Is This The Best New Iron Of 2025?

Joe Ferguson puts the new Maxfli XC2 irons to the test agains the new TaylorMade P790 iron to see if it can be considered one of the best new irons of 2025!

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right everybody welcome back to the channel and I’ve got some news for you max Flyer back [Music] so where on earth has Maxfly been this is their first iron release in over 30 years and I’ve got with me the XC2 they’ve also released an XC3 version which is a bit more in the game improvement category whereas this sits very much in the players distance category although there is a bit of a twist which I’ll explain as we go through the video so Maxfly for those of us who remember had some incredible irons back in the day the real purists will remember the Aussie blades the Australian blades and there was always a guy a golf club I played at who had a set of Aussie blades and was a real ball striker if they had those clubs you should not have played them for money that is for sure i also remember irons like the Revolution irons which is slightly different category but they really just made some great product and they just seemed to kind of disappear and MaxFly as a brand actually went through a few different iterations of ownership it got passed around a little bit until in 2003 it was acquired by Tailor Made who actually wanted a lot of the patents from the golf ball side of things to help reestablish and grow their market share within the golf ball sector and it’s done really really well for them however once they kind of got what they needed from it in terms of patents they sold off what was left of Maxfly to Dick Sporting Goods where it sat for a while now as an instore and online only brand within Dick Sporting Goods portfolio so I said earlier I was pleasantly surprised when these arrived and call me superficial but here’s why i wasn’t actually going to make this video but when I popped a little post on social media my DMs were packed out with heart eyes flames and it wasn’t about me it was about these golf clubs and I can see why i’m a sucker for a very minimalist and clean look in an iron and these just absolutely epitomize that this kind of brushed matte finish I think looks absolutely fantastic and there’s something about how sparingly they’ve logoed this the Maxfly logo looks great and also I love when iron companies just use one color on their branding i think it looks really premium and very sophisticated when you go down into the playing position they’ve got the proportions really very very good here the longer irons I think look a bit better than the shorter irons for me in the playing position the shorter irons look a little bit angular and the toes a little bit high for me but those longer irons look absolutely great so overall the aesthetic package is a very exciting one and it made me want to learn a bit more about the tech now I said these sat in a players distance category but with a slight twist and a slight twist for me is in the construction a lot of the irons we see in that compact distance or players distance category tend to be hollowbodied with high flexing faces and maybe filled with some sort of foam well what we’ve got here is slightly different this is more of a single forging although it goes through a few processes to get to its final stage so the first three stages of forging is just to create the the basic shape of a club head then the fourth stage of the forging refineses that a little bit more but actually creates some little gaps in the head where they can insert some tungsten and ceramic which take care of some of the requirements of the CG the perimeter weighting and the feel and then the final stage of forging covers that hole up packs it all back in tight for a nice essentially overall one piece forged club but if you’re going to enter the players distance category then you’re going to have to take on some of the real big boys of the game and probably for me still the daddy of that category is the Tailor Made P790 now we’ve got some very comparable lofts here so the Tailor-Made P790 the 79 for example is 30° this is 30.5 and when you go through the set increments it is very similar so what I’ve done is I’ve brought with me some P790s so I think this will be a great chance to hit some balls away and compare some data okay so let’s get some away i’ve got the Maxfly in my hands first i’ve literally never hit a shot with this so I’m actually intrigued to see what we’re going to get here got seven iron let’s get some away and get some initial impressions wow that felt fantastic it’s a good first start that was a really interesting so in terms of numbers for that first one that was a 180 carry which is pretty good for me i’m kind of a one high 170s with my own clubs my own 7 iron so there’s a bit of extra on that and a decent spin rate there of 6,300 revs it was soft but not buttery soft like a blade it felt like there was a bit of spring to it it felt like a there was a bit of power in there it was kind of a kind of a springy soft that felt absolutely fantastic truth be told [Music] that felt flushed so I’m going to suggest that’s going to have a bit more carry on it that time so yeah we’re up at 187 there so that’s a really meaty strike spin rate really good though 6,600 revs nearly 67 so that’s plenty plenty of spin to keep it in the air and give me a nice pretty steep descent angle there of 49.7 so that’s something to look out for in this category sometimes when we go stronger in loft you can benefit in terms of your being flatter by the distance number but if you lose that descent angle and that spin then you’re not going to hold any greens so that’s really interesting now that will be interesting because that felt quite significantly out of the heel but that’s done really really well for what is essentially a misstruck shot that’s given me 181 yards of carry spin 6,900 revs that’s something really encouraging for me because quite often when I do go into this category as I said that spin drops off and my overall performance although it can look very flattering on a launch monitor my overall performance can come down a little bit but that’s a that’s a genuinely very impressive start for the Max Fight Club so let’s hit some with the P790 and compare those numbers right sorry to interrupt but I hope you’re enjoying this video and I hope you’re enjoying this look at these Maxfly irons if you are if you could hit the like button it really helps us and subscribe to the channel also comment down below have you ever played Maxfly product and which ones did you play yeah that’s it’s very different an impressive output there we’ve got 190 yards of carry lower on spin so 59 in the spin there sub6000s but just going purely on feel to start with i’ve been a big fan of this new P790 because some of the older ones to me have just felt a little bit clicky a little bit tingy they’ve done a really good lot of work on the acoustics and the feel of the P790 making what was as I said kind of for me the leader in this category even better but the difference between those two clubs even straight away which I’m going to investigate a little bit further this does feel springier it does feel hotter off the face and I guess that is to be expected this is as I was talking about one of those hollow body clubs filled so it’s going to have a slightly more flexing face and I could genuinely feel that at impact there so that was another good pass at it there i feel that’s gone a long long way that Yeah 192 yards spin’s gone up a little bit there 6,179 revs so we’ve got a slightly different flight profile going on here going to be really interested to get into these numbers a little bit deeper in a second me just hit one more so that was a touch lower on the face probably a couple of grooves lower than I’ve been striking it but from Tailor Made as I expect I mean I’ve kept a good considering as low as that was on the face 183 yards of carry 61 of spin again so very consistent in terms of the spin numbers there so what I’m going to do now I’m going to go through hit i’ve got the four iron of each model here and I’ve got the pitching wedge of each model here cuz I’d like to get a a full flavor of the whole set so I’m going to hit a few away with all of them and I’m going to get back to you with the data now [Music] well that was a really interesting data gathering session and I’m not quite sure what to think yet so I’m going to kind of make my mind up as I go through starting from the bottom so we’re going to start with the pitching wedge the main numbers I want to see here are spin ball speed and distance so ball speed off the Maxfly pitching wedge I was getting nearly 115 mph 114.7 versus the Tailor Made P790 pitching wedge but basically 112 so a good two 2 and 1 half plus ball speed difference there i will caveat that by saying the Maxfly is a little bit stronger in pitching wedge so this is something I’m going to talk about in a bit but you got to be wary of so the Maxfly pitching wedge coming in at 43 versus the P790 at 44 we’d expect to see some ball speed drop off there because of that loft difference i’m seeing less spin out of the Maxfly kind of 8,900 revs versus 9 12 from the P790 and I’m seeing 7 yards more distance from the Maxfly pitching wedge 50 yards I was carrying that pitching wedge on average which is not a normal number for me whereas with the Tailor Made P790 143 which is still a strong number for me coming from what I normally play in so those are the differences in wedges yet when we go to the seven IR data it’s almost the other way round so or it gets a lot more similar the ball speeds 129 and a half with maxfly 131 12 with tailor made a 2 mph jump in Tailor Made 6,600 and a bit revs from the Maxfly basically 6,000 from the Tailor Made so less spin coming from the Tailor Made there which is opposite to what it was in the pitching wedge and don’t forget these 7 irons are very comparable in loft in terms of carry I was getting more out of the P790 in 7 188 yards versus 183 yards finally in the longer irons a pretty distinct difference here so again it’s gone slightly the other way whereas the Maxfly was stronger in the shorter irons the Tailor Made is slightly stronger in four iron 20° of loft versus Maxfly is 21° because of that I was seeing quite a big big jump in terms of ball speed 147.9 from the Tailor Made versus 141.3 from Maxfly spin numbers were basically identical 4,200 revs but I was seeing quite a significant jump in yardage in that tailorade iron so 218 yards of carry from my Maxfly 4 iron 231 yards which is massive from that tailorade 4 iron so couple of takeaways there for me number one you’ve got to be so careful with lofts if you’re changing irons you need to know what you’re going through not just that 7 iron number because a lot of people and I’m guilty of that in some of my reviews I’ll let you know what the seven iron loft is but not all manufacturers create those increments equally so you might get some spread here like we have in this particular scenario that’s one thing I want to take away another thing I’d like to take away is the feel difference i alluded to it as I was going through the Max Fives are giving me a much more kind of traditional soft forged feel so those of you if you’re thinking of going into the players distance category I kind of want you to think about which way you’re coming into that from if you’re coming into it as someone who’s maybe traditionally played forged clubs or blades but you’re getting a bit older and you’re losing some distance so you need a bit of a boost I think that’s a really potentially good gateway into that category for you because you’re going to get that distance leap but you’re not going to sacrifice that more soft forge feel that you might become used to the Tailor Made gives you that very much more it almost feels like a hybrid you’ve got that hollow body face flexing a bit of power and you can really sense that and it is an exceptional feeling iron and I still think 100% it’s the category leader in terms of players distance but if you’re someone who’s maybe coming from the game improvement side of moving into the players distance category maybe your game’s improving and you want something a little bit more playerly looking and compact but you don’t want to give give up that distance you’ve gotten used to then the feel of the Tailor Made might be more suitable for you so overall I have to say I was seriously impressed with this MaxFly XC2i and it’s gone up against the best of the best arguably within this category and produced some really comparable data but giving me a really good alternative in terms of feel at impact and I tell you what else has really impressed me it’s very sensibly priced which you tend to see in this direct to consumer market at $999 there’s not much to dislike here great looks great feel