Video Transcriptions
About the AP1 Iron
About the AP1 Iron: Both of them look so similar, but they’re different down on the bottom on the soles, and a little bit different on the loft stores. Everything has exceeded my expectations. I was lucky enough to be able to see the whole design process. We got together with our tour group and got their input to make the best looking and best performing line of new irons we’ve ever launched. To have these golf clubs in your bag and have them looking that good and getting a sense that people are going to come over and be, “Wow. That looks really nice,” and then be able to take the next step and actually hit it and go, “That feels great.” From concept to design to prototype, AP Irons have been tested and refined based on feedback from PGA Tour players at Oceanside, club professionals at Sea Island, and better players from all across the country. As soon as you start hitting them, they felt just phenomenal. It sounded different. What I liked most of all was probably the sound. This is the best iron I’ve hit. It’s really stable down in through the bottom. The feel is exceptional. They’re just probably some of the most solid golf clubs I’ve ever hit. On an off-center shot, how pure a ball striker are you? It’s a very forgiving golf club. As I was hitting shots, I was a little off center on a few and pretty much got the same result. I could see my dispersion pattern tightening up probably 20% easily. It seems to slide through the grass real easy. It had that great feel on the ball. It feels like it stays on the face for a while. And I immediately felt the ball get up. The AP 2s gave me a higher launch angle and a little less spin, which is optimal for me. My speed increased by 5 miles an hour. My spin rates were better. I actually started hitting them longer. We’re trying to find something that we can hit high and soft in the greens from a long distance away and then from short distance, kind of keep low in control. The AP2s certainly lend itself to that quality. I could turn the ball over easier with the AP2s. When I was in the shorter iron, I could keep it down. I could work the ball. It’s a very easy club to move into. I know I’m going to move into those AP2s because just the look and the feel of those was just fantastic. The technology that was involved with the making of the iron is absolutely tremendous. I think that pretty much every player on tour is going to go to this iron. It’s just that good. This is going to be a really exciting launch for us because we’ve already begun executing aggressive promotion plans for the new AP irons. Over the past several months we’ve met with key equipment editors, writers, bloggers, all to ensure we get the strong editorial coverage that we need. We’re going to spend a record 3 ½ million on a print advertising campaign that begins in February and runs all the way through August. This advertising campaign is going to deliver unprecedented reach and frequency for a Titleist iron product and really help to create the product awareness and demand. We’ve developed a deep menu of merchandizing, display, and point of sale items to help communicate the story to consumers. The tagline we developed to characterize and position the new AP irons is “advanced performance you can feel.” We wanted to convey that AP irons provide both outstanding performance and what Titleist irons have always been known for, and that’s great feel. Introducing Titleist AP1 and AP2 irons. Advanced performance you can feel.
About the AP2 Iron
About the AP2 Iron: And then we scaled that down to create the one for the tour player, which is a forged version. The AP1 is a cast body, Tungsten nickel back. The AP2 is a forged version with a Tungsten nickel box. The box structure is utilized to give the iron a much more solid feel. That was really what it was designed to do, to have great playing characteristics, but also have a superior feel that we have not achieved before.
Adam Scott: Titleist AP Irons
Adam Scott: Titleist AP Irons: Well, it’s interesting because I’m coming out of playing a forged blade my whole life, my whole career. The nice part about the AP2s is they’re forged. I think the feel comes down to the Tungsten that they’ve put into them. So it’s certainly a lot more forgiving club but still has the feel and workability that my forged blades have. So I’ve adapted well to them. They certainly softened all areas of the club, which is a nice look. The club flows a lot better. The lines are better. It’s a classic looking golf club. I’m a pretty low spin player. These days the balls are spinning less. The driver is spinning less. The clubs are spinning less. It was just becoming too hard for me to work the forged blades with the ease that I had in the past. The AP2s seem to just give me that little bit more spin, which gives me a bit more control. Also, more spin makes it easier for me to work the ball. So I’m back to a ball flight, which I think is ideal for me with the AP2s. Anything that I get off Titleist obviously I know is going to be able to perform at the highest level. I know that they’re going to be set up for me and that the work that’s gone in and through the guys on tour, the reps, knowing my game so well aren’t going to put something in front of me that’s not going to work. So when they arrived on my doorstep in Australia, I had a look at them. It’s a good-looking iron, a little different for me being a bit bigger than a blade, but I wanted to work with them because I wanted to get back to that ball flight and strike the ball how I used to. All those things put together, I knew that this is a club that I could definitely test out. It tested well. I put it in play in Abu Dhabi, and it performed really well there. Then obviously in Kata I hit a lot of great shots with them, and I ran away with the tournament on Sunday.
Ben Crane: Titleist AP Irons
Ben Crane: Titleist AP Irons: Well, the technology that was involved with the making the iron is absolutely tremendous, and I think that pretty much every player on tour, maybe with exception of a couple of the blade players, are going to go to this iron. It’s just that good, and we’re that excited about it. I hit it today for the first time, and I couldn’t be more excited about the way it feels. I love the fact the ball flight you get off the short irons, and then you get in the long irons, all of a sudden you get a little higher ball flight, a little easier to hit. It’s just all the things you want in an iron. So I played the 755s for two years and loved them and didn’t really know what I was missing until I stepped in the AP2. I started hitting longer irons. I’m going, “Wow. These launch a little higher, which I like. I’m going to come down a little softer if I’m coming into a long par 4 or a par 5 with an iron,” which is exciting. So I’m excited about the transition and look for some lower scores. The way it stacks up against the past irons is it’s still got the nice rounded toe look and the similar top line. But then you maybe turn the club to the back, and you see the technology of the Tungsten in the back there. You see just the whole new look of it, and you can tell that a lot went into this iron. We started hearing about this iron quite a while ago out on tour just because there was so much excitement within in the company because so much has gone into it and because it’s that good as far as the numbers go. It goes through the turf even that much better than some of the irons in the past. It’s going to be as good as anything else out there if not better than anything else on the market, so we’re all excited about it.
Ben Curtis: Titleist AP Irons
Ben Curtis: Titleist AP Irons: Well, they feel great. They’re pretty soft. I had 735s, and they were pretty soft irons as well, but these feel a little bit softer. It looks like you control the play the ball a little bit better because of that. I think they look great. They don’t fit the mold of what Titleist was all about previously. They’ve kind of got a different look in that aspect, but it’s come more up to date in that regard. I think the back of it looks pretty neat. I’ve just never really seen anything like that. You expect when you set the club down, it still has a classic look to it. It looks like a good golf club. I just basically took them out and started hitting them. I just started playing around with them a little bit here and there, just felt like I really enjoyed the way they felt. So then I just put them in the bag, and when I was at home this winter, just started playing with them. You could tell. For me it’s a lot by ball plate, the distance, and stuff like that, but how they really feel and how they’re going to perform. They felt really good. I got them in the bag, and they obviously feel good. This is my first week, so I’ll test them out. It’s always different when you’re playing at home then under the real gun, but I feel confident that they’re going to perform well.
Bill Haas: Titleist AP Irons
Bill Haas: Titleist AP Irons: An amateur goes into a golf shop would look at them and say, “Wow. These look nice.” They’re eye-catching. Then feel wise, I feel like my misses, even when I mis-hit the club, still go almost as far. My misses seem better than previous irons I’ve used. They’re more forgiving, maybe better for the all around player. That’s something I work on at home when I’m practicing: hitting cuts and draws and being able to do both. Being able to hit it high and low is just very important. Rarely do you just get to hit a stock, normal driving range shot on the course. So far they feel pretty good. I’m working on them. I’m bending them a little upright. I think they were a little flat. I was losing them a little right. I don’t know if that’s the quick fix answer to everything, but I’ll work with them some more on the off season. NOTES: In first video, first sentence, I couldn’t decipher the word right after “a little bit different on the loft [xx].” In the third video, last sentence, I was unsure if he’s speaking of “Kata.” In the 6th video there were many false starts at first, which were not included, and incorrect grammar was fixed. For all videos, I broke content into smaller paragraphs for ease of reading.
Billy Mayfair: Titleist AP Irons
Billy Mayfair: Titleist AP Irons: I think they feel real good. They’re a little bit softer than my 804’s that I played with last year. The ball doesn’t seem to come off quite as hard, but the ball seems to still go the same distance and the same type of accuracy on them. So I really liked them a lot. I’ve always enjoyed off set irons. I think that the leading edge being a little bit thicker is a good thing especially with the longer irons. The shorter irons, I think, feel a lot the same as my 804’s did, but the longer irons are much easier to hit. They’re much easier to get off the ground—to get them in the air. And they seem so far, I haven’t hit them too many times in the rough, but easier to hit out of the rough.
Brad Faxon: Titleist AP Irons
Brad Faxon: Titleist AP Irons: Any player that plays on tour wants to look down and like what they see. These irons are unbelievable. They’re extremely solid and they’re extremely good to look at. What I like the most, going through the set from a long iron to a short iron, I got the long irons up in the air. I’ve always had trouble hitting 2,3,4 irons up high. These things I could get up in the air. At the same time, the scoring clubs, when I was in a shorter iron, I could keep it down. I could work the ball. I think that’s really important. These clubs cut through the turf nicely. I never felt like there was too sharp a leading edge. I felt like there was really good control through the ball. I felt that great feel you like to feel when the ball feels like it stays on the face for a while. That was great. I love to be able to draw a shot in there. I felt like I got some beautiful draws with some irons right away. At the same time, I had to hit a couple of really stinger sort of 3 or 4 irons, I could do that. Then when I had to hit a couple up in the air, it was working so that’s a great feeling. They’re in the bag. I just can’t wait for January. There’s not a lot of times, you pull an iron out and know it’s going to replace what you’ve been using. I’ve been using 735’s for over two years now. I pretty much knew after about four shots this was the new club for me.
Davis Love: Titleist AP Irons
Davis Love: Titleist AP Irons: Well, they have a great feel. That’s the most surprising thing. They feel really easy to hit—a good solid feel, but it’s a different kind of feel. It doesn’t feel like you can really mis-hit them. Every shot you hit if you don’t hit the ground first, they feel real good. I’m real happy with the ball flight and the performance, but especially the feel. The AP2’s really look like a player’s club. They don’t look like a modern technology club. When you look down at them, they’re very pleasing to the eye. They look really good. They look easy to hit. I think that’s the biggest thing. They’re not a real big head, but they’re big enough to make it look like they’re friendly, but still have classic Titleist lines. That was the most important thing for me with this iron is that I can hit the ball low if I need to hit it low and hit the ball high when I want to hit it high. You definitely work the ball with these clubs. That’s what I was the most surprised with. Clubs like this that I’ve had before tended to just go really high and were harder to curve—which is a good thing, but you want to be also able to hit a shot when you want to hit a shot. Like I said they’re easier to hit in any shot, whether you’re trying to knock it down or trying to hit a high cut or whatever. I’m real happy with the ball flight performance. I’m shocked at how well the ball flies through the air. I just expected everything to go high just because that’s what your preconceived notion is, but it really doesn’t. It goes exactly where you want it to go.
John Mills: Titleist AP Irons
John Mills: Titleist AP Irons: They feel great. Anytime you go to a new iron, you’re never quite sure how it’s going to react compared to what I was using, and I was prior to that using 755’s. But that transition was extremely easy. Again, I love the look of it. They definitely made huge stride in the look of the iron. To have an iron that looks that good and that performs as well as it looks, it’s great. I tried them for the first time near the end of last year on a nationwide. Right away I love them. I hit a couple on the range and just loved the feel of them. I got them in the winter and worked on them in the winter, but you never know what to expect once you get into a tournament. But in Hawaii, they performed just as well as the other ones and the first few weeks I’ve just hit a ton of greens.
Larry Mize: Titleist AP Irons
Larry Mize: Titleist AP Irons: I just got them yesterday, my Performance 2 irons. I was really happy with the look of them. They just have a great profile. All the irons—the 8, 7, 6 right there in the middle—they looked excellent. You always look at those irons in the middle. After hitting them yesterday and today, I really was happy. And then getting the results from all the launch monitor and everything, they were spot on. I’m really excited about them. I hit some knock downs with the 8 iron out there today and the ball really flew just like I expected. I was able to keep it down and get a good penetrating ball flight. It was excellent and the long irons were just easy to hit. You got to like that. Well, I really like it. I think it’s eye catching. You’ll notice that they’re different in there. You’ll see the look of them. It’s funny, maybe I look at that more than some guys, I like my irons to look good. I want to perform good best of all, but there’s nothing wrong with having it look good. These are nice looking and I think they’ll be very popular.
Mark Omeara: Titleist AP Irons
Mark Omeara: Titleist AP Irons: I’m so impressed with the new AP2’s. Certainly Titleist is well known for making tremendous irons—really tremendous all in the golf product business, but the AP2 irons are by far the most solid irons that I’ve hit so far. They are really, really good. That was why it was so easy for me to put them into play real quickly. The new Titleist look in the AP2’s and really in our whole new line of irons is incredibly beautiful. They’re very classy looking. They’re appealing to the eye when you set them down. As we get older sometimes with the new balls and stuff that don’t spin quite as much, we understand that it’s a little harder to get the ball into the air which the launch angle with a longer iron so the progressiveness in the irons, especially like the AP2’s, is really good for all types of players—not only good players like tour players, but all the players at home too. I received the AP2’s late last fall. I actually played with them and right from the get-go I was so impressed that I called Steve Mott on the phone and told him how incredible they felt. I was going to put them in play. I was going to be using them in the Maryland Shoot Out, but at the last minute didn’t. After I got done with the tournament, they went right back in the bag and they’ve been in there every since. I really cannot stress how impressed I am with the irons.
Nick Watney: Titleist AP Irons
Nick Watney: Titleist AP Irons: The feel, I think, is incredible. As far as, you know, for not maybe a classic looking blade, it feels maybe even better than any Titleist club I've hit. So, I'm excited about it. I love the look of them. I think, like you said, they still look traditional but at the same time there's a bit of game improvement in there also. So, I love the look. They're identical almost. I think maybe the sole is just a touch wider on the AP2's, which the club gets through the grass even better than a blade. So, performance-wise they are on-par if not better than any forged club or any blade club that I've ever played.
Peter Jacobson: Titleist AP Irons
Peter Jacobson: Titleist AP Irons: I first hit the AP2's with Larry Bobka a couple of months ago, maybe in October, when we were playing the bridges. I hit one 8-iron off the second tee, which was a par three, and I turned to Larry and said "Ooh, I need a set of these." They just felt like they were quicker through the ball. When I mean "quicker through the ball" there was no drag. It felt like when it hit the turf, it just zipped through the ball. I immediately felt the ball get up, a little bit better launch condition for me. The ball got up in the air. So, that day I hit four or five of the irons that were in Larry's bag, and today I just tested it on the launch monitor and sure enough I had probably two miles-an-hour faster ball speed across-the-board. I had a little better launch condition, a little more spin, a little more height. So, my old irons came out and the AP2's went right in. For me, I love to come and get the numbers on the irons, and then I like to take that and I like to go to the golf course and put it to use. I could just tell by using the clubs the last couple of weeks, without having the numbers, I knew they were the right clubs for me. But for me now, I'm armed with the numbers and armed with the knowledge of the clubs, then it's up to me to go out and play on the golf course and try to maneuver the ball and work it. I can tell you right now, I can turn the ball over easier with the AP2's than with the 704's or 755's that I've used in the past. I could really release this club and the ball would pop up higher, and it would have a slight draw. It wouldn't have much of a hook, becuase we don't want to be hooking and slicing our irons -- especially our short irons -- But I could really feel I had some control, but I could release it and play fairly aggressive with the club. The thing that I noticed when I saw the AP2's for time was how pretty a golf club it was. It really stands out, and I think the Tungsten on the bottom really makes the club for me. It's got a traditional look to it, but in the back of the club it's a little busier than Titleist normally has, but I like that because tells a little more of a story. I think it's the best looking club -- cosmetically -- it's the best looking club Titleist has ever done. Obviously, it has to perform well or it won't be in anybody's bag, but after seeing the numbers that I have on my shots, and knowing how they feel, I think it's going to be a perfect marriage: looks and performance.
Titleist AP Irons - About
Titleist AP Irons - About: The AP1, you know, it's a big iron, but it doesn't look big. It has features built-in to help flight it up and be more forgiving, by way of this Tungsten box and by way of the size that is. (Glenn Mahler) AP1 is that wider sole, deeper cavity, and the ability to transfer energy and get that launch up. So many players just don't have enough launch to keep it up in the air at their ball speed, and the AP1 really addresses that.
Titleist AP Irons - Advanced Performance
Titleist AP Irons - Advanced Performance: The new Titleist AP irons. (Jeff Harmet) Global research showed an opportunity to simplify our branding. We also saw an opportunity to increase the technical image of the Titleist club brand. AP: Advanced Performance. New Titleist AP1 and AP2 irons. Two multi-material, dual-cavity irons that combine high performance with pure feel. It starts by understanding what good feel is and we've done that from a scientific point of view, and we can filter out these frequencies that people regard as harsh. We were absolutely intent on creating an iron that had extraordinary feel. We were exploring a lot of materials that we could put in the back, and began to tune and tweak that to what we would call a softer, but more solid feel. Nickel is an alloy that allows certain vibrations to be muted out. No other iron kind of existed with this, what we call a structural box, and that gave us a lot of advantages in weight redistribution, getting the mass down lower and aft for improved flight and forgiveness. The output of that was a feel and a sound enhancement. The damping material that's put into the cavity section, we call that a TPU polymer, and that is used also to mute out those unwanted frequencies. We created two golf clubs that have the same performance target in terms of easing the flight up but still visually setting up nice and cosmetically being rich. So on the AP1 it sets up with a much softer look, but still very traditional and very Titleist.
Titleist AP Irons - Testimony
Titleist AP Irons - Testimony: They've got a line that can satisfy whatever your needs are. Spectacular. Exceptional. They are so nice looking. Very easy to hit. The sound was terrific. Some of the most solid golf clubs I've ever hit. All the things you want in an iron. Felt just phenomenal. They're very pretty. I pretty much knew after about 4 shots, this was the new club for me.
Tom Pernice: Titleist AP Irons
Tom Pernice: Titleist AP Irons: I thought it was exciting. One, the new chrome look is a totally different look than the 755's I have with the satin look. I think the new chrome is a great look, and then more importantly is the performance of the iron. The combination with the Tungsten-Nickel in the back, lowering the CG, along with the look, I think is fantastic. It performed great. From the first time hitting them, I'm really exited. What's exciting about the club here is the Tungsten-Nickel back here that they've put in. I'm not smart enough to know all the logistics about it, but I think supposedly it lowers the CG, which is going to help the club perform much better. Especially for me, a little better launch. It performed very nicely out there the first time hitting them so I'm really excited about it. It sounded different in terms of the impact of the club through the turf and hitting the ball. The cosmetic of it is obviously the chrome rather than the satin finish in the 755. That sticks out quite a bit to me more than anything, being used to the satin finish than the chrome. I think it looks much more attractive, a little more glitz to it on the back as well, in terms of the lines and all that's performed on the back. I think it's a much cleaner look on the back as well. But for me, most importantly is performance, but I think it's important that the club be very attractive, and it actually has a very retro look with the lines in the back. I think with the combination they're on the right track.
