Best irons of 2022 for every budget and handicap

Gear: Srixon ZX5
Price: $1,137.99 (at GlobalGolf) with Nippon N.S. PRO Modus3 Tour shafts and Golf Pride Tour Velvet 360 grips; $1,399.99 with UST Mamiya Recoil 95 graphite shafts (ZX5)
Specs: Forged 1025 carbon-steel bodies with tungsten weights

“With a reasonably narrow topline and only a moderate level of offset, the Srixon ZX5 irons look like a better-player’s club in the address position. Still, the company has added several distance-enhancing technologies that should make it appealing to mid-handicap players.

The chassis is forged from 1025 mild-carbon steel for a better feel, but the face is the real story with this iron. It is made using SUP10 stainless steel, a very hard material, and it looks like other faces on the outside.

The inner-facing side, however, is covered with grooves, valleys and channels. Srixon refers to the design as MainFrame, and those elements were added after engineers set parameters and programmed supercomputers to simulate thousands of different face designs and test how they performed using artificial intelligence. The result is a face that maximizes deflection and enhances ball speed across a larger area of the hitting surface, so mishits carry nearly as far as well-struck shots.” More …