Mizuno

Every set of Mizuno irons traces back to a forging plant in Hiroshima, where the company has made them since 1968. Long before that, brothers Rihachi and Rizo Mizuno opened a sporting goods business in Osaka in 1906, selling baseball equipment years before the first Mizuno golf clubs, the Star Line, appeared in 1933. Baseball gloves and running shoes still come out of the same company. In golf it's the irons.

Grain Flow Forging, patented in 1998, works a single billet of steel through several forging stages so the grain runs unbroken through the finished head. That process is most of why people talk about feel the way they do here. At Yoro in Gifu the clubs are assembled and finished by builders who hold Meister status, a rank that takes roughly fifteen years to earn. Two families cover the irons, Mizuno Pro and JPX. For fitting, Swing DNA reads a swing off a sensor in the shaft and matches it against the company's own shaft data, and it happens through a network of fitting retailers rather than one company studio. Nothing feels like a Mizuno is the line the company has run for years. Nick Faldo won all six of his majors with these irons in the bag, and there are still tour players carrying them who aren't paid to.