Five Stars for TaylorMade

The greatest items of golf equipment have profoundly affected our sport and how we play it.

The gutta-percha ball, Bristol Steel and Apollo’s steel shafts, and more recent success stories like Ping’s Eye 2 irons and Anser putter, Callaway’s Big Bertha driver, and the Titleist Pro-V1 have changed the course of golf to some degree, making it more enjoyable for a huge number of enthusiasts. Now in its fifth generation and still having a huge influence on the way clubs are designed, we wonder if it might be time to add TaylorMade’s P790 iron to the list of clubs that changed the game.

The hugely influential P·790 first appeared in 2017, hinting at the creation of a new category of irons (it wasn’t the original but was, by far, the most important) that has since grown considerably and is now second only in sales and significance to irons used by game-improvers.
Players-Distance clubs, made for better-than-average golfers, seek speed more than they are forgiveness, are ubiquitous now with nearly every manufacturer in the world making its own version.

With so many metrics for measuring a club’s success, it’s hard to know which of the five iterations of the P·790 has been the best, which made the biggest waves, and which differed the most from its immediate predecessor. It’s not as if the 2017 model was unattractive (it certainly wasn’t), but 2025’s just looks a little cleaner and more elegant somehow. And while big manufacturers who adhere to strict two-year product cycles are sometimes guilty of bringing out new clubs that differ very little from the previous model, the 2025 P·790 is sufficiently different from 2023’s to appease cynics.

As already mentioned, the new club is clean. The word ‘Tungsten’ has been removed and all that remains are the simplified TaylorMade logo in its familiar position high in the toe of the back of the club and “P∙790” in the middle. Other alterations include a slightly thinner topline and more curved sole which make it look remarkably similar to 2024’s P·770.

A deeper analysis reveals the most significant change with the use of a new high-high strength, high-speed 4340M forged steel face material that’s 20% stronger than that of the 2023 P··790(4340 is a ‘medium-carbon, low-alloy’ steel used for aircraft, cars, and hydraulic systems.) As we’ve seen when any clubmaker introduces a new, stronger material it enables engineers to make much thinner faces that flex more at impact, boosting ball speed. The slot in the sole of the 4-7-irons is back to help those clubs flex a little more at impact and get the ball up in the air. TaylorMade is also saying the new face helps increase the size of the sweetspot by an incredible 24%.

The use of tungsten (30-40 grams positioned horizontally in the long irons to help launch the ball higher, and vertically toward the toe in the middle irons, with none in the short irons) creates what TaylorMade calls FLTD CG where the CG in each iron is optimized depending on the job it needs to do. Stiffening bars and thin/thick sections on the back wall also effect the feel of each iron, something TaylorMade prioritized.

Feel is greatly enhanced, of course, by continued use of a light, urethane foam that has improved with each generation. The SpeedFoam Air which evolved from the initial material, does a great job of dampening vibration and improving the sound of impact.

Foam, stabilization bars, and tungsten have all been used before but their constant tweaking ensures better performance.

$1,400 (4-AW, steel); $1,500 (graphite)
Lofts – 4-20˚, 7-30˚, PW-44˚
Shafts – KBS Tour Lite (steel);  Mitsubishi MMT (graphite)
Right and left-hand.
Available for pre-order on the website; in stores March 13th
taylormadegolf.com