Gear: Mizuno Pro 245 irons
Price: $200 each with Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 steel shafts and Golf Pride MCC grips
Specs: Grainflow forged 4135 Chromoly with internal tungsten weight (2-8 irons), and forged 1025E mild carbon steel (9-iron through gap wedge) with copper underlayer. Available in 4-iron through gap wedge.
Available: January 25, 2024
Who It’s For: Made to look like a better-player’s iron but perform like a game-improvement club, the Mizuno Pro 245 blends different materials and a unique construction to deliver more ball speed and distance without sacrificing feel.
The Skinny: This game-improvement iron’s hollow-body design helps it produce more ball speed and distance. At the same time, an internal tungsten weight encourages a higher flight and more stability.
The Deep Dive: Elite golfers like the look and feel of Mizuno irons, while golfers who routinely shoot in the 80s and low-90s dream of being able to play the Japanese company’s muscleback blades and better-player cavity-back offerings. But that doesn’t mean Mizuno has nothing to offer golfers who need a game-improvement iron. On the contrary, while the new Mizuno Pro 245 looks like a better-player’s club, it hides several technologies that make it playable for a wide variety of golfers.
The Mizuno Pro 245 is a hollow-bodied iron with a face and neck piece in the 2-8 iron being grain flow forged using 4135 Chromoly, an extremely strong stainless steel alloy. Using the Chromoly allowed Mizuno designers to make the faces very thin, which, along with the hollow-body construction, helps to maximize ball speed and increase distance.
Mizuno Pro 245 irons. (Mizuno)
The back piece is 431 stainless steel, and to lower the center of gravity (CG) location and encourage higher-flying shots, the 2-iron through 7-iron have an internal tungsten bar that extends from toe to heel. In the Mizuno Pro 225, a 30-gram tungsten weight was internally embedded into the back of each head, but the new Mizuno Pro 245 has a 47-gram weight positioned in the same area. Instead of embedding it, Mizuno welded its top area and allowed it to be suspended above the sole, resulting in a heavier weight positioned lower in the head, which amplifies the effect on the CG.
The 8-iron is constructed like the other long and mid-irons but has no tungsten. The 9-iron through gap wedge have a grain flow forged 1025E stainless steel body and neck and a 17-4 stainless steel back cap. The cap covers a small hollow area in the head.
Like the other irons in the updated Mizuno Pro line-up, the 245 has a more compact shape and thinner topline than the Mizuno Pro 225 it replaces, making it appear smaller when golfers address the ball.
