Iron plan

The G400 brief was simple – make them longer and higher

Fact. Truly outstanding gameimprovement irons don’t come along very often. If you can name more than five, without checking Google, you’re either easily pleased or know something we don’t.

The problems stem from how GI irons in the past have been viewed by designers as the poor cousins of better player models.

Club engineers thought – wrongly – that “average” golfers wanted forgiveness at all costs, and simply forgot to factor-in decent looking head shapes that golfers would want to play. Ping have been guilty of it themselves with the original Ping Zings, but thanks to modern tech things are changing. As manufacturers have tried to out-do each other on distance, lofts have got stronger; but ball flights got flatter, making it harder to stop shots on a green. So a key design parameter for the G400 was longer, but only if it was higher, too. Ping is confident the G400s deliver both.

Details: RRP £110 (s) £120 (g) per club. Availability: 4-LW. Stock steel shafts: Ping AWT 2.0 plus five upgrade shafts at no charge. Stock graphite shaft: Ping Alta CB.

More forgiveness It’s not huge but Ping reckon the G400’s MOI is 4% higher than the previous G iron. Don’t forget G itself was a super forgiving and playable option.

The G400s are also available in a Power Spec option. It means you can better tailor your longest iron (and set) to fill yardage gaps between irons and hybrids or a wood. One Ping staff tour player reckoned his G400 7-iron hit shots as far as his usual...