OK, so by now you should know my new passion is golf. Golf is a game I always imagined old men playing with nothing better to do than while away their retirement coffers on expensive sets of clubs. Well, not true. In fact, players like Sergio Garcia and Tiger woods have done a lot to popularise it with the younger set. When im at my local driving range, it always shocks me as to how many children are playing. However, good golf clubs cost some serious money. A set of good quality irons will set you back many hundreds of pounds. Or so I thought.
I managed to pick my set of Hippo Irons up for a grand total of $79 at Edwin Watts Golf Store in Orlando on my recent trip to Florida (www.edwinwatts.com) and I think it is the best £50 I have ever spent.
Yes. £50. This is a £200 set of golf clubs so if you have a credit card, you could ship them over. The men in the shop were more than helpful and would probably oblige if you contact them directly.
Anyway, you know they are cheap. How do they play? Well, coming from my ?blade? design irons, I was immediately struck by the pure shots I was playing?. Hold on, blades? Yes. Sorry. Allow me to explain. Until recently, Irons were forged by their makers from solid metal. They did not have a very even weighting because of this across the golf club head. If you caught the ball slightly wrong, you were in trouble. Some bright spark realised that there was a sweet spot on a golf club face and weighting the club in the right place encouraged the player to hit it there more often. So the clubs were redesigned with a hollow back, called Cavity-Backed clubs. This then allowed the designers to put the weight where they wanted in the different clubs. If you pick up a set of Hippo Cavity backed irons such as the Plus Pro set I am reviewing, you will see the metal is thicker in certain places. This is to weight it correctly for playing your shots cleaner. For those that don?t know, the clubs can vary in angle and length to achieve different results and distances . The longest club and least angled face club is a 2 Iron and the shortest and most angled (lofted) club is a Sand Wedge. The clubs in between vary across a scale between the 2. This means a set of irons can go from 2 ? 9, then a Pitching Wedge and lastly a Sand Wedge. A 2 Iron hits it furthest and lowest. Built for distance. A Sand Wedge is built for getting you out of a bunker. It is made for height but very little distance. The weighting of the irons varies too. To get the most out of it, the longer distance 2 iron contains most of its cavity weight in the toe of the club to keep it straight and powerful. The Sand wedge is weighted to the heal of the club to get more lift and accuracy to the high balls.
With the Hippo Clubs, the cavities are nicely designed too. No ugly engineering feats to achieve the best results. Instead they are ornately designed to give a great look and performance all in one.
The faces of the clubs are quite rough to give you the best grip and control when striking the ball. No shiny faces to lose the ball here. You know where you are aiming is where it is going to go. The toes and heels are highly polished with gives it a great look and a newness that lasts. On the bottom of the club head is the club number ( for example, a 4 for a 4 Iron) in bright red and this is recessed to prevent the paint from chipping. You also have the word HIPPO in similar styled recessed Black writing, just in case you forgot who made them!
The shafts are made from the finest 17-4 true tempered steel and they really are built to last. No bends or chips here. Just pure strength and performance while still giving you a lightweight club to swing. You should not need to replace them and they come with a 3 year guarantee. For those of you that want something a little bit more whippy (shaft wise) they also make this model with Graphite Shafts.
As for the bit you hold, the grips, these too match the great performance that the rest of the club gives you. The slight graining pattern in the handle gives excellent grip with minimal turn in your palms. This allows for a more sure shot and puts the ball exactly where you aimed it with the follow through.
Performance? Well, I was a little sceptical. When I got out onto the course, I decided to give the complete set of irons a try. What I have found is as follows:
3, 4 and 5 Irons. Build for the longer distance, these clubs are more weighted towards the toe of the club head. When you make a contact with the ball, it initially feels like you are hitting a brick wall with the Hippo?s. Its just a matter of adjusting your swing for the club and remembering that the Hippo range does send every vibration through your body. This can be a good thing for ?feeling the ball? but a bad thing if you are shunting a lot.
6 and 7 Irons. These are possibly the most evenly weighted clubs but the cutt off between heel weighting and toe weighting seems to be somewhere between the 2. I find that the 6 is the most underused club in the bag and the 7 the most used! I find the 7 the sweetest and most true club in the set while the 6 iron and myself cannot get on!
8,9 and PW The 8 and 9 irons are great for high, short distance shots and the Pitching Wedge (PW) is excellent for getting it up and down is a really short distance. They provide great height and loft but do lack an amount of backspin. I think the grooves in the face, which generate the backspin, are not deep enough.
Let downs? One thing this set lacks that I wish it had was a decent Sand Wedge. While Hippo make a sand wedge, they don?t make one that matches the set. This means you are going to have at least one odd iron club in the bag.
Overall. For this value, you cannot turn it down. It?s a great package of irons for the beginning to improving golfer and one that will last you a while.
My tip? Buy a set of Iron covers for these clubs. Look after them, clean them and in a couple of years, when you want some better clubs, you can probably sell them for what you paid for them. A real bargain!
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