For the 2025 season, TaylorMade sought out to improve on its already successful player’s distance iron, P790. In order to see results that would best the previous iteration, the engineers knew they needed to have major breakthroughs.
And they succeeded in their goal.
The latest version of the P790 features new material in the face that is 20 percent stronger than the previous generation and a sweet spot that has increased by up to 24 percent compared to the 2023 model.
“The average purchase cycle for an iron is five to six years. So, if you’re playing a 2017 or 2019 and you go and test this 2025 model, you’re going to notice massive changes in feel,” Matt Bovee, TaylorMade Director of Product Creation said. “You’re going to see more distance and you’re going to see it more consistently.”
The new material used in the face are part of what helps get more distance and more consistency. It’s called 4340M that gives the face increased strength and allows for a thinner face to bring faster ball speeds. Each individual iron is also optimized and the FLTD center of gravity as you work your way through the irons allows for optimal launch and spin windows.
By using this new material, the TaylorMade engineers wanted to focus on improved performance, but knew they couldn’t sacrifice feel or sound. They utilized a sound stabilization bar, but also unlocked new tools to help test for feel and sound to optimize each iron for that golfer in this category.
“What we’re able to do is model how the club is going to vibrate at impact. When it vibrates, it creates a sound, that frequency is what you hear and ultimately how you interpret feel,” Bovee said. “But, it’s more than just that, because you need to be able to tune that sound in a mass efficient way. So, those two things are intimately tied together.”
Fine tuning the sound meant that TaylorMade needed to change the structure of each head to stiffen each head in a different way.
Part of that structure change included an even lower center of gravity in the longer irons to provide higher launch. That center of gravity works up as you get into your scoring irons to provide more spin.
“Any time you give an engineer extra weight to play with, it’s impactful. We like to say that grams are massive,” Bovee said. “What it allows us to do is reinforce different areas of the iron, so it’ll feel better. We can get better mass properties.”
With higher launching long irons, more spin in the scoring irons, a 20 percent stronger face and a 24 percent bigger sweet spot, these are not the old P790 irons. TaylorMade utilized new tools and materials to optimize these irons to bring an exciting new option to the player’s distance category.
It’s the fifth generation of the P790 irons for TaylorMade, but the engineers are excited by the breakthroughs they found through this process and what it will do for the future of the company.
“That’s how you get better each year with the different models is you develop new tools, you develop new materials,” Bovee said. “You learn from where you were in the past and you take all of that and keep pushing forward.”
