Unlike some Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) brands, Hogan does have a four-person, U.S.-based design firm under contract to handle its R&D so you can expect several new Hogan products this spring and throughout the year.ĭue to COVID-19-related shipping delays, Hogan will begin taking pre-orders today for the ICON chrome irons. For now, Hogan isn’t saying yes, but it isn’t saying no, either. That leads to the question of possible progressive sets. You’re looking at serious, improving golfers, but probably not much more than a six- to eight-handicap player.” “They’ve played really well with them, especially the short irons, which are so easy to hit. The ICON is designed for advanced ball strikers and competitive golfers but White says they’ve tested well with high single-digit handicappers, too. “These are not golf clubs with training wheels by any stretch of the imagination.”
“You really have to know what you’re doing here,” says White. Dirty Harry: “a man’s got to know his limitations.” Blades are sexy to look at and fun to play if you have the game but in the words of Clint Eastwood in his role as Detective Harry Callahan, a.k.a. The company says it’s tried to make the Ben Hogan ICON as playable as possible. “It’s not just a piece of metal on the end of a stick.” Can You Even Blade, Bro?įorgiving and blade go together like haddock and ice cream so, in this case, you have to look at it relatively. “It’s a pretty forgiving blade,” says White. As irons get longer, the center of mass gets lower, so you get the ball up easier. For scoring irons (8-9-PW), the center of mass is higher, producing lower, more piercing shots without ballooning. Hogan calls it the Progressive Center of Mass Weighting System, a fancy name for a simple concept: the center of mass gets lower as the irons get longer. “It puts more mass behind the golf ball so you get that great feeling a blade can provide when you hit it squarely.” “The weight pad on the back has a different geometry for each individual club,” adds White. That should translate into more confidence and – for a blade – more forgiveness. The design also allows for a larger face and a larger hitting area. “This feature provided a thicker mass behind the face while keeping the center of gravity more heel-ward for easier workability,” wrote Jeff Sheets for MyGolfSpy back in 2010. The blade-on-blade look was used by the original Hogan for years but that 1999 Apex made it look stunning. The ICON is a muscle-back blade so there’s only so much technology that can be stuffed into it. If you look at the entire product line, everything sort of fits and flows together, like you’d expect from Ben Hogan.” “It’s a traditional, sort of elegant, look. “We try to marry form with function,” says White. There’s a clear and intentional Hogan family consistency. As was the case with last year’s PTx PRO, the ICON styling looks updated and retro at the same time. The Ben Hogan ICON replaces the Fort Worth, Hogan’s first release during its 2015 resurrection. “To get back to the traditional and classical styling Ben Hogan blades have been known for.” “That was really our design intent,” says Hogan CEO Scott White.
It’s back today with a new blade, the Ben Hogan ICON. If you find yourself yearning for that iconic look, yearn no more. Those Apex blades were designed by Jeff Sheets during Spalding’s ownership of the brand and featured the distinctively Hogan- esque blade-on-blade styling. They, along with the Apex Plus, were perhaps the last great iron sets released by the original Hogan Co. The circa-1999 Apex blade may have been the most iconic. Hogan was arguably the greatest ball striker ever and damned near every forged iron his company produced was, well, iconic. The words Ben Hogan and Icon go together like velvety and smooth.