know and have the instant feedback of uh them not hitting the middle of the club but it does

Result in quite a big drop off in ball speed uh and therefore for how far the ball goes so I’ve been hitting a few shots of this I mean it is utterly beautiful to hit feels like hitting a bit of wet butter um which you’d expect from auno but when I’ve missed the

Middle and I tend to catch the ball a slightly low and off the toe if anything um the ball speed drops off and this is a 161 yard carry uh to the flag par three overw waterer and you can see in the top right there the red dots I’ve

Actually failed to make the putting surface on three or four other shots there where I’ve not caught the middle of the club so in terms of playability is this what what you want with your game do you like the feedback are you willing to put up

With bad shots um or bad results from a shot that wasn’t that far off the middle that’s the sort of questions you’re going to have to ask yourself but ultimately they do look amazing uh and the feel of them is is something else so

I’ll hit one see if I can get one to carry okay not quite off the middle needs to go a bit excellent okay so it just carried on to the putting surface but that really wasn’t very far off the middle just felt a little bit heavy uh and I wish I

Really really wish I found the middle of the club often enough to make this a viable choice for me um but as you’ll see in the figures in a minute not they’re not for me you can blend them so you could have these in the lower part

Of the bag uh and you could go for something more helpful in the top end of the bag but wait till you see the next model because that’s sort of um problem is covered with the next set so the next model in the range is

The 243 this is sits in the middle here and it’s probably the most interesting set for me in that it’s a blended set within a set so what I mean by that is the 89 wedge and Gat wedge in this uh set of irons is a solid forged piece of

Metal but then when you go 76 6 54 you’ll find that there’s a micro slotted cavity which you can’t see um but and then weights are applied inside the head they’re able to move the center of gravity away from the face giving you a much bigger Sweet Spot uh and a higher

Launch making the long ions easier it’s also a slightly different metal from the seven ion down to the four ion as opposed to the short ion so you end up with a scoring end of the bag and a helpful end of the bag as I call it so a

Set a blended set within a set and I think this has got a lot of future for most golfers who once they get to 150 yards in are looking to score but out from outside 150 yards probably more focuses on a decent strike uh than actually getting it close to the flag I

Think that’s a fair sh so this looks exactly like this on the back you can see this is the seven iron so it’s the first of the irons with a pocketed cavity there’s a little cover over there compared to its predecessor again there’s more weight centered behind the

Impact area increases the feel no end it’s fractionally smaller blade than the version of this last time but again the bounce angle is increased to just facilitate a better strike and if you were to catch it slightly heavy the Leading Edge isn’t going to snag as much

Therefore it’s just going to be more forgiving on those not quite perfect strikes so really enjoyed hitting this one we’d expect a little bit more out of this one because of the um different type of metal and the fact that there’s a cavity uh also there’s two degrees

Less Loft on this club than the blade uh which because of the higher launch they’ve been able to do that and therefore we get a little bit more distance let’s see how this one goes oh that feels great so you’ll see I mean it’s just on the green there that

One’s gone past the flag to the back of the green and both seven irons this the blade and this one but you can see it’s beginning to make a difference as to how far the ball goes and therefore what choices of club I’m going to have over a

Period of a season the shorter Club I can use basically the better I’m going to be at scoring so that’s the 243 uh let’s move on to its big sister now the 245 and see what that can do let’s move on to the 245 then this is

The big sister to the other two and you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’d shown you the blade Club again the 241 because it’s modeled on exactly the same Aesthetics as a blade for all intents and purposes it looks like a blade when you uh first set eyes on it but inside

The club head there’s a lot going on every single one of the two four FS throughout the set from wedge right down uh is hollow uh but there’s been so much acoustic engineering gone on within the head that you honestly can’t tell uh I was surprised to hear they were Hollow

This time around because the the feel is exactly the same as I got off the fully solid bladed club which is amazing again a slightly harder metal uh than the blade but it’s still forg that gives a bit more bull speed and because it’s a wider Sole and a bigger head they’ve

Been able to move the weight away from the face hence increasing The Sweet Spot and also moving the weight down nearer to the ground increasing the launch making them even easier to hit there’s also been a 50% increase in the amount of tungsten in the head so again just

Pulling that sweet spot bigger and bigger and bigger across the face uh at the same time as making the head fractionally smaller so these now appeal are going to appeal to much much better players uh in fact Luke Donald last night on social media just revealed his

What’s in the bag and he has changed from Blades which he’s used forever uh up to these for this playing season that’s how that’s how close to a blade they look and perform but as he’s getting older as I am the extra distance is very very welcome so again less LOF

Than the previous two models just coming down a fraction going to give us more ball speed going to give us us a bit of a longer shot and when you couple that with the Forgiveness the feel and the sound and the looks of a mauno this is

Going to be hard to beat this will be on everyone’s wish list this year I fancy so let’s have a bit of fun with the 245 that’s a really good example I absolutely missed that one um and completely out the toe and off the bottom and it’s still gone as far as my

243 which I absolutely killed and that would mean I got away with murder there carried that what did I carry that nearly 170 yards off a pretty poor Mish hit let’s see if I can find the middle of one there we are so you’ll see this one will air mail

The green and go straight into the bunker at the back and you can see now on just because I’ve used this hole here the the the bladed 7 IM was struggling to get to the front edge the 243 was just past the flag that’s the green dots

On the screen there and most of the blue dots you can see unless I miss the striker in the back bunker so that’s going to be a big change to how you which club you’re selecting on different holes and again I think for scoring purposes for those of you struggle for

Distance a little bit and but love goodlook golf clubs this is going to be really really hard to beat so let’s have a look at the numbers now and see if it actually backs up what mauno are saying uh and then we’ll finish up I’ll hit a

Few shape shots for you and tell you which clubs I’ve chosen for my bag this year so let’s have a quick whiz through the numbers not too long so it’s boring for some people but it I find it quite interesting the three model heads are here the blade uh the mid cavity and

Then the hollow one at the bottom ball speed as we’d expect slowest off the blade middle and then a ridiculously high number off the 245 that’s very high for me I have an average Club speed of around about 86 87 mph with 79 uh and that’s a very good return and this one

Was higher on a lot of shots but of course the poor shots really drag that average down and just check out the standard deviations underneath you can see that the standard deviation is nearly double that of the other clubs so when you do miss the middle you get

Punished more as we know launch angle pretty much as per The Lofts highest middle and lowest totally to be expected and the backspin is related to The Loft so again the highest backs spin mid and low anything over 5,000 is playable with a 79 and is likely to want to stop I

Prefer something in the high 5000 which I’m getting with the middle one here and then the blade obviously is going to be the spinni carry distances this is a bit we’re all interested in I carried the uh Blade 2 152 on average there were quite

A few in the 157 58 when I really caught it because this has been dragged down by my not such good strike uh with the 243 and the 245 the standard deviation was really low uh they were really tight even on off center hit so you can see that for all three being

Seven irons the there is a definite difference in what these clubs are going to do uh about 10 yards per Club as viewed here with no realistic change in dispersion if anything the bigger and more Hollow the head of this club is got the tightest dispersion rather than the

Blade which is a lot bigger here so in recap what have we learned about these new three irons well they all feel great all the three irons here how are we going to choose which one’s most suitable for each player well a lot of that all depend on Club head speed how

Far you need to hit the ball want to hit the ball how much forgiveness will help your game or do you hit the middle of the club quite often and don’t need that forgiveness first thing to say is the blade is just that it’s a blade it won’t

Be for everyone it is beautiful you’ve got to kind of like a bit of punishment for bad shots if you’re going to go for the blade but the reward the upside is probably the most enviable set of golf clubs anywhere in a in in a bag are

Going to be yours so we do have some bladed players here at woking and they’re going to absolutely love this being a little bit smaller and neater than before for me I don’t hit the middle often enough and as I’m getting older I need a bit more distance than

That blade can offer but I can hope one day second one the 245 who’s that going to be sued to well I think this is the set which is going to be for low handicapp is type players maybe 12 and Below people who like goodlooking golf clubs cuz they really are good-looking

Appreciate the feel of a fully forged club which again bit old school now but this is forged with serious science behind it so there’s a bit of everything here from a on down don’t forget they’re solid onepiece forged softest metal Golf Club so they’re going to feel wonderful

And then there’s a bit of help in the top end this is the set that I’ve gone for I’ve played around with all of them you might ask well why didn’t you get the extra distance that the 245 offered and the Forgiveness well I’ve cut myself

A bit of slack I used to use blades I’ve met myself in the middle if you like and I just think that actually with if I start hitting a 7 iron 175 yards which is kind of my average on here it puts too much stress on my short game because

Suddenly my wedge is going to go 145 or 150 possibly and and I it leaves me too much to do in the scoring zone so there is such a thing as hitting it too far and I believe I want I don’t want my seven iron to start going that sort of

Distance purely because it leaves me with a lot of work to do with very few clubs from 80 yards to 145 yards so my choice is the 243 for this coming year and then the 245 well this is going to be the most popular I think it is beautiful it’s had

The most upgrades uh there’s the most science involved with this one uh but now that it sounds better looks better um I just I know the ball’s even hotter off the face than it was last time I think this is going to be a real winner it’s a little bit more expensive than

The others I don’t quite know what the retail prices are going to be yet but it’s a fraction more than the others um but for those who appreciate the fin of things wellmade goodlook performs well with no compromises whatsoever this has to be worth a hit so I’m just going to

Hit a few more if you want to come and try these before before they launched on the country please give the shop a ring because we’re fitting them now and people are queuing up uh at the top of the queue to receive their sets for the upcoming year hopefully I’m the very

First in the queue um and we will see if you know something that you’re interested in with all mauno custom fitting we don’t charge for the fitting the shaft options there’s about 88 different shaft options that are available without an upcharge and the any grip that you want is again no up

Charges whatsoever so what you see is what you get with zuno no hidden costs and we’ll provide Our advice for free as well so I’m going to grab my club the one that I’ve ordered I’m just going to see and what I can do in terms of

Playing a few shots I’m going to play a draw because I like to move the ball that way about once every 10 years well as little as I can I just need to make sure it can be done yeah so I feel with this with this

Club it just feels great but I can maneuver the at will um much easier than I can with some of the bigger headed more forgiving models I mean that’s obviously a sizable draw that’s what that’s why I don’t draw it by the way they tend to get a little

Bit out of control uh but if I wanted to take a few yards off and play a bigger cut go on then cut anytime you like okay so obviously a lot shorter but i’ I’ve hit a lot of shots with this club and I can tell you it just feels

Great and I cons seemingly do various shots with it I feel as though it’s going to give me enough distance to have the whole bag covered my forearm is going to go just over 200 yards which leads nicely into my hybrid and Fairway Wood um and I can’t wait for them to

Arrive so hope you’ve enjoyed the review please let us know if you have any questions or if you want to come and hit them uh you’re very welcome to I’d love your feedback actually uh and I hope you’ve enjy enjoy the video we’ll see you next time