Talking Titleist T-Series Irons with Marni Ines – Director of Iron Development

Get the inside scoop on the latest generation of Titleist T-Series irons as Director of Iron Development Marni Ines answers questions from Team Titleist and covers a wide range of topics from design to fitting and blended sets.

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00:00 – Meet the Iron Man of Titleist
01:00 – What’s New in T-Series
04:23 – Why Golfers Should Try Titleist Irons
05:33 – Designing Irons for Distance, Dispersion and Descent Angle
06:08 – The importance of Feel
08:30 – You Are Good Enough to Play Titleist
09:10 – Iron, Strong Lofted Iron or Hybrid?
11:15 – Why Did Titleist Introduce the T-350?
12:48 – What’s New with the T-200?
15:00 – A Closer Look at the Industrial Design Process
16:22 – Are We Seeing More Blended Sets?
17:30 – What Irons Does Marni Play and Why?
19:20 – Why You Should Look at New Irons
20:10 – Marni’s 3-Iron
20:50 – Favorite Launch Moments
23:00 – Greatest Hits in Iron Design

Marni, you mentioned that you’ve got a three  iron in your bag as kind of the Iron Man of   Titleist. Do you ever feel any added pressure  when you’re probably on a par three and you’re  

Teeing up an iron and people are looking at you? I do, but I have to admit I also like that,   right? I also like being able to show people that  a three iron can be hit high in the air. Yeah,  

Especially when I’m not that fast, right?  They’re like, ‘Wow, you really hit that   pretty high.’ I was like, ‘Well, yeah, I think  you just have to know how to hit a ball high.  You’ve got some speed. I’m not that fast. 

Alright, well, you know what? We’re going to  do a little Team Titleist Talks today, and our   friends at Team Titleist, turns out they have  a lot of questions. And one of the big ones is,   we’ve got a lot of players that are playing some  older generation irons, and there’s some belief  

Out there, ‘Will I really notice a difference?’  And if you would, maybe for anyone who’s playing   like an AP1 or AP2, which obviously we sold a ton  of those, your team created a great product in   those. But now as we’ve moved into, and we’re  in our third generation of T-Series, what are  

Some of the things that the golfer is going to  notice that’s really different and an upgrade   from irons that are four or five or even older? Yeah, I mean, you’re talking AP line goes back  

Quite a ways, right? I think in ’17, ‘18 was the  first time we even attempted to do some COR in an   iron. And so we’ve come a long way even since  then, right? So we’re always trying to improve  

Our long iron performance, trying to get the ball  higher in the air, trying to get those long irons   stretched out to give you more distance in those  lofts, especially. We’re always trying to improve   feel as well, and we’re also trying to improve the  look and overall packaging of the club as well. 

Well, let’s just put more of a fine point on  it. Is someone going to notice benefits that   you just talked about? Would these irons  feel better? Will they fly higher? Are you   going to get a little bit more ball speed? Absolutely. So, as you go up into the set  

Towards the mid and long irons, you’re going to  notice more difference, right? So where we’ve   added those technologies like the L face, the  max impact, the larger amounts of tungsten moved   out to the heel and toe, you’re just going  to notice it flying higher, going faster,  

And the club head will be more stable at  impact, which results in better feel as well.  One of the questions that we get from quite  a few of our Team Titleist members are, ‘Hey,   I’ve already got the first generation of T-Series  or I got the second generation of T-Series. When  

Should I switch? And how should I switch? How  do I make the determination of when is the right   time for me to upgrade my new irons?’ Every time we’re making a new product,   there are going to be improvements in that  new product, and you have to ask yourself,  

‘Am I willing to pay for those improvements right  now versus what you have in your bag?’ And for us,   long and mid iron performance is where you’re  going to see more performance difference. Feel,   certainly throughout the set, you know, in all of  these irons. So, if you’re someone who’s sensitive  

To feel, if you’re sensitive in feel in terms  of turf interaction, there’s been changes there   too in the newer sets versus the older. So, and  certainly the looks of the product too, so some   people want an upgrade because they want something  shinier, right? But all these things together,  

You know, can help you make your decision. I think the other thing that can help you is,   ‘Hey, we offer fittings. Bring your old clubs,  try them against new ones.’ And you get to see   firsthand and experience all the things you  just said, Marni. So not only are you going to  

See those 3Ds we’ve been talking about with iron  performance, but you’re going to feel a difference   in the new irons. And then certainly, there are  some new models that didn’t exist before. The T150   is different than anything we’ve had before.  And T350 is way different than anything we’ve  

Had before. So it’s cool to have those join the  lineup along with stalwarts of T100 and T200. You   like to play golf, you see a lot of golfers,  what do you tell golfers when you’re looking  

In their bag and you see that they don’t have  any Titleist irons, and you ask them about it   and they’re just like, ‘I’ve never really tried  Titleist irons.’ What do you tell that person?  I tell them they should. And there’s  good reason for all of the technologies  

We’ve put into ours. And I think one of the  things we talked about earlier was tungsten,   and how we have lots of tungsten, but how we  use it is also different from the competitors.  

So we use a lot of it, but we also split it  up into the heel and toe to give us the best   combination of CG location and MOI for clubhead  stability, and launch, and everything else. 

Dan Stone, who led our R and D team for years,  used to say that at every blade length, Titleist   makes the most forgiving iron in the game. Sure, yeah, I back that up. And really,  

If you’re playing an old set and you haven’t tried  one of ours, there’s just so many reasons for you   to go out and give it a try. You won’t regret it. Marni, one of the things that really impresses me  

About you and your team is that we go into  creating new irons with this idea of how are   we going to fit them? How are we going to  expose these to players and show them the   benefits? And your team is really honed in on  these 3Ds: that real consistent carry distance,  

Tight dispersion, and steep descent  angle. Why are those so important   when it comes to iron design and iron play? Well, because they’re all key aspects of being   accurate and getting accurate distance, which is  really the main focus of iron performance. When  

You pick up an iron, you’ve got a number that you  want to hit, right? So, you want that club to hit   that number, and if we can deliver that number to  you more often, every time you hit it, then that’s  

A better golf club for us. That’s a better iron. One of the things we hear from players all the   time when it comes to irons is how important feel  is. And I’ve got to imagine for your team, it’s a  

Little bit of a challenge because certainly when  I’ve had a chance to talk to those players and ask   them how important is feel, they explain it’s  very important. But then when you say describe   feel to me, it seems like we kind of get almost  a word salad out of people: all these different  

Terms and different ideas. How does your team take  all that feedback and turn it into something real?  It’s a very personal experience for each person,  right? Feel as a personal experience, the   experience of the impact of the golf ball within  iron, especially, right? So people have this  

Expectation of what they want to feel at impact,  and that is a resultant of tactile sensation.   It’s also a resultant of audible sensation and  visual sensation too, like when you see the golf   ball coming off with the trajectory of a perfect  impact. That all adds to this experience of what  

We call feel. And so, being able to deliver that  more often for the golfer and being able to target   that is something that is very important because  it can make or break someone’s experience of the  

Club. If it doesn’t feel good to them, they might  not buy your product, they might not play it.  I think the challenge for your team is how do you  take and impart this incredible sensation of feel,  

But at the same time, be able to deliver on,  you mentioned COR and putting that in an iron,   you mentioned the 3Ds of iron performance.  How do you balance those together?  Yeah, it’s not an easy task, right? But  we have technologies like Max Impact,  

We have technologies in the high-density tungsten  that we use, and of course, how we engineer the   overall platform between the face, the structure  of the body, the placement of the tungsten,   any supporting structures, how our muscle plate  is attached even to the body. All these different  

Aspects are used to manage vibration,  which then translates into feel, sound,   all the tactile experiences that golfers get. Titleist has got this proud heritage of being   used by some of the best players in the world, and  at every level of golf. Occasionally we’ll hear,  

‘Boy, I’m not good enough to play a Titleist  iron.’ What would you say to that person?  I’d say that’s not true. We have a range of  products, right? And there are products that   probably are better suited to players that are  better, and we have other products that are suited  

For anyone. So we have a range of irons from T100  up to T150, 200 to 350 now, that really cover,   I think, the gamut of players. So if you  are a golfer, we have an iron you can play. 

I love that, Marni. Great answer. Our friend,  Chuck Z, wants to know, should he be playing   a stronger lofted iron, a utility iron,  or a hybrid at the top end of his bag?  That’s kind of a loaded question. I can only imagine what the man  

In charge of iron design might suggest. Yes, I could give you the biased iron and just   say play the stronger lofted iron. However, we  believe in custom fitting. You should go get fit,   especially for that part of the bag. If you can  experience long iron at one of our fitters that  

Has our long iron fitting kits, go experience the  long irons for yourself and see which one performs   best for you. Sometimes you’re not as shallow.  Shallow swings can play stronger lofts in their   long irons, or all their irons, actually. But some  people who are steeper, maybe a hybrid is for you.  

But I’m not saying that one size fits all. You  should go get fit for that part of your bag.  I know that we talked about those 3Ds and  how important they are. We take those 3Ds   of consistent distance, really tight dispersion,  and descent angle, and we add to that through our  

Fittings 5 mph ball speed gaps. And that’s really  where we identify where do you stop playing irons,   and maybe that’s a different chassis that you need  as you go up through your irons. And by chassis,  

We just mean, maybe play T150 in your short  irons, but your long irons we’re going to put you   in T200, maybe even T350. Or, is it time to make  that leap to utility iron, to a high lofted or to  

A hybrid, or even a high lofted fairway. There’s  so many great options on the top end of the bag.  Some people are more sensitive to spin  characteristics. Hybrids tend to have a   little bit more side spin than irons,  so if you are more sensitive to that,  

Maybe an iron is better suited for you. Another friend of the show, Abdon, he says,   ‘I love the new T350 irons. I’m just curious  as to why Titleist decided to add a new model,   as opposed to upgrading the T400.’ The 350 I would say is more of an  

Evolution of the T300, more of a revolution  versus 300, in that the chassis was really,   really changed. So we went from essentially a very  deep cavity back design to hollow construction,   much more similar to where the 200 is. So  now we have the advantages of dual tungsten  

Waiting in the heel and toe; we have the high  strength steel L face as well. So adding all   these technologies to this category now really  warranted us having a new model here as opposed to  

Saying this is a new version of T300 or T400. I agree. I think early on when we saw the   prototypes your team was working on, we fought  to make sure it was a completely new name,   because everything in there was different than  prior gen T300, and gives us better performance,  

And when we do that it’s time for a new name. And I think visually too. It also played the part   visually. It absolutely looks very, very different  from the T300. It’s a whole new platform. 

Fred says, ‘Hey, I play 2021 T200s three through  gap wedge.’ So look at that, Marni, it’s a lot of   iron, you and Fred are pals. But he asks, ‘Is  there any changes in the makeup of the clubs,  

Specifically with the polymer backing?’ And I have  a feeling what Fred’s getting at is is there a   change in feel between 2021 T200 and the new T200? Absolutely. I mean, that was something that we   got feedback on. T200 performance, you  know, spot on, it’s great, it’s fast,  

Flies high. But if there was anything that we  could have on top of everything that we’ve done,   can you further improve the feel of this iron? And  so that really was a target for not only the T200,  

But for the whole T-Series line. But specifically  for T200, so many things changed about that iron   to improve the feel, and if you’re talking about  the polymer muscle plate, how that’s attached,   the ribbing behind that, you can see that  there’s ribbing behind that that was added in  

There. Again, we’re changing the stiffness, we’re  changing how it’s attached, we’re changing the   structure of the casting as well, where we place  the max impact core, how thick the max impact core   is, the thickness gradient of the face, all these  things add to the feel we got in the 2023 T200. 

The feedback we’ve gotten from our tour pros is  it’s such a significant upgrade. They already   felt like they were getting great performance  when we talk about those 3Ds of iron play,   but now they’ve got this terrific feel in  T200, and certainly we’re seeing it in the  

Marketplace as well. I think we’ve got probably  the best in class feel in that player distance   iron that has kind of a hollow construction or an  unsupported face, because you do want that speed,   you do want that forgiveness, but at the same time  you want great feel. We’re really fortunate right  

Now to have the type of product performance that  we have, and one of the things we haven’t talked   about yet is the Vis ID, something that  you and I and team spend a lot of time on,  

And I think that we take pride in a lot of things  we do here, but I love the fact that every little   detail is really scrutinized from the shape of  the irons to the look of the irons. If you could,  

Why don’t you tell our listeners a little  bit about what that process is like.  First, for those that don’t know, Vis ID stands  for visual industrial design. But that process,   there’s some tension there, because typically  we’ll come to the Vis ID team with a platform,  

And the platform comes with constraints, and the  constraints make the Vis ID team’s job a little   bit harder. We say, ‘hey, we need to have this  weight here, we need to have this opening there,  

This portion of the head needs to be this thick  or that thick.’ And so there is kind of this   collaboration and this back and forth of trying  to have the win-win solution. It’s something  

That we’re very proud of that at the end of each  successive line, we like to take a look at it and   go, ‘not only is this better than what we’ve  done, we definitely believe that it’s better   than anything else in the market as well. You think about the look of our clubs,  

It really leads into the next question from  another one of our big fans, Dale, where he said   it looks like you’ve really designed this lineup  to be set up where you can do some blended sets,   and is that something now that we’ve had a couple  months in the marketplace, are we seeing that? 

Absolutely, we’re seeing the majority of our  sets come in with more than one model. And it’s   not just 100 to 200, we’re seeing it all the  way up through 350s coming in blended as well.  One of the things we shared with media members  and others was that over 80% of tour pros have  

A mixed set, so why wouldn’t the amateur golfers  follow the same? But I think it starts with you’ve   got to go get fit, and we’re getting more and more  golfers taking the time to go do a proper fitting,  

And we’ve also created a lot of the fitting  tools. So, at all of our large national   accounts indoor fittings we’ve offered them  up long iron packs so you can really figure   out where do your irons stop, and where  do you go to either a larger chassis,  

So maybe a bigger iron, or do you move up into  that hybrid utility iron or high lofted fairway.  So true. Okay, Marni,   we’re going to get personal here for a minute.  What irons do you play, and why do you play them? 

I have a blended set, and I play a, let’s start  from the top down. I play a three iron T200 model,   which you’ve seen me hit, so you know. Since you’re intimating to the team,   Marni hits his three iron terrific. It  makes me jealous every time I watch it. 

I have a very shallow angle of attack, and I  think that’s something that more people could   certainly learn to do, in terms of being able to  hit a long iron well, but there’s other products  

Now so you don’t have to play a long iron. The  next part of my set four through pitch is the   T150. I am not the fastest golfer, obviously,  I’m all of 127 pounds, that’s not very heavy,  

So I can use a little bit of distance, and because  of my shallow angle of attack, I have no problems   playing the 150 with a 2 degree stronger loft  versus T100. I get plenty of the 3Ds that I’m  

Looking for, and really the size, the look, the  feel of 150s is something that I really enjoy.  Well, Marni, last time we played together  I also noticed that you were testing out   some custom finishes, some prototypes. Yes, my T150s actually have a black finish  

On them. It’s a PVD finish that we’re looking  at; we’re always looking at black finishes to   see if we can get a slightly different shade and  if we can get more durability out of it, you know,  

That’s always a good thing for the black finish.  But it’s always neat to see an iron in black.  How does it make you feel when you’re out  playing golf, and you look in someone’s bag,   and they’ve got really old irons? Maybe  they’re really old Titleist irons,  

So you don’t have to feel that competitive, but  you see somebody who’s got something a little   too old. What do you say to that person? I ask him, ‘why are you playing these old   irons?’ Because there’s sentiment, sometimes  there’s a financial reason that they don’t have  

Money to buy new irons right now, but I try  to let them know that if they’re really old,   that they are missing out on some performance, for  sure, that could be helping them. Because I think   everybody wants to play better golf, and certainly  modern equipment can help, and especially ours. 

Marni, you mentioned that you’ve got a three iron  in your bag. As kind of the iron man of Titleist,   do you ever feel any added pressure when  you’re probably on a par three and you’re  

Teeing up an iron, and people are looking at you? I do, but I have to admit I also like that. I like   being able to show people that a three iron can  be hit high in the air. Especially when I’m not  

That fast, they’re like, ‘wow, you really hit that  pretty high.” And I’m like, ‘well yeah, I think   you just have to know how to hit a ball high.’ You’ve got some speed, buddy.  I’m not that fast. You know, Marni,  

We’ve been together on a lot of these trips this  year, including for some tour launches. Is there   any moment that sticks out to you where you’re  like, ‘whoa, that was a really fun moment,’ or   ‘that was a really great memory,’ whether it’s  tour launch or even some of the media stuff we’ve  

Been doing together? What kind of sticks out to  you that, when you talk to your friends, this   is something pretty neat that we’ve been doing? Yeah, between the tour shoot and the tour launch,   seeing tour players respond to 350 was pretty  interesting. Being able to watch Peter Malnati  

Hit the 350 on tour, and just seeing him respond  to how straight that product was for him, I mean,   he said something like, ‘It’s just always  online.’ And for someone like Peter to   experience a product like a 350, when you have  that kind of speed and skill, the advantages  

Of that technology are really on display. So  he’s able to hit it really high, really far,   and really straight. Lee Hodges was another  guy who was just really excited to talk to us.  I really enjoyed seeing you and Lee spend  some time and to see his excitement. 

I mean, there’s a video of some of it, but  yeah, I he was a guy that was really excited,   was one of the first players to put the clubs  in his bag, and guess what? He was one of the  

First players to win with the new irons as well. I remember him looking back and telling you that   he had never hit a six iron that he loved  as much as this new six iron. And he was  

Joking with his caddy about how they were just  going to lay back to six iron distances on all   the holes because he was so confident in it. Yeah he did, and if you have the chance, you  

Have to watch the video of him, because the sound  of his voice, the reaction his face, as well,   when he was hitting that six iron, it’s priceless. Marni, you know both you and I nerd out on some   old irons, whether it’s shapes or designs,  some feel aspects of them. Is there an iron  

In your past, whether you made it or not,  that you look back and you’re just like,   ‘this was pretty innovative, this is pretty cool,’  or it did something unique that you’re like,   ‘we’re going to improve upon this?’ Well, certainly in recent history,  

Like some of the concept work that we’ve  done. Between C16 being the trailblazer,   and then the whole CP line, between the CP01 and  the 02, and the 03, I think I like talking about   the CP02 because it’s kind of a hidden gem. It’s the smallest one,  

Kind of shaped like a CB platform. It’s actually based off of our muscle back size.   So it’s essentially a muscle back with everything  that you can throw at it. So it’s got the very   compliant face, it’s got all the tungsten in the  heel and toe, and it’s got this great muscle back  

Shape to it. So if you like that look with all the  performance in it, I don’t know how many people   I’ve let try the five or the four of that product,  and the reaction you get from them on their face  

Because of their expectation looking at the blade,  and then seeing where the ball flies when they hit   it, it’s a big disconnect for them. Because it  looks like a blade, but it flies high and far. 

Well I think that’s one of the things that your  team has done such a great job of, taking ideas   from our concept line and putting into everything  else, and as you said, people are shocked by when  

They look down at some of the Titleist clubs that  may appear small but they play big. I think that   really stands out in what you guys are designing. Yeah, absolutely. I think the way to describe   that is that they’re very forgiving for  their size. Forgiving on off center,  

And they’re also forgiving of launch, especially  in the mid launch irons, where they get up.  Marni, it’s always fun spending time with  you. Thank you so much for taking the time   to answer a lot of these questions for the team  Titleist community. They love hearing from you.  

They want to see you, so get ready to go to some  team Titleist events in the new year, because   you’ve built something that’s pretty incredible. Thank you, and likewise, it’s always fun to be   here. It’s always fun to talk about product,  and I’m willing to do it anytime, anywhere,   with anyone. Great job.