Try TaylorMade Golf Clubs-TaylorMade Burner 2.0 Irons

For more than a year, TaylorMade's Burner irons have been among the best selling irons in the game. The combination of distance and ease of use made them especially popular with mid- and higher-handicap players. Tinkering with that success was not without risk, but Brett Wahl, TaylorMade's senior director of product development for irons, says that the new Burner 2.0 irons are simply better than their predecessors — for several reasons.

"In a way, we took the concept of developing eight individual clubs a little more seriously this time," Wahl says. "Each of these clubheads have more beneficial features built into them than the previous Burner irons." For example, the faces of the Burner 2.0 long-irons are thinner than the faces of the original Burner long-irons, which should help golfers create more ball speed and distance. The weight saved by making the faces thinner has been redistributed to the lower section of the clubs, near the heel and toe areas, which Wahl says should make them more forgiving too.

At the same time, the faces of the short irons are thicker than the original Burner's, and the heads are smaller and feature thinner top lines. Doing this puts a greater emphasis on accuracy and control at address, but also puts more weight directly behind the ball to enhance feel. The multi-material badge on the back of the Burner 2.0 is also an upgrade over the original Burner's. "It has a softer material integrated with the aluminum which gives it better dampening, in terms of managing vibration," Wahl says. "And in the long-irons, there is a stiff nylon layer of material that you can't see that really helps to improve the sound."

Wahl says that the sound-enhancing layer was not used in the mid- and short-irons, and the badge used is thinner because their heads have thicker faces. They naturally create a more-pleasing sound. ICP In addition to the badge, on the back of all the Burner 2.0 irons you'll see a circular piece of metal that is part of TaylorMade's Inverted Cone Technology (ICT). But once again, it's been upgraded. "The ICT has been re-shaped and re-positioned slightly in the long-irons in order to ensure the clubs deliver faster ball speeds, but also have consistency on mis-hits," Wahl says.

The soles of the short irons, like the 9-iron, are also thinner than the long irons because golfers swing a 9-iron more vertically into the ball. In contrast, most players sweep the ball using a flatter swing when hitting a 4-iron, so a wide sole is beneficial. Each of the eight iron shafts flexes in a slightly different area, or kick point. The long irons have a lower kick point to help players get shots higher; the short irons have a higher kick point to encourage a slightly lower trajectory; and the mid-irons' kick point is in between.