Single Length Irons Info & FAQ
For your convenience, we’ve listed answers below to frequently asked questions.
If you do not see an answer to your question, feel free to contact us using the form below the FAQs.
At the time being, we offer only what is listed during checkout.
The shafts that we use are made by club design icon Tom Wishon. Tom designed them to cover a wide variety of club fitting needs. This includes 4 different steel shaft options and 8 different graphite shaft options. We feel confident in the performance of these shafts and you can see that in our testimonials.
With the grips, beginning March 1st, 2019, the stock grip we began using on all our builds was the Golf Pride MCC Red/Black grip. It’s a very high quality and very highly rated and we feel that you will love it. It is available in numerous sizes that you can choose from during the checkout process.
Uruguay 310 Uzbekistan 310 Vanuatu 310 Venezuela 310 Wallis and Futuna Islands 310 Zambia 310 Zimbabwe 310 Afghanistan 185 Albania 185 Algeria 185 American Samoa 185 Angola 185 Argentina 185 Armenia 185 Azerbaijan Republic 185 Belarus 185 Belize 185 Benin 185 Bolivia 185 Bosnia and Herzegovina 185 Botswana 185 Brazil 185 Bulgaria 185 Burkina Faso 185 Burundi 185 Cambodia 185 Cameroon 185 Colombia 185 Cook Islands 185 Costa Rica 185 Croatia 185 Cape Verde 185 Chad 185 Chile 185 Djbouti 185 Democractic Republic of the Congo 185 East Timor 185 Ecuador 185 Ehiopia 185 El Salvador 185 Eritrea 185 Estonia 185 Fiji 185 Paraguay 185 Peru 185 Poland 185 Qatar 185 Republic of the Congo 185 |
Reunion 185 Romania 185 French Guiana 185 French Polynesia 185 Gabon Republic 185 Gambia 185 Georgia 185 Ghana 185 Gibraltar 185 Guatemala 185 Guinea 185 Guyana 185 Honduras 185 Hungary 185 Iraq 185 Kazakhstan 185 Kenya 185 Kyrgyzstan 185 Laos 185 Latvia 185 Lesotho 185 Liberia 185 Libya 185 Lithuania 185 Macedonia 185 Madagascar 185 Malawi 185 Mali 185 Marshall Islands 185 Mauritania 185 Mauritius 185 Micronesia 185 Moldova 185 Mongolia 185 Montenegro 185 Morocco 185 Mozambique 185 New Caledonia 185 Nicargua 185 Niger 185 Nigeria 185 Nmibia 185 Palau 185 Panama 185 Papua New Guinea 185 Russia 185 Rwanda 185 Samoa 185 |
Senegal 185 Serbia 185 Serbia and Montenegro 185 Seychelles 185 Slovakia 185 Slovenia 185 South Africa 185 Suriname 185 Swaziland 185 Tanzania 185 Australia 116 Austria 116 Bahrain 116 Bangladesh 116 Bhutan 116 Brunei 116 China 116 Cyprus 116 Denmark 116 Egypt 116 Faroe Isands 116 Finland 116 Germany 116 Greece 116 Greenland 116 Guam 116 Icelands 116 India 116 Indonesia 116 Israel 116 Jordan 116 Liechtenstein 116 Kuwait 116 Lebanon 116 Macau 116 Malaysi 116 Maldives 116 Malta 116 Nepal 116 New Zealand 116 Norway 116 Oman 116 Pakistan 116 Palestine 116 Philippines 116 Portugal 116 Saudi Arabia 116 Spain 116 |
Togo 185 Tunisia 185 Uganda 185 Ukraine 185 United Arab Emirates 185 Vietnam 185 Sri Lanka 116 Sweden 116 Switzerland 116 Thailand 116 Turkey 116 Anguilla 86 Antigua and Barbuda 86 Aruba 86 Bahamas 86 Barbados 86 Belgium 86 Bermuda 86 British Virgin Islands 86 Canada 86 Cayman Islands 86 Dominica 86 Dominican Republic 86 France 86 Grenada 86 Guadeloupe 86 Haiti 86 Hong Kong 86 Ireland 86 Italy 86 Jamaica 86 Japan 86 Luxembourg 86 Martinique 86 Mexico 86 Monaco 86 Montserrat 86 Netherlands 86 Puerto Rico 86 Saint Kitts and Nevis Anguila 86 Saint Vincent and Grenadines 86 Singapore 86 South Korea 86 St. Lucia 86 Taiwan 86 Trinidad and Tobago 86 Turks and Caicos Islands 86 United Kingdom 86 |
If the cost is a concern for you, we do offer 3-month payment plans. Just proceed through checkout and you’ll see the option along the way.
No, we are currently not selling the component heads by themselves.
Yes, but it has to be done manually. If you’d like to pay via PayPal, send us an email message with the specifics of the set you want and we’ll send you a PayPal invoice.
Yes. After you place your order, send us a message using the contact below and we will have such requests appended to your order.
If you need help deciding what set makeup and specs to choose, click here for more info.
In-person custom fittings via the official website are not available.
However, during checkout you will have the option of selecting an extremely high level of detail as to the build specifications of your set. In this way, you will be getting a set of clubs that can vastly outperform any normal set of golf clubs you buy off the rack that only offers limited fitting options.
Trying the clubs before buying via the official website is not available.
However, this is why we offer a 90-day money back guarantee. We offer such a guarantee because we feel confident that you will like them and play better with them over time versus your current set. You can see this in our testimonials.
The Sterling Irons® conform to the Rules of Golf and are legal for tournament play.
The main selling point of single length irons is that they are simply easier to play.
In a conventional set of golf clubs, each iron is made with a different length and weight…and they are meant to be played from a different ball position as you go from club to club. Golf is already hard enough and conventional iron design only complicates the game further.
On the other hand, single length irons are all the same length and weight. This means you only need one swing and one ball position as you go from club to club.
For the average amateur who doesn’t play regularly, this can make hitting the ball easier and the game more fun.
For the better player and/or professional, you will be able to hit your approach shots much closer, make more birdies, and leak less bogeys. This is especially useful with the lower lofted irons in that 175-225 yard range that is so statistically critical to tour success.
The Sterling Irons ™ in particular are built to be 8-iron length. This length ensures that you will hit the lower-lofted clubs more consistently in the sweet spot…while still not being so long-shafted that it feels odd to be playing 9-iron or wedges that are slightly longer than in a conventional set.
If you want to hit the ball better, shoot lower scores, and have more fun…you should play single length irons.
Honestly, you shouldn’t play any clubs simply because a pro plays them.
Typically, top tour players are paid millions of dollars to play clubs from a certain manufacturer and it is in their contract to switch to the latest clubs any time the manufacturer comes out with something new. Really you should play what best fits your own game.
That being said the answer is yes.
Bobby Jones apparently won the Grand Slam using single length irons.
Moe Norman, a golfer who many consider one of the greatest ball strikers of all times, used single length irons.
Jaacob Bowden PGA, used 1Iron Golf’s single length irons to shoot his first tournament round in the 60s in 2007. He also shot the Speedgolf World Championship record for golf score at Bandon Dunes with a 72 in 55 minutes and 42 seconds using GRIA Golf’s single length hybrid irons.
More recently, PGA TOUR winner and Ryder Cup player Bryson DeChambeau used single length irons from Edel Golf to also win the 2015 NCAA Championship and 2015 US Amateur. PGA TOUR player Matt Dobyns plays single length irons as well.
Yes.
A Canadian company by the name of Iso-Vibe designed a set a number of decades ago. Tommy Armour came out with the EQL’s in the 1980s. My Ostrich Golf created the PureFit iMatch SLs but are also no longer in production.
More recently, 1Iron Golf, Value Golf, GRIA Golf, Edel Golf, Cobra Golf, and several others have manufactured single length irons.
In designing Sterling Irons ™, we had had the advantage of both Jaacob Bowden’s and Tom Wishon’s experience, the Internet for research, and modern technology for testing.
Jaacob Bowden has been involved with playing and selling single length irons since 2007 and he knew the single length iron market very well.
Tom Wishon is a 40-year veteran of the golf equipment industry specializing in club head design, shaft performance analysis, and club fitting research and development.
During the initial phases of working together, we scavenged the Internet to find every possible bit of information about what worked and did not work with single length irons. We then compar®entalized the feedback in to buckets and literally sat down at a white board to try to figure out how to retain all the benefits of single length irons while fixing all the problems and common complaints.
We were also able to test all our prototypes with both human testing and robot testing on Trackman, which Tom has at his R&D facility at the Dalton Ranch Golf Club in Durango, CO.
We set out to design a cool-looking, customizable, and competition-legal set of single length irons based off an 8-iron length club (single length irons have historically been built from 5-iron to 7-iron length) that went the distances and trajectories that you’d expect for a set of modern day golf clubs.
We feel like we’ve done it!
The Sterling Irons™ are a huge leap forward in single length iron technology.
To our understanding, companies aren’t making single length clubs as a result of misguided manufacturing decisions made earlier in the 20th century. Now that thousands and thousands of iron sets have been made this way, consequently we think the modern golf psyche is now so deeply entrenched in the idea that irons have to all be different lengths, that no major manufacturer is willing to take the risk at trying to change the design perception of the entire golf industry. Even though the science supports same length clubs, we’re still stuck where we are because of a mix of stubborn tradition and a business risk that few will take on.
To elaborate more on the risk, one time Jaacob Bowden was talking to the former CEO of a major golf company and they were talking about single length irons…here is what this former CEO said:
“Same length has been done, personally I’ve been a fan but it’s a tough concept to sell. Reality; In the US golf industry there are 6 major chains that buy product that is sold to what constitutes 85% of the market. All but roughly 2-3 % of the rest is sold in golf pro shops and they are influenced by the retailers. The buyers for these major chains only buy what is played on tour and pretty much in order of market share. Like it or not we dance to that tune. To introduce something like single length after investing in the design we’d have to spend millions on marketing and not so minor get tour credibility because no product is successful at retail without it.”
– Anonymous Former Major Golf Company CEO
So even though this guy is personally a fan, the company wouldn’t do it because the buyers for retail stores only buy what’s played on tour…and it would cost too much money to get tour players to play same length despite the good concept!
It’s just about money and risk and not what’s best for the golfer!
In polling of our players, here’s what they had to say:
26% of All Players Adjusted Immediately
37% of All Players Adjusted Within 1 Week
63% of All Players Adjusted Within 1-3 Weeks
81% of All Players Adjusted Within 4-6 Weeks
So as you can see, some are quicker and some take a bit of time. But the overall trend suggests everyone can adjust to single length irons and start realizing the consistency benefits within just a couple months.
How far you hit the clubs will also depend.
Someone who swings slower will have tighter distance gaps and won’t hit the ball as far. A faster swinger will have larger distance gaps and have more distance. But mostly the gaps are designed to be somewhere in the 10-15-yard range.
It also depends a bit on the loft of the club. All else being equal, a 45-degree pitching wedge will go farther than a 47-degree pitching wedge. Keep that in mind when comparing these clubs to others you may have hit.
Yes, they can be bent +/- 3 degrees.
Similar to conventional iron sets, there can be never be a single design that appeals to all players.
This first generation of Sterling Irons® is primarily targeted towards the 75% of golfers who are swinging a driver between 85-105 mph. That doesn’t mean slower or faster swingers can’t play the set. Jaacob Bowden, PGA, who has PGA TOUR level swing speed is playing them. There are also quite a few other club professionals and mini tour players playing them.
Anyway, for this group of players, they’ll probably need a little help getting the ball up in the air. That’s partially why the 4 to 7-iron are designed with high COR faces.
That being said, response has been great enough to our first generation that we are planning to have a “pro” set in the second generation. We are expecting to begin designing the 2nd generation of Sterling Irons® in 2019, hoping to have them ready to go towards the end of the year or beginning of 2020.
One of the issues that we observed with traditional single length iron sets was that the lower lofted clubs sometimes had peak shot heights that were too low and the higher lofted clubs were peaking too high.
Tom Wishon had the clever idea of incorporating progressive offset in to the Sterling Irons®. This offset puts the center of gravity a little farther back from the shaft bore centerline which can help increase launch angle.
This helped solve the problem of too low of shots with the lower lofted clubs.
You could but they are not designed to do this.
You would have to add length to your higher lofted clubs as well as grind off weight. On the lower lofted clubs you would need to add a lot of weight.
You would also have to adjust the loft of the clubs to get the right distance gapping, but this could effectively change the bounce of your clubs and create a club that skips or digs too much. Then there’s the problem of achieving consistent peak heights with all the clubs.
On the other hand, the Sterling Irons® are specifically designed to be built with a single shaft length using a single ball position.
Coming up with a unique and useable name can be surprisingly challenging.
We believe that the Sterling Irons® name was actually the third “final” name.
The idea originally came from the street that Jaacob Bowden, PGA and his wife live on in New York City called Sterling Place. We thought it had a nice ring to it, the suggestive nature of the word sterling was good, and it polled well in focus testing. We were also able to get a website URL for it and get the name trademarked.