A Dead Simple Guide To Pick The Best Driving Iron [2021 Update]

Foaming at the Mouth

As we also see in the TaylorMade P790 UDI, TaylorMade uses their proprietary Speedfoam technology to fill in the hollow head design.

It’s deployed to great effect here, providing an active and lively club face that the ball just jumps off of. The GAPR feels buttery smooth and has one of the best sounds of any iron I’ve hit this year.

Looks That Kill

The GAPR iron is a little odd-looking, but even though I’m generally a fan of a more traditional look, I found myself liking it a lot more than I expected to.

It has the look of an iron face with a thin topline that then has a chunk of metal backpacking behind that traditional iron face.

Perhaps it’s the great color combo of a matte charcoal face and Darth Vader-black chrome elsewhere that makes the odd look effective and confidence-inspiring.

A Pro Is Also a Con

You may have noticed that there’s an identical entry in the Pros and Cons section above: the GAPR produces a very straight ball flight.

This is a pro in that as long as you make a good swing and square the clubface to the target, the ball is going straight down the fairway.

It’s not going to impart any sidespin, and it’s very difficult to hook, slice, fade or draw the ball.

However, a lot of players in the market for a driving iron want to curve the ball, so an overly straight flight like this winds up being a con more than a pro.

Slower-swinging players and higher handicappers will probably love the GAPR MID, however. And if your specialty is Francesco Molinari-esque laser straight bullets, then the GAPR MID is likely a great option for you.

17 Degrees of Stingeration

The elusive stinger is a beautiful thing: a low, penetrating shot that cheats the wind but still flies a good distance, hits the ground running and rolls out to a position that rivals other players’ drivers or 3-woods. 

The TaylorMade UDI Driving Iron seems like it was designed with this in mind.

Its 17-degree loft is that of a traditional 1-iron, which means you’ll need a pretty high swing speed to get it into the air at all. But put a good swing on it and it really goes!

The steep loft and minimal offset will delight low handicappers and terrify beginners.

The classic design without much perimeter weighting makes it rather workable. I found it a little easier to hit draws than fades, which could be a result of the tungsten weight in the toe imparting extra draw spin to the ball.

But compared to most clubs I tested, it was much easier to shape shots to fight the wind and optimize the angle for the next shot.

Speedfoam and Inverted Cone

TaylorMade is always on the cutting edge of golf technology, and their patented Speedfoam is no exception.

The thin face is backed up by this unique filling, giving a springiness you won’t find in a solid forged iron.

They also tout an “inverted cone” in the face to further sweeten the sweet spot. And I can tell you, it’s one fantastic sweet spot: it feels like hitting a golf ball with a trampoline.

On windy days, I was able to hit low balls that hovered under the breeze and rolled out, even into a strong headwind.

Hitting it off the fairway was tough but doable and was very useful on holes with room to run it up to the green.

You’re not going to find yourself hitting high shots that land and stop, but that’s not why you carry a driving iron. The TaylorMade UDI is built for penetrating trajectories and workability, and it does both very well.

Pretty as a Picture

The Srixon Z Utility 85 is one of the best-looking traditionally-styled driving irons I’ve come across.

It hearkens back to the Hogan Apex irons of my youth, only with updated features and even prettier construction.

The sole is thicker and, surprise surprise, there’s a hollow section of the head to lower the center of gravity and make the club a little bit easier to hit.

However, this is a far cry from the other hollow headed clubs offered this year, as it still plays and feels like a classic blade.

Spin Control for Days

The best thing about blades is how workable they are. If you’ve got the talent, then blades will let you impart sidespin that can result in trap draws, high fades, baby cuts, and more.

While that may sound daunting to most players, it’s the holy grail that golfers dream of: hitting the right shaped shot to get to that tucked pin and make birdie where other players dream of par.

The Srixon Z Utility 85 is the most workable iron I tested this year, with purely struck shots resulting in the picture I had in my head prior to the swing.

The drawback to this is that shots that aren’t struck purely are much worse than they’d be with a more forgiving driving iron.

Hot Face, Low Shots

The Srixon Z Utility 85 was the most reliable producer of the low, wind-cheating stinger that I look for in the best driving irons.

If you’re a better player looking to expand your repertoire to include a stinger, or just looking for a club that you can consistently shape shots with that won’t get you in as much trouble as a wild driver, the Z Utility 85 should be on your short list.

Adjustability options

Cobra is one of the pioneers of adjustable clubs, giving players the option of several different lofts to fine-tune the trajectory to their liking.

They haven’t slacked off here, offering the MyFly adjustable hosel that’s also offered in their woods.

This lets you adjust the loft of the club while keeping the face square to the target line, quite an engineering triumph unto itself.

I found myself tuning the loft to the lowest possible to get that desirable penetrating ball flight, but slower swing players will appreciate the ability to add loft to help get the ball airborne.

Hollow Body and Tungsten Toe

I’m beginning to see a pattern here of technologically forward-thinking golf manufacturers making driving irons with hollow bodies to increase hittability.

This does help driving irons become more accessible to more players, but it sacrifices a little bit of the strength of true driving irons. I found the trajectory nice but a little too high for my tastes.

When I tried to hit wind cheaters, I really had to move the ball back in my stance and use an exaggerated knock-down swing to accomplish the trajectory I wanted.

However, the tradeoff is that I found myself hitting the utility iron out of tougher lies in the rough than long irons of old, and it was still useful in hitting low bullets out of the trees when I had to keep it under limbs.

So while the hallowed stinger wasn’t quite as hot as I’d like, the overall usefulness of the club was quite high.

The tungsten toe weight is another feature that’s beginning to become standard in driving irons these days.

It helps counteract the weight of the hosel and distribute the center of gravity more across the whole face, and it works here. The sweet spot is large and lively.

Forged Face

The most attractive feature of the Hot Launch HL3 driving irons is the fact that it has a forged face.

Forged irons, even if it’s just the face, provide a vastly superior feel to cast irons. To me, they feel somehow smoother and springier, so the ball really leaps off the club face.

The face is very thin overall and has to be extremely close to the maximum limit of thinness allowed by the USGA. It features “variable face thickness,” which means it’s a bit bulkier at the heel and toe to help correct mis-hits and enlarge the sweet spot.

Hollow Body

I’m a fan of how the Hot Launch HL3 driving iron sits behind the ball, as the color scheme makes it look like it has a thin topline with a blacked-out body.

That hollow body is part of why this club is so hittable: the center of gravity is just below the traditional hitting area, so it’s very easy to get the ball in the air.

I’m guessing that’s why they call this an “iron-wood” instead of simply a driving iron – you can hit it off the fairway and even out of a decent lie in the rough.

However, that does make it a little harder to flight the ball down. When I first looked at and swung the club, I thought it would surely behave like a hybrid: high flight and soft landing.

That’s not what most players look for in a driving iron. But I was surprised by the lively face and the lower-than-expected ceiling of the trajectories I was able to produce.

None of the shots ballooned and it was playable in the wind. However, the center of gravity is just a touch too low to really get that desirable stinger that gives you an extra 50 yards of roll in dry conditions.

Lost in Translation

The HI 877 is listed as a hybrid, but I think there may be something lost in translation (Fourteen is a Japanese company), because it looks and plays much more like a driving iron than a hybrid.

The clubface looks like an iron, and there’s a slight bulge behind the club head that’s really too small to fall into the hybrid category.

Like so many other driving irons, the Fourteen HI 877 features a hollow head construction to maximize forgiveness.

This is a driving iron aimed more at the average golfer, as it’s quite forgiving. But it still has a great low, penetrating trajectory and can produce a surprisingly good version of a stinger.

But That Yellow

You definitely can’t miss the Fourteen HI 877 in someone’s golf bag, because it’s got a very unique color scheme.

It’s the first thing you’ll notice about it, and it may be enough to turn off some golfers completely.

Fourteen touts it as a “vibrant yellow body”, but I couldn’t ever get used to the slightly mustardy yellow of the club.

However, just like some players prefer a yellow golf ball, I’m sure there are players out there who would find the yellow of the clubhead quite appealing, or at the very least, not distracting.

Versatile Sole

Perhaps the best aspect of the clever design is the sole, which is thick right under the hitting area and thinned out towards the heel and toe.

This shape really helps dig through tough lies and makes the HI 877 useful as more than just a driving iron.

It’s an effective tool from deep rough, hardpan, pine needles and tight lies.Comfort in the Tech Response 4.0 golf shoe begins with the lightweight material.

These shoes did not burden us while walking the course with additional weight, so we felt as fresh at the end of our round as we did at the beginning.