Do Sub 70 Irons Perform as Good as They Look?

My review of the Sub 70 TAIII irons. I combo the cavity backs and muscle backs to see how they perform.

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If you were to cover up the logo on these irons and tell me that they cost $1,500 for this set, I wouldn’t bat an eye because the level of detail, precision, and care that’s put into the design of these really is second to none for a direct to consumer club. They are beautiful. But on today’s episode, we’re going to test and see if these irons can perform. What I’ve got is the Sub70 TA3s, a highly requested iron here on the show. I’ve got both the muscleback version and the cavity back version. These irons were co-designed with Tommy Armor III himself alongside of Sub70. And like I said, they are absolutely gorgeous. We’re going to take them out for six holes here today with an overunder of plus one. That will be the bell weather if we can play some good golf with these. First, let’s take a closer look. I mean, talk about a cool design. This is the muscle back. And I’ve got this muscle back in the seven through pitching wedge. I’ve got the cavity back in the six, five, and four irons. One thing that struck me right off the get-go is the sole of this club. You’ve got relief here towards the face and you’ve got this fine milling running vertically here along the bottom. In addition, you have a nice milling pattern there on the back and you’ve got horizontal lines there towards the uh back of this club as well. But what this is going to allow is for the club to really cut through the turf. Now, as you can see on the hoszle here, this is a forged club, so I’m expecting some nice buttery feel out of this one. For a muscle back, in terms of shape of the club, this is not a really thin top line. I would call it like a medium for a muscle back top line. Still thinner than a lot of the players distance irons you’re going to see where you’ve got a hollow cavity there, but it’s not going to be as thin or butter knifey as a lot of the muscle backs we’ve tested on this show. In terms of offset, a little bit of offset there as well, so it’s not just a straight blade. It looks like it’s going to be a little bit more forgiving than most. All right. Now, here are the cavity backs. I’ve got the six and the four iron neck. You can see the difference there. You’ve actually got some extra weighting here with these screws on the 4 iron. That’s to give this a little bit more lift. The cavity back design is just going to give you more forgiveness overall with that perimeter weighting. But you’re going to get even some extra lift out of the four and five iron which has these screws there towards the back. Again, just beautiful package. They’re going to look very nice together in the bag. As you can see, there’s the seven iron muscle back. And at a dress, you’re going to get again very similar looks. Same top line, same amount of offset basically. So, these are going to blend really well. Now, I’ve got these paired with the KBS Tour 120 gram stiff shaft, but there are a ton of shaft options available on Sub70s website. They do a really good job of giving you a lot of options. They’ve put a Lamin Crossline grip on here for me. I have this as a medium grip, which gives me just a little bit more for my big hands. I really like that. Again, you can customize a lot of options here in the Sub70 line. Now, one thing that’s really nice about the Sub70 is that you can demo their irons. They’ve got a demo program where you give them a deposit and you’ll get it back once you’ve tested the clubs and return them in good working order. So, that’s a great way to just try the clubs before you buy them. You don’t get that with many brands that aren’t going to be in a Dix or a Golf Galaxy or a PJ Tour Superstore, something like that. At least you get a chance to try them. Very, very cool. I’m ready to try them. So, let’s take them out on course to the first hole and get to work. I’ve got the Garmin G80 here first just to give us an idea of distance that we’re going to get onto this four iron. And we’ll be using this quite a bit here today. for some launch data and to measure some shots. First hole straight away, par4. Well, I push it off to the right a little bit, but it was hit fairly solidly. Let’s go see how far it went. For my 4 iron, we’ve seen some really strong 4 irons this year. I believe we topped out in the 230s with the Ping G440, the Srixon ZXi4s as well. Those were, of course, much stronger pressed irons. This set of irons really meant for players is going to be quite a bit weaker lofted and I don’t expect those kinds of distances but I would expect to be somewhere with a 4 iron around the 200 mark 205 or so. It is morning we hit the rough but let’s see how far it finished. All right, here we are just right side in the first cut. 197 is the number. So like I said in the rough in the morning. Decent. I don’t think these irons, from what I could tell on the range and using them in the simulator a little bit, I don’t think they’re going to blow our socks off with distance here today, but we will continue to test as we go. All right, so it’s actually a great angle for this flag stick, which is 151 out. Again, being early morning, I want to make sure I get there because we got some water to cover here as well. So, we’re going to go 8 iron. Now, as we saw in the closer look section, these irons are really built to penetrate through the rough and get through the turf. We’ve got that face side relief. We’ve got that milling at the bottom, which I really love. Pretty amazing to see. Let’s see what we get out of it here. We’re going to need some forgiveness because I hit that off of the toe. But we had plenty of distance. I don’t think we’re on the green up there on the right hand side. We’re probably on the fringe chipping, but I hit that club as I often do in the morning. It seems like every shot first time is right around there. It was actually a very, very forgiving result, especially distance-wise. That’s where a lot of clubs, muscle backs especially, you’re going to lose significant distance on offc center strikes, but we didn’t seem to do it there. I had my distance right. One thing I did notice though off those first two shots is the feel of these are exceptional. Of course, being a forged club, you’d expect that, but they really just have a nice soft feel at impact. Like I said, distance-wise, you can see we’re actually pin high here. So, distance was perfect. And this is a fairly easy, which may be the kiss of death, but a fairly easy up and down here. We got plenty of green to work with. Let’s see if we can convert. We will want to check stopping power of these irons. Hopefully on the next green we’ll actually hit the green. But again, I’m impressed for an offc center strike there. What this thing did? See if I got the weight of that shot right. Pretty good. Roll down a little further than I wanted. But looks like 6 feet here to save our par. All right, baby. Let’s roll one in. I didn’t give it enough. All right, so early bogey, but not the iron’s fault there, especially with the swings we put on them. So, next hole here is going to be a straightaway par4. Again, we’re going to take the four iron out, try to get max distance cuz this is a kind of a long hole and see if we hit the fairway here. When I took that club back, it snagged and I couldn’t stop my swing there. Again, another tow hit, but somehow we did find the fairway. Although, our second shot’s going to be very, very long because we certainly suffered a distance loss there. That was an extreme toe strike really. All right, so came up short there. Only hit that 165. So big distance loss on that strike. And I think I’m out of range. I’m 223 plus some uphill action here. So what we’re going to do is just try to lay ourselves into a good position and try to make a tough par here. I’m going to go nine iron. And again, we’re out of the rough here. We’ll see how it cuts through the turf. It did very well on that last one. Oh yeah, that was perfect. All right, finally we hit one in the middle of the club face again. Felt great and no problem getting through some sticky stuff here in the morning. I really love the sole design of these. Matches those Adele’s that I have. Other than the Adell’s, I’ve never seen that on a direct to consumer. So, you’re getting a lot of value from a construction materials aspect here with the Sub70s. And we’ve seen that with some other clubs that they have. The 699 irons, a really good set of players distance irons. Sub70 really focused on quality from what I can tell. We’re in perfect position here. Let’s see if we can get up and down here and save a tough par. All right. 68 yards out. That enough. Yes. All right. We got a crack at it. Par. Stay up. Oh my gosh. Well, we’re very close to being even par right now, but right now we’re plus two. We’re heading to a par three. We’re also going to hopefully be able to test the stopping power here on this next one. Once we hit the green, I’ll show you where the pitch mark is and where it rolls out. All right. 151 is the number. I was thinking about 8 iron, which is the same club I hit 151 back there. But I’m actually switching to 9 because we’re elevated here just a little bit. And that’s a back pin. So shorter of this flag is probably better than longer. So we’re going to test this 9 iron. See if we can get distance out of it. We’re going to find out if I hopefully hit one in the middle. Well, I did that. Very nice and high, let me tell you. Pretty straight. Wasn’t drawing a ton. We’re on the green there. We’ve got a birdie putt. We’ll be able to check the pitch mark here and see stopping power with the nine. By eye, it looked very good, though. All right, so I’m pretty short of this one. I’m uh 12 to 15 yards off that number. We kind of saw it with the 4 iron. I think distance-wise, you’re going to have to probably generate your own ball speed with these clubs. I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of extra help distance-wise. Here’s my pitch mark right here. And uh with a nine iron, early morning, we rolled out 2 feet here. I’d say very good in terms of stopping power and spin in the simulator. Spin-wise, I was getting pretty close to what my normal spin numbers are. I was right around the 5,000 RPM mark with a 7iron, and that’s pretty normal for me. I’m a bit more of a lower spin player, and that’s about what I was getting here with the TA3s. Oh, I don’t think I gave it enough. That’s a much longer par putt than I wanted. My putting has been left a little bit to be desired lately. I was hoping for a tap in there, but either way, it’s a two putt. We’ve got three more holes to play to get those strokes back. At least one back to hit that over under. And uh we’ve got a stretch of holes. I think we can do it. Little dog leg right par4, then a par five where I can really score. And then the six hole will be a bit of a challenging finish for us, but I’ve got faith. All right. So, these being a players iron suited for the lower handicappers out there, those folks going to want to be able to work the ball, move it left to right, right to left on command on this whole dog leg, right? I wouldn’t mind hitting more of a cut here. So, I’m actually going to aim out at that bunker. I’m going to adjust my stance, open it up, take an outside to in swing, and see if we can move this ball left to right. And it is cutting pretty nicely there. So, it’s nice when you can do what you want to do. And it was a decent result there on the launch monitor as well. Club head speed was 86, ball speed was 121, the smash was 1.40, and the estimated carry there 174. Now, I did hit that fairly middle of the club face, but with that swing speed 86, it’s going to be with a fade swing generally slightly slower swings for me at least. So, we may not have the same amount of distance, but again, when you can do what you want to do hitting a golf ball, that uh is going to help you score no matter what. I know I’ve seen some data, and Shot Scope especially does a lot of really good things with the data telling you that the further you can hit it generally, the better. But, I think also for us am trouble as good as the pros do, sometimes it’s better to hit a little shorter and hit some fairways. So, we’re in a perfect perfect angle here at this pin. Let’s see how far that club flew. Yeah, the Garmin had it pretty good there. Here’s the ball at 187. And I’ve got 149 to what seems to be a middle pin here. I think we can go on attack mode. So, after seeing what we did in the last hole, I think 9 iron is going to be the club here again. It’s uh it started just a little right of target, but you know what? We came up short there. And I may have come down into the water. It felt like a good strike. I’m actually very surprised we came up short, but uh we did. And we missed the green, unfortunately. All right, so I hit right in here, actually. And it’s only a couple yards short. I probably hit that 144, but again, I think these clubs are not going to be the longest that you’re going to find in this category of irons. Somehow, I actually stayed up here, so we’ve got a chance. And I’m not actually in the water. And from what I can tell, there’s no alligators around me. So, I’m going to give this one a go. I hope I don’t get too dirty cuz I got other videos to shoot here today. But, let’s try. Now, that was a good shot, but the biggest win is that I stayed pretty clean. My wife will be very happy at that one. So, again, we’ve got a little longer par putt than I’d like, but at least we do have a par putt. And if we’re going to hit that over under, it would really help if I could put this one in because it’s going to get a lot more difficult if we don’t. I do think we have a birdie hole coming here with the par five, but I don’t want to drop another shot here. Come on. Turn, turn, turn, turn. No. So, we’re off to the par five. We’re going to need to get one back and get really two back, but hopefully we get this first one back quick. All right. So, where these TE’s are, we’re only like 450 out here. I don’t know if we can get home in two, but we’re going to be near the green in two and hopefully we’ll have an easy chance at birdie. First step, four iron here. And that is my best one. So, if we’re going to have an idea distance-wise of what this one can do and where it can top down at, that’s going to be it. Club head speed was 88, ball speed was 127, the smash was 143, and the estimated carry 187. I think we’re going to be over 200 with this one, though. So, there’s our number 202. We did get over the 200 mark. One thing I’ll say about these irons is the sound. And I heard it there cuz that was middle of the club face. There’s just a nice crunchy crack to it that is really exceptional. Let’s see how far we’ve got to this pin. We are out of range, especially cuz we’re actually into the wind a little bit here. So, I probably would have hit it 210 or so, but we got 260 to get there. I would like to get another swing from a different club in this set in. Anyways, I’m going to go five iron, which should lay me into the 80 yard range here, which should be pretty good opportunity to get it tight. And that is perfect drawn in there. We should have a good angle at it. And we should have the right distance. When you put good swings on, you get good results out of these TA3s. I mean, this sits at a little higher range for direct to consumer clubs, but you’re getting sound and feel and looks, the aesthetics wise, that look like a premium club, look like something you get out of Japan. All right, 85 is the number. Pitching wedge is the lowest club I have in this set. Let’s see if we can get the weight of the shot right. That’s the main thing. I’m gonna choke up on this one. Hit it kind of low. Spin, baby. All right, we’ve got a birdie putt. Not as tight as I’d like to have it, but it’s up there. Okay, first decent opportunity at birdie of the day. Do it. All right, that’s one back. That’s one back. We’ve got one more hole to play. So, we’re two over again. That over under plus one. So, we’re going to have to do it again. So, if you’ve been watching the show lately, you know how much I needed that putt to go in. The putting really just been atrocious at times. I’ve putted holes. I’ve three putted plenty of times here this spring, but it’s finally starting to come around a little bit. Haven’t had a three putt here today, which is good. and then making a big long bomb. That always feels great. So, thanks for rooting me along. Win or lose here. We haven’t been winning, but we still have a chance. And after I hit my T-OT here, I’m going to rank these clubs and give them a score. All right, last hole here. Dog leg to the right. Four iron. We need one more good four iron here. And that is step one complete. All right, so it’s time to rank these clubs. And this ranking is going to be what you’ve seen here out on course as well as some other testing that I’ve done in the studio with these irons. In terms of distance, we saw all day that you’re going to need to generate your own club head speed. So, for me, I’m going to give them a three and a half out of five stars. These are not going to be the longest clubs in the category by any means, but there’s some other aspects that these clubs do really well. The first being forgiveness. For me, I’m giving it five out of five for forgiveness. And I think the most telling shot here today was that first eight iron that I hit on the number one hole where again I hit it very toeside. It was out of the rough. Still got the distance I expected and it still left me in a place where I could potentially save par. Although I didn’t, but five out of five for forgiveness. Really great job in that category. Now, when it comes to workability, you are able to shape your shots very well with these. Maybe not the most workable clubs that we’ve tested, but pretty darn good. And I’ve been able to flight shots lower and higher. I flighted that pitching wedge in kind of low there and I’ve been able to hit fades and draws on command as needed. So for me, four and a half out of five for workability. In terms of aesthetics, which is looks, feel, and sound, well, this is an easy five out of five. These are beautiful clubs. They’re very well made. They’ve got those extra touches to show you the care that was put into them. And on top of that, the sound and feel really exceptional. So that’s an easy five out of five for me. In terms of value, I’m going to give it a 4 and 1/2 out of five. Again, the price point these clubs sit at in the direct to consumer world. A little bit higher than some offerings from brands like Tacomao, but I also think you’re again getting a little bit more attention to detail there. And I think you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck when you think about putting these up against the big OEMs out there. So, four and a half out of five. Very strong score here of 90 points for the sub70 irons. These are ones I think you really want to take a look at. Whether it’s the muscle backs or the cavity backs for a musclebacked iron, it’s not, like I said, an imposing club. It’s uh very approachable and I think the cavity backs really would work for handicaps from like 12ish down. Okay. And the muscle backs probably even 10 to eight handicaps could play these clubs. So great job. I’m looking forward to playing more sub70s. I did review the driver. So I’m going to leave a link to that up front. But before you click that video, let’s see if we can hit our overunder here. We’ve got one more shot to make it happen. And uh one more putt as well. And for another middle pin, we’ve got 153. I think eight’s the club. If it’s the distance, we may have a chance. It is. We’ve got a chance. Very makeable. Come on. That close. That close. Well, I hope you enjoyed this one. I hope you’ll hit subscribe if you haven’t already and we’ll catch you back here next time on another edition of Let’s Play Through.