Equipment Insider: Hoffman goes old-school with his irons

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Check out more of Adam Barr's equipment coverage at AdamBarrGolfGearGuide.com.

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A 62 to finish any professional tournament is a solid accomplishment. Making it the last of four rounds in the 60s, in a playoff event, on a stout golf course, and making 11 birdies to do it -- that's jaw-dropping.

But as usual, Charley Hoffman was all about cool, quietly rockin' his surfer-style demeanor no matter what may have been going on inside. A bag he could rely on, which has changed very little throughout the season, surely helped.

Just look at the controlled iron shots on the back-side par 3s, Nos. 11 and 16. Only a random pin-clanging bounce kept the tee shot on 11 from going in, and the shot on 16 came to rest at tap-in range. On both swings, Hoffman truncated his finish in a way that showed confidence in the control he could exert over this kind of shot. And it was shotmaker irons, Titleist's lean and spare MB (for muscle back) line that worked so well into Hoffman's approach.

The traditional MB forging is about as classic-looking as irons get. Blade length is constant (not too short, not too long), and the topline is good-player thin. But the location of the "muscle," something Titleist engineers put a lot of work into, has been optimized to put substantial mass behind the ball as possible to enhance that soft-solid impact feel forged players crave.

PGA TOUR players, of course, plus more and more skilled amateurs, have their clubs custom bent for lie angle, etc. But the stock set of the MBs shows some forethought in the ay the offset progresses from long irons to the scoring clubs.

In My Bag: Charley Hoffman

Driver: Titleist 910 D3 prototype, 9.5 degrees Hybrid: Adams Idea Tour prototype, 18 degrees Irons: Titleist MB Wedges: Titleist Vokey, 48, 56, 60 degrees Putter: Scotty Cameron Red X Ball: Titleist Pro V1

For instance, the offset starts at .125" in the 3-iron, then drops by .005" for each club down to the 6. When the set reaches the shorter irons, where even less-skilled players need less offset, the face gets closer to the shafts in .010" increments. The end result is the opportunity for consistent flight without a lot of forcing in the swing.

We first saw these irons in Hoffman's bag at Pebble Beach, and clearly his season-long relationship with them paid off in Boston. One of the few major shifts in Charley's bag this year has been the introduction of Titleist's new 910 driver, which we first saw him try from the back of the range at Aronimink during the AT&T National in July. The 910, successor to the popular 909 models, has a face-angle adjustment mechanism involving a locking ring on the hosel. But at AT&T, where Hoffman, Brendon de Jonge, and others gave it a whirl, it was added yardage that seemed to be the No. 1 attraction.

Hoffman, a long hitter with just about any club, didn't disappoint with the new driver. His average for the tournament was 299.6 yards, 10th in the field. Bomber that he is, we chose Hoffman as the season began as one of the players most likely to get hurt if the new groove rules devalued the bomb-and-gouge approach to the game. Charley, obviously unperturbed by our prediction, has shown some range and adaptability. He avoided trouble with the rough by mostly staying out of it. With 78.6 percent fairways hit for the week, he was T5 in the field in Boston.

Hoffman was also unperturbed by the occasional miscue, as he showed on the par-3 13th by confidently thumping his Bob Vokey sand wedge into the bunker wall and holing out for birdie. Vokey, a great listener to TOUR players, pretty much customizes all his work for the world's best players. But the stock models he starts with are made of 8620 carbon steel, a metal recipe that reacts well with golf ball covers to give the feel and sound many players prefer. From that baseline, the milled heads can be ground and shaped exactly to player specs.