Maltby DBM and MMB iron heads have lower bounce specs than other iron brands (and I’m not sure if their sole widths are wider). Do the DBM or MMB have more effective bounce due to their sole widths?
There has been a trend the last few years of putting more bounce on some irons. The progression of bounce throughout the set has also changed to where there is more bounce in mid and long irons in some models than what has been. Generally, designs will have more effective bounce the wider the soles. That being said, we do not consider the DBM, TE and MMB models to have “wider soles”. They have a designed sole width that, in combination with the designed bounce of each model, performs as we intended. More bounce is not always the best thing for a design and what we are seeing, partly due to the increased bounce in mid irons, is the vertical cg moving up, which is also not a positive thing for most players. We believe the sole widths and bounce on the DBM, TE and MMB are exactly what they need to be to provide the best performance. Ultimately, the bounce of any iron should be what makes that design perform as intended. I have not seen any information that shows me how 8 deg. of bounce on a #6 iron enhances the performance over a more conventional 3 degrees of bounce. That doesn’t mean that some designs couldn’t be designed with more bounce to optimize performance for specific types of players. As designers we want to balance the sole width and bounce angles to compliment the design for the type of players we believe will benefit from those specifications. More bounce just for the sake of more bounce, siting that it makes a design more turf friendly, is simply just short sided. It may be more turf friendly, but that depends on the turf.
Britt Lindsey