Wilson Di7 Irons  

- When I was a kid, Wilson irons were the cream of the crop in my eye. My older (by 18 years) brother played Wilson Staffs and has been a scratch player as long as I can remember. Watching him hit those irons and knock down flags every time we’d play made me envious of his game and his equipment. Unfortunately he plays left-handed, so I never got the opportunity to try those gorgeous irons for myself.

Now some 30 years later, I finally got the opportunity to test out the new Wilson Di7 irons. While technology has changed the look and feel of irons, I find these just as beautiful as those Staff blades that my brother played for so many years.

Lately all the hype in equipment has surrounded the square drivers. Now Wilson has put that same stability and forgiveness into a set of irons targeted at us recreational golfers.

Not all of us hit the ball in the middle of the face with every swing. Truth be told, most of us may find that spot only a handful of times in a round. What we need is something to help us when we don’t. The newest technology in drivers helps us with our tee shots, but those same theories cannot be applied to irons. There is simply no way to move the weight far enough back and out to the sides and still have what we’d consider an iron for a club.

What Wilson has done with the Di7 line is pretty simple. The engineers removed most of the hosel and put that weight into the head where it does the most good. By nearly removing the hosel, the sweet spot moves farther from the heel area and out toward the toe, where most amateurs tend to hit the ball.

From there they lowered the height of the face, moving the center-of-gravity further down the face, making it easy to get the ball airborne. The channel behind the face and the wider sole then moves the center-of-gravity deeper in the head improving the moment of inertia, or the club’s ability to resist twisting.

The final step is where things got weird. They made the shaft nice and fat. Simple physics tells us that the larger the diameter of the tube, the harder it will be to twist.

All of this makes for what appears to be an odd club at first glance. Looking down at the club the first time I swung it, I had an odd impression. It disappeared quickly once I hit a few shots.

The first thing you notice is how quickly the ball jumps off the face. The next thing that I noticed is how stable the club is, no matter where I struck the ball.

My usual miss is where I hit the ball out toward the toe of the club. The usual result is a shot that starts slightly right, moves farther right and falls short. With the Di7s, my usual miss starts slightly right, but stays right there, with little or no distance loss. The result is that I now find the right side of the green or am just off it.

Of all the irons that I have tried in the last three to four years, these are the first to improve my game enough for me to take notice and to replace my old set. Welcome back Wilson.