CRAZY CONSISTENCY! Best Players Distance Irons of 2025

This video features the best players distance irons of 2025 as decided by 2nd Swing Golf’s 2025 Fitters Choice. The 2nd Swing award-winning master club fitters have analyzed millions of swings and thousands of club fittings on the best players distance irons of 2025 and voted on their favorites in the 2025 Fitters Choice survey. This video in particular highlights the Best players distance irons of 2025 including the Srixon ZXi5 irons and PING i530 irons.

0:00 Intro
2:43 Testing – PING i530
6:14 Testing – Srixon ZXi5
8:17 Data & Conclusions

In this 2025 Fitters Choice video, 2nd Swing’s Drew Mahowald is joined by master club fitter Jake Montgomery to test and review two of the best players distance irons of 2025, including the PING i530 irons and Srixon ZXi5 irons.

Learn more about 2025 2nd Swing Fitters Choice: https://www.2ndswing.com/fitters-choice

Schedule an award-winning 2nd Swing Tour Van club fitting: https://fitting.2ndswing.info/schedule-now/

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Today we’re back with another Fitter’s Choice 2025 video. It’s players distance irons. Today we’ve got two of the best players distance irons as voted by fitters like Jake. We’ll test them out on Trackman and tell you why these two models are the best in this category. Hey golfers, Drew Mold here with Second Swing Golf in the Second Swing Tour van. Joined by Jake Montgomery, fitting manager at the Minneapolis store. Players distance irons. Jake. Um the fitter’s choice top two models here. Um we’ve got Shrixen ZXi5, we’ve got Ping i530. So uh first Jake, talk to us about Fitter’s Choice, what it is, and then we’ll get into why these two models were kind of voted as the two best in this category. Yeah. So Fitter’s Choice is a survey that was sent to all the fitters in our company back at the end of around January. So it gave us some time to kind of get the new product in hand, give it to our customers, and kind of see what’s working, see what’s not. Then we kind of selected our favorite options in a multitude of different categories. Yep. And so what we got is these two. So u we have ZXI5, Ping i530 as the top two models. Uh but then we also uh the top five rounded out included the JPX925 forge from Muno, the Tailor Made P790, which has been a mainstay in this category for a long time now, and the Titus T200. Um but we’re going to showcase specifically these two today. And I think part of the reason for that is there’s actually a difference in technology between these two. So, um, the ZXI5, you’ve got your VT soul, you got mainframe technology, so some distance enhancing properties, whereas the i530 is a little bit more of that kind of hollow body type design. U, but both nonetheless clearly performed really well. And you even made a comment to me before we started this like like for me, these are absolutely the two that have set themselves apart. 100%. I mean, in the players distance category, these probably make up 70 80% of my sales. Really, they are both very good at different things. Yeah, the i530 is very fast. If a player is just looking for more ball speed, but they don’t want like a big game improvement package, um, and they want something that’s maybe a little bit more consistent shot to shot, i530 is fantastic. If we’re looking for peak height, the Stricks does a great job of that. Spins a little bit more, might see a little bit higher launch from it as well. Uh the I530 isn’t the highest launching golf club, but for the right player, especially someone that cuts across the ball, it’s phenomenal because they generally don’t struggle with dynamic loft or how high they launch it. Uh they struggle with getting ball speed because they add a little bit of loft onto it. So, this is great for a fader, the golf ball. That’s great for someone that’s just looking for a little more height. Awesome. Well, we’re going to have uh we’re going to have you hit some shots with both of these and we’ll see what Trackman tells us about that. Let’s do it. Little thin, little pulley. Yeah. Okay. But still want 274 in the air. That’s really what this category is for. Yeah. Yeah. I think uh because this is the category where, you know, maybe a player it, you know, game improvement irons are either too big or in some cases maybe too strong lofted. Yep. um where you need just a little bit of lift, a little bit of spin, but you still want to pack a punch, want some distance, want some speed out of it. Yep. 100%. Little skinny again. And you still got it to 172. Yeah. But you even said too, I mean, granted, these are a couple missits. Um Yeah. But you even said too, like this is for someone that maybe adds loft or is hitting that high high slice there and those two are kind of correcting that. I know you hit him low in the face, but that was solid. That was really good. That was better. Look at that ball. There’s some more speed again. Wow, that was hard. Just a little left. It’s jumpy. Yep, that one was also right in the center of the club face. We’ll give you one more swing here and talk about what we see. It’s my anti-pull swing there. Sure. All right. So, we’ve got five swings to look at here. What just talk to me about the like feel of the i530. Yes. I mean, for a game improvement iron, still feels very soft. Um, that’s an area where in this category some people can have complaints just kind of on the feel, but feeling kind of hollow, a little tiny. Uh, didn’t feel that at all with this club. I mean, I I play a CB iron currently and the feel wasn’t too off of that. Um, definitely very fast in the ball speed. I mean, a 138 smash factor out of a seven iron. Yeah, it’s pretty dang good, especially considering I did not hit it the best, right? Um, little low in the launch and the spin. Not shocked to see as this is a little stronger lofted club. Um, and I do typically hit a draw which delofts even a little bit more. I think I was swinging down on it four and a half degrees. So, I’m delofting that as well. So, this particular head isn’t built for me, but I mean, even like the one that I caught, well, was still about 100 ft in the air. Like, plenty of height, plenty of land angle there. Yeah. Um, the number one thing that I look at for a player in an iron is the land angle. Right about 44 degree average. And I mean, I had one in there that was 36 that again, I just kind of cut real thin. So, it’s still getting pretty good height. 46° land angle, plenty. Um, and then the carry variability. So, the number under the carry, that 7.8, that’s just the variation on each of my carry numbers. Want to try and get that to be as tight as possible. Um, I had that one that I kind of hit long and pulled left a little bit that drops it down to 4.4 again. That’s in a pretty good range. Yeah. Yeah. I think uh I mean there was and I think your first couple shots you also for sure the second one with the launch angle kind of a little thin and so you know things get a lot tighter and closer there. But nonetheless, I think we saw some of the things that you talked about with I530 before, which was, you know, this thing is it’s going to help maybe square the face up for some players or, you know, if if someone’s hitting maybe too high, too spinny. Yep. Kind of control some of that stuff. So, um, all right. Yeah. Let’s get to the, uh, the ZXI5 now. Got that pretty solid. Yeah, that sounded It’s also sounds a lot softer than the 530. Yeah, could tell more of that solid construction versus kind of the hollow piece to it. Yeah, a pretty solid one. Maybe a little low on the face, but not bad at all. Yeah. How’s it? I mean, how about what’s the feel difference between? I would say honestly, this feels a a smidge harsher. Really? Uh harsher is maybe a bad word. Firmer. Firmer. Um, I can feel the misses on this a little bit more than I could on the i530. I30 just felt very soft. Yeah, I see. Okay. Cuz it’s it’s interesting cuz the sound they feel like to me is backwards and from that whereas I think the sound is a little bit more muted with the ZXi5, but you’re saying it feels a little bit firmer. So, typically you don’t get that contradiction, but that felt real nice. You are hitting this thing really good. Uh, yeah, I’m liking the dispersion so far. dispersion is fantastic. I don’t want to We won’t leak it yet because I don’t want to jinx anything. But that’s three fantastic golf shots. And your your deviation numbers are really good, too. Yeah. Ah, I just bladed it basically. There. There it is. Right. There it is. It’s actually ended up pretty straight. Not that bad really. You lost what? Seven yards carryish. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s where this club type really comes in handy is like it’s going to be pretty nice to you when you don’t hit one. Great. I mean, like I felt like I basically hit that in the middle of the golf ball, right? Yeah. Still had a 40 degree landing carried 166. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you totally you got the distance out of that that you would probably need, right, if you’re trying to carry over something. All right. Well, I gotta say that’s pretty darn good dispersion here. So, we’ll bring up our our chart and our dispersion. So, we were looking at this dispersion. These three right here were the first three that you hit and we were like, “This is going to be something special.” Now, still a very good result. Um, I think I also want to point out the spin rates of these. So, you had the one that you kind of, you know, hit low in the face despite spin up, but then your consistency after that was 88. Yeah, it’s pretty good. ZXI5 and the distance dispersion and carry was 1.7. Uhhuh. So talk to me about just ZXI5 in this test how it performed what you see from the numbers here as well. Yes. So I mean honestly what I saw there is pretty similar to what I see in the Bay every day. Stricks is very consistent for spin which in the players distance category if we see spin jumping around a lot kind of raises some red flags because that’s usually when you get that jumper. Yeah. uh where you catch one flush, but it’s maybe a little high on the grooves or there’s a little grass in the way and it all of a sudden it’s 10 15 yards longer and that can be a round killer for some people. Uh so a little bit more consistent spin from the stricks on there. It wasn’t as long. Yeah, 175 carrier compared to 180. Ball speed was down a couple miles an hour, but land angle was a little bit higher. Peak height was a little bit higher as well. So kind of what I expected to see. This one is launched a little higher, gets a little bit more spin. I530 just goes a little bit longer. Um, yeah, both felt very good. Both are very playable. Yeah. Um, but for a player like myself, the Strickson is just a better fit. Yeah, I think there’s, you know, there’s a Is there a loft difference between these two? Is it Is it a degree? I think I believe it’s a couple. Okay. A couple degrees. So that, you know, part of the launch and spin differences are due to that loft. But I think also the consistency piece you talked about and I guess I mean you mentioned that there’s just maybe a different purpose so to speak with these two irons despite being in the same category where you know if you’re if the player is kind of falling into this category then it’s like okay well what’s the next piece to optimize their iron game? Do they need to um maybe increase or or fine-tune the launch and spin a little bit or do they need just a little bit more distance? Y and you can kind of go a different paths with these two irons. Yeah. Um because I clearly as you mentioned before even swinging you know the i530 might be a little faster a little hotter ZXi5 it’ be a little bit more spin more control so to speak more consistency there so I can totally see why these two irons um ranked so highly in the fitter’s choice and why you particular gave the feedback that u they were you know making up a huge chunk of of the sales that you make in just this category. It seems to be that they do really well in the fittings. Yeah 100%. Well, golfers, fitter’s choice, go check it out at secondwing.com for all the results from all the categories. ZXI5 and i530 were two great performers uh from the survey and they showed out in testing here today. So, Jake, thanks for joining and uh providing the context from your perspective on these two irons. Two great options for sure. No [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] problem. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music]