No. Your trajectory is influenced by your initial launch conditions, but once that “happens”, the ball design will take over. Loft will have the largest influence with overall trajectory though.
Stronger lofts fit a niche of player that is stronger and more athletic than ever before, they also fit players who add loft at impact or don’t add the shaft lean that elite level ball strikers give to their clubs. If you took 2 iron heads and swung them both with the same exact swing, yes the lower lofted iron will go farther because you’re trading back spin for ball speed as lofts reduce.
You can see what happens when iron designs change from single piece designs to multi-piece designs such as the TS1 or TS1-IM with a maraging steel face. The dispersion from front to back with these designs will be greater, so they tend to fall out of favor with better players in most of their irons. For example, myself a +1 index would only consider a TS1 for a 4 or 5 or at worst a 6 iron because the design increases ball speed slightly vs the same loft 1 piece forging. But I will not be putting them into play for example with my 9 or PW because the variation front to back is too large to ignore for critical scoring. Trust me, I’ve already tested this with the TS1 vs DBM forged (and the DBM is 2* stronger than traditional).
At the end of the day, it depends on what you want to accomplish with your iron play. There is no “best of both worlds” no matter who you ask because all designs incorporate a trade-off of some sort. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to you.
thanks Britt, excellent info as usual.
I started to play in the 90’s and my first set of irons had strong lofts. Stronger lofts are here to stay and have continued to be that way for over 20 years.
Seriously doubt if anyone is going to be talking about traditional lofts in 2040. They’ll either have forgot about them or be in the grave.
Reminds me of walking 5 miles to school in the snow, uphill in both directions!