Matt Bovee – Podcast #312 – 2020 TaylorMade P Series Irons

Worldwide Golf Shops INSIDER PODCAST #312! In this installment, we chat with Matt Bovee, Senior Manager of Product Creation for TaylorMade Golf.  Matt gives us insight on the 2020 P Series Irons, including the new P770 irons, P7MC Irons and P7MB Irons, which types of players would benefit most from playing each model, and what went into designing every club in this lineup. Take a listen to the latest installment of the INSIDER Podcast. To read more about the new 2020 P Series lineup, click here! Transcript  Tom Brassell  Welcome to the Worldwide Golf Shops Insider Podcast.  Episode 312. Hello Everyone, Tom Brassell here. Thanks so much for joining us. We love having you if you're a rookie, first-timer or you're a long time veteran, or maybe somewhere in the middle, it doesn't matter. We're just glad that you joined us in our special guest today. Joins us from adding California. He's been. He's been on the show before. He is over product creation. He's the category lead for the Iron category.  From TaylorMade Golf, Mr Matt Bovee, Matt, thanks so much great to have you with us again.  Matt Bovee  So great to be back there anytime you guys wanna talk golf. You know I'm all about it.  Tom Brassell  Well, what's nice is when we talk with you about golf, that always means there's something new and exciting that you guys have been working up. And in this case it's the Iron, said all new P7 series and 770. Share with us a little bit about the development and what all went into this behind the scenes.  Matt Bovee  Oh wow, so yeah lot went into designs. You know from a development standpoint, in each one kind of has their own narrative on story. You know you talked about the P7 and P7 MC. Those two designs are geared for the better ball strikers of the world, right? We designed those four tour players. And of course, if we're designing it for the best players in the world, we're gonna reach out. We're going to get their feedback.  If you want to make sure that they're going to perform exactly like they, they want them to, so the P7 MB that is our new muscleback blade replacements, so that will be replacing P730 for anyone who is familiar with our previous lineup, and the P7 was built off of Dustin Johnson's prototype, so it shares a lot of similarities with the club that he's been playing.  And of course, inspired by what he likes to look down at. And then Rory provided some feedback as well, which changed the offset of the iron. And then of course we have that beautiful new design on the back which is so different from anything we've done in the past. That's different from any blade I've ever seen to be honest, and the feedback about this has just been phenomenal.  Tom Brassell  For those who can't see it, as we talked describe it.  Matt Bovee  So the P7B uses what we started calling a faceted back bar geometry. There's this point in that. Oh that's been kind of raised up in three surfaces. Come and meet at this point, like a facet of a diamond, and the reason we the reason we did this was ultimately all blades have more mass.  In the toe, than in the heel.  You have to offset the weight of the hosel in order to keep the center of gravity around's interface tour players like it a little bit. He'll side of this interface, but if you want to get it right, you know where they want it. You gotta have more mass in that. Oh, but we wanted to do it in a way that was different and visually intriguing, so we took that point and we created a third dimension. Most blades you see they're very 2 dimensional.  In terms of like design geometry very cleaner, this is totally the opposite and it created something that reflects the white light. Excuse me in such a way that's really captivating, but at the same time it's like elegant and timeless. It's a very unique design.  Tom Brassell  And you said DJ is influenced from what I was reading. He likes it just a little longer. Blade length, right?  Matt Bovee  When you compare it to the 730, Yep, uh, he so this blade length is 1.4 millimeters longer than the 730, but it is a constant blade link throughout the set that's very common with with blades, right? They're all about consistency, but the 730? Really? That's a smaller blade in the whole, in the spectrum of irons. That was a shorter blade length, and it wasn't just DJ, we heard it from others who are players and and I would say even you know local pros. The term we use a staff rose to where it was just a little intimidating to look down at, specially in the long guys. So we wanted to bump that bleeds out a little bit and give players something that was a little bit more well rounded from a visual perspective.  Tom Brassell  The Next up is the P7MC muscle cavity iron right?  Matt Bovee  Yes, muscle cavity. That's right. This particular design was built from feedback that we got around the 750 tour. Players honestly love the 750 guys like John Rahm are so enamored with this club and he's not the only one right. Matt will play 750 and Colin who just won the PGA PGA.  Not too long ago, he also plays 750 so a lot of players they just love that single piece forge construction with a little bit of forgiveness. We got a lot of questions about, you know. Are you guys going to come out with another one of those? When can we replace this? So we took that feedback and in combination with some market feedback and we created the P7MC.  Matt Bovee  Because there's such a cult classic like following around the 750, we kept that address, shape and sole geometry exactly the same. So when you look down at 7 and see it's just like looking down at the 750 and it was designed to perform very, very similar as well. But the big change comes when you look at the back of the iron. We redesigned the back bar geometry to put more mass behind this interface. Where impact is happening and that gives golfers a more solid feel.  Even in 750 had, which was undeniably a great feeling on it.  Tom Brassell  And you said Jon Rahm had a lot to do with this one, correct?  Matt Bovee  Well Jon, he he really likes the 750 and and you know to be honest the fact that he feels so strongly about them was a big reason as to why we kept that shape the same again. You know we're designing these clubs for the best players in the world and we have certain tour players in mind. If it expands beyond that which it naturally will because what they like to look down at is what other good golfers like to look down at and the performance characteristics are very similar in terms of what they demand. So it's going to propagate from there. But John was definitely a big influence, and why we kept the MC the way we did.  Tom Brassell  So we got very very minimal offset. A narrow top edge right making this thing look real clean.  Matt Bovee  That's correct, so both very traditional from the address, minimal offset on both. The MV has less offset and a slightly thinner top line. The EMT's got a little bit more offset. You're still, it's not. It's not a lot in a slightly thicker top line. These two irons were designed to pair together should players want to create a combo set and it goes with this third eye, and that I'm sure we're going to get into as well, but we wanted to create something that just visually flowed together a little bit better than we had been in the past, both from address.  Tom Brassell  It was just going to ask you that met some of the players do pare some of these together and mix these up, correct?  Matt Bovee  Absolutely Colin Morikawa another good example right? He plays a four and five iron in the P750 and then he is down into the 730 in the six to the wedge. I anticipate him to do the exact same thing with the MBS.  And the MCS, Rory before he switched into the MBS, he was playing 7 3 and 4 iron. He sensed switched to a full set of MBS because these are a little bit easier to hit than the seven 30s. That's a natural byproduct of having a slightly longer blade length is there's going to be a little bit more stability built into the club, but I mean it's all relative right then? The yeah. It's still a blade. It's a butter knife. You could spread, you know your peanut butter on toast in the morning with this thing. So when you miss it, you're gonna know. But it's a little bit easier to hit some of 7:30.  Tom Brassell  Let's go down to the P770 because these are great looking irons as well. Talk about these.  Matt Bovee  So the 770s again were born from some market feedback that we got around P760 and also just the phenomenal response that we've had to 790. It continues to be the number one players distance irons in the category. It honestly has redefined this area of club design and everybody's chasing after it and the the secret here is, I mean, it's not really so much a secret is you gotta create an iron that has as much performance in it as possible, as great sound and feel and looks visually stunning to wear any level of player would be proud to have it in the bag, so we wanted to take this recipe and we wanted to put it into a shape that was a true player shape. Something that would be on tour even throughout the full set.  So we took all that performance and we shoved it into this compact shape and that's how we created P770. So from address you're going to see again, minimal offset and a fairly thin top line, so it's got a little more offset than the P7MC does, and it's got a little bit thicker top line, and it has a little bit thicker top line because of the player demographic.  But also because it's a full hollow body set, so it's a forged hollow body construction just like the P790, and that allows us to build in a lot of ball speed. A lot of forgiveness, and with this particular iron you're going to get more launch and more spin than you do out of the 790, so it's geared towards better players.  ...