Text: Kassandra Olschanski // Photography: TaylorMade Golf Company
TaylorMade Golf Company of Carlsbad, California officially announced their third generation of the P·790 irons in August 2021, following global success as one of the best-selling iron franchises in the history of the company. As an industry leader in innovation, technology, and performance in high-performance golf equipment, TaylorMade re-envisioned the technology at the center of the irons to achieve new levels of power and performance, while maintaining its iconic elegance, distance, and feel.
The iron heads for this third generation have been carefully crafted from 8620 carbon steel that gives them the ability to maintain and provide durability as well as strength, while also still having a thin design wall. The main focus was to deliver power and distance, which has appealed to a wide range of players thus far in the history of the irons, leveraging the all-new SpeedFoam™ Air, which is an ultra-light urethane foam that rests inside the forged hollow body. This minor adjustment accounts for a significant amount of weight savings and also provides improved launch properties. In P·790 history, this is the thinnest face thus far. Additionally, the foam that is inside the hollow body is now 69 percent less dense than the previous generation, adding to the list of improvements and changes from the previous generations.
“SpeedFoam™ Air is the heartbeat of the new P·790 irons,” stated Matt Bovee, senior product engineer in product creation of irons at TaylorMade, in the press release. “The development of this lightweight urethane material allowed us to strategically reconstruct the iron head to promote optimal launch conditions and a sweet spot that covers the most common strike points on the face.”
Data was collected from thousands of golf shots, which provided the iron development team better insight to help them determine the most common impact points on the face of the iron. The information collected allowed engineers to position and shape that sweet spot to have the ability to better capture more of those shots. The sweet spot has now been better aligned with the center face to provide an even better performance. This allowed them the data they needed to be able to redevelop the beloved irons to be even better
To complement the P·790 irons, there is the P·790 UDI, which is a forged driving iron design with tour inspired shaping intertwining with TaylorMade technologies such as Thru-Slot Speed Pocket™ and Forged Hollow Body Construction along with a new thin-walled design. Just like the other irons in the set, P·790 UDI is powered by the all-new SpeedFoam™ Air as well. This still has that same sweet spot that positions performance exactly where golfers need it. This head design promotes low spin shots that provides golfers control without having to give up any distance
