Mizuno Golf – Luke Donald’s first look at new Mizuno irons and wedges

August 1, 2014 – On April 22nd Mizuno’s R&D team met with Luke Donald at Old Palm Golf Club’s glorious practice facility at Florida (USA) to gather his views on their new MP tour samples.

The aim was to see if the MP-15 irons had evolved Mizuno’s Ti Muscle technology in order to meet Luke’s approval. In the past Donald had played and won with the MP-59 (also a Ti Muscle) – before moving onto the more traditional MP-64.

MP-15: Luke and the Ti Muscle
“The statistics show that Luke played very well with the MP-59’s,” said Chris Voshall – Senior Engineer. “But although he won tournaments – he never quite sync’d with the feel off the clubface.  When Luke moved onto the MP-64’s, we knew we had to find a model that gave the best of both worlds. The challenge from then was to refine the feel of the Ti Muscle – without losing the extra stability it gave from off centre strikes.”

“In MP-15, we’ve combined the very best of both models – the profile, trajectory control and feel of the MP-64, with the peripheral weighting only possible with a Ti insert.   There’s no more sensory a player than Luke Donald – if the feel gets his approval, it’s a pretty good sign.”

MP-H5: The difference between Luke Donald and a 1 hcp amateur
Donald also took the hollow technology MP-H5 long irons for a test run – and was happy to see the long irons peak with less spin than their predecessors. Donald was one of the first to play Mizuno’s original Fli-Hi long iron replacements, starting a trend amongst better players to ditch their traditional long irons. Chris Voshall said: “We’d made a test bag for Luke with his normal split of hybrids and traditional irons – but we wanted his feedback on the MP-H5 mid and short irons too. They’re a little bigger than Luke is used to playing, but we’ve kept the MP proportions intact – so it doesn’t take long for the eye to adjust.”

Mizuno’s Chris Voshall is a fair player himself with a 1 hcp, but hitting balls side by side with Luke highlighted the difference between a leading tour player and a good amateur player. “I’d like to trick myself that I’m close, but the difference in ball striking was pretty clear.  I hit it out of the middle a little less often than Luke, but there was 10mph difference in ball speed as well.  It’s why Luke only needs the 2 or 3 iron in MP-H5, where someone like me should be make the break higher up the set.  It’s the MP-H5’s assistance with launch that’s the biggest help to someone with slightly less ball speed.”

MP-T5 wedges: More bounce options
There were no surprises with the wedges.  Luke’s a classic chrome wedge man, so the new Black IP was just for looking at. The MP-T5’s offering of 25 different loft/bounce combinations of little use to a player to tuned to his personal grind.  Though Luke was flattered to hear that his personal grind had made its way into the line of grind options.

By REDACCIÓN