- 2 days ago
Joe Ferguson puts the new Maxfli XC2 irons to the test agains the new TaylorMade P790 iron to see if it can be considered one of the best new irons of 2025!
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00:00Right everybody, welcome back to the channel and I've got some news for you. MaxFly are back.
00:12So where on earth has MaxFly been? This is their first iron release in over 30 years and I've got
00:19with me the XC2. They've also released an XC3 version which is a bit more in the game improvement
00:26category whereas this sits very much in the player's distance category although there is a
00:30bit of a twist which I'll explain as we go through the video. So MaxFly for those of us who remember
00:36had some incredible irons back in the day. The real purists will remember the Aussie blades,
00:40the Australian blades and there was always a guy at a golf club I played at who had a set of Aussie
00:45blades and was a real ball striker. If they had those clubs you should not have played them for
00:50money that is for sure. I also remember irons like the Revolution irons which are slightly different
00:55category but they really just made some great product and they just seemed to kind of disappear.
01:01MaxFly as a brand actually went through a few different iterations of ownership. It got passed
01:06around a little bit until in 2003 it was acquired by TaylorMade who actually wanted a lot of the
01:12patents from the golf ball side of things to help re-establish and grow their market share within
01:17the golf ball sector and it's done really really well for them. However once they kind of got what they
01:23needed from it in terms of patents they sold off what was left of MaxFly to Dick's Sporting Goods
01:28where it's sat for a while now as an in-store and online only brand within Dick's Sporting Goods
01:34portfolio. So I said earlier I was pleasantly surprised when these arrived and call me superficial
01:39but here's why. I wasn't actually going to make this video but when I popped a little post on social
01:44media my DMs were packed out with heart eyes, flames and it wasn't about me it was about these golf clubs
01:50and I can see why. I'm a sucker for a very minimalist and clean looking iron and these just
01:56absolutely epitomise that. This kind of brushed matte finish I think looks absolutely fantastic
02:03and there's something about how sparingly they've logoed this. The MaxFly logo looks great and also
02:09I love when iron companies just use one colour on their branding. I think it looks really premium
02:15and very sophisticated. When you go down into the playing position they've got the proportions
02:20really very very good here. The longer irons I think look a bit better than the shorter irons. For me
02:27in the playing position the shorter irons look a little bit angular and the toes a little bit high
02:31for me but those longer irons look absolutely great. So overall the aesthetic package is a very
02:37exciting one and it made me want to learn a bit more about the tech. Now I said these sat in a
02:42player's distance category but with a slight twist and the slight twist for me is in the construction
02:48a lot of the irons we see in that compact distance or player's distance category tend to be hollow bodied
02:54with high flexing faces and maybe filled with some sort of foam. Well what we've got here is slightly
03:00different this is more of a single forging although it goes through a few processes to get to its final
03:05stage. So the first three stages of forging is just to create the basic shape of a club head. Then
03:12the fourth stage of the forging refines that a little bit more but actually creates some little
03:17gaps in the head where they can insert some tungsten and ceramic which take care of some of the requirements
03:23of the CG, the perimeter weighting and the feel. And then the final stage of forging covers that hole up
03:29packs it all back in tight for a nice essentially overall one piece forged club. But if you're going to
03:36enter the player's distance category then you're going to have to take on some of the real big boys of the
03:41game and probably for me still the daddy of that category is the tailor-made P790. Now we've got
03:48some very comparable lofts here so the tailor-made P790, the 7-iron for example is 30 degrees, this is
03:5430.5 and when you go through the set increments it is very similar. So what I've done is I've brought
04:00with me some P790s so I think this would be a great chance to hit some balls away and compare some
04:05data. Okay so let's get some away. I've got the max fly in my hands first. I've literally
04:09never hit a shot with this so I'm actually intrigued to see what we're going to get here.
04:15Got a 7-iron, let's get some away and get some initial impressions.
04:22Wow that felt fantastic. It's a good first start. That was a really interesting. So in terms of numbers
04:31for that first one that was a 180 carry which is pretty good for me. I'm kind of a high 170s with
04:38my own clubs, my own 7-iron. So there's a bit of extra on that and a decent spin rate
04:43there of 6,300 revs. It was soft but not buttery soft like a blade. It felt like there was a bit
04:51of spring to it. It felt like there was a bit of power in there. It was kind of a springy soft.
04:56That felt absolutely fantastic, truth be told.
05:04That felt flushed so I'm going to suggest that's going to have a bit more carry on it that time.
05:09So yeah, we're up at 187 there so that's a really meaty strike. Spin rate really good though.
05:17Okay, 6,600 revs, nearly 6,700. So that's plenty of spin to keep it in the air and give me a nice
05:25pretty steep descent angle there at 49.7. So that's something to look out for in this category.
05:31Sometimes when we go stronger in loft you can benefit in terms of you being flattered by the
05:37distance number but if you lose that descent angle and that spin then you're not going to hold any green.
05:41So that's really interesting.
05:50Now that will be interesting because that felt quite significantly out of the heel
05:54but that's done really, really well for what was essentially a misstruck shot. That's given me 181
06:02yards of carry. Spin 6,900 revs. That's something really encouraging for me because quite often when
06:10I do go into this category as I said that spin drops off and my overall performance although
06:14it can look very flattering on a launch monitor my overall performance can come down a little bit
06:18but that's a genuinely very impressive start for the MaxFly Club. So let's hit some with the P790
06:24and compare those numbers. Right, sorry to interrupt but I hope you're enjoying this video and I hope
06:28you're enjoying this look at these MaxFly irons. If you are, if you could hit the like button it
06:33really helps us and subscribe to the channel. Also comment down below if you ever played MaxFly
06:38product and which ones did you play?
06:44Yeah, that's, it's very different.
06:48An impressive output there. We've got
06:50190 yards of carry, lower on spin so 5,900 in the spin there, sub 6,000 but just going purely on
06:59feel to start with. I've been a big fan of this new P790 because some of the older ones to me
07:06have just felt a little bit clicky, a little bit tingy. They've done a really good lot of work on
07:11the acoustics and the feel of the P790 making what was, as I said, kind of for me the leader in this
07:17category even better. But the difference between those two clubs even straight away which I'm going
07:23to investigate a little bit further. This does feel springier, it does feel hotter off the face and I
07:28guess that is to be expected. This is, as I was talking about, one of those hollow body clubs
07:33filled. It's going to have a slightly more flexing face and I could genuinely feel that at impact there.
07:45So that was another good pass at it there. I feel that it's gone a long, long way. Yeah, 192 yards.
07:51Spin's gone up a little bit there, 6,179 revs. So you've got a slightly different flight
07:58profile going on here. I'm going to be really interested to get into these numbers a little
08:02bit deeper in a second. Let me just hit one more. So it was a touch lower on the face,
08:10probably a couple of grooves lower than I've been striking it.
08:15But from TaylorMade, as I expect, I mean, I've kept a good, considering as low as that was on the face,
08:21183 yards of carry, 6,1 of spin again. So very consistent in terms of the spin numbers there.
08:29So what I'm going to do now, I'm going to go through, hit, I've got the four iron of each model here
08:33and I've got the pitching wedge of each model here because I'd like to get a full flavour of the whole
08:37set. So I'm going to hit a few away with all of them and I'm going to get back to you with the data now.
08:51Well, that was a really interesting data gathering session. I'm not quite sure what to think yet.
09:08So I'm going to kind of make my mind up as I go through, starting from the bottom. So we're
09:12going to start with the pitching wedge. The main numbers I want to see here are spin,
09:16ball speed and distance. So ball speed off the MaxFly pitching wedge, I was getting nearly 115
09:22miles per hour, 114.7 versus the TaylorMade P790 pitching wedge, basically 112. So a good two,
09:30two and a half plus ball speed difference there. I will caveat that by saying the MaxFly is a little
09:36bit stronger in pitching wedge. So this is something I'm going to talk about in a bit, but you've got to
09:40be wary of. So the MaxFly pitching wedge coming in at 43 versus the P790 at 44.
09:46We'd expect to see some ball speed drop off there because of that loft difference. I'm seeing less
09:51spin out of the MaxFly, kind of 8,900 revs versus nine and a half from the P790. And I'm seeing seven
09:58yards more distance from the MaxFly pitching wedge, 150 yards. I was carrying that pitching wedge on
10:05average, which is not a normal number for me. Whereas with the TaylorMade P790, 143, which is still a
10:10strong number for me coming from what I normally play in. So those are the differences in wedges.
10:15Yet when we go to the seven iron data, it's almost the other way around. So, or it gets a lot more
10:22similar. The ball speeds, 129 and a half with MaxFly, 131 and a half with TaylorMade. So two
10:28miles an hour jump in TaylorMade. 6,600 and a bit revs from the MaxFly, basically 6,000 from the
10:36TaylorMade. So less spin coming from the TaylorMade there, which is opposite to what it was in the
10:42pitching wedge. And don't forget, these seven irons are very comparable in loft. In terms of carry,
10:47I was getting more out of the P790 in seven iron, 188 yards versus 183 yards. Finally, in the longer
10:55irons, a pretty distinct difference here. So again, it's gone slightly the other way. Whereas the MaxFly
11:01was stronger in the shorter irons, the TaylorMade is slightly stronger in four iron, 20 degrees of loft
11:06versus MaxFly's 21 degrees. Because of that, I was seeing quite a big, big jump in terms of ball
11:13speed. 147.9 from the TaylorMade versus 141.3 from MaxFly. Spin numbers were basically identical,
11:214,200 revs, but I was seeing quite a significant jump in yardage in that TaylorMade iron. So
11:28218 yards of carry from a MaxFly four iron, 231 yards, which is massive from that TaylorMade
11:37four iron. So a couple of takeaways there. For me, number one, you've got to be so careful with
11:43lofts. If you're changing irons, you need to know what you're going through, not just that seven iron
11:48number, because a lot of people, and I'm guilty of that in some of my reviews, I'll let you know what
11:51the seven iron loft is, but not all manufacturers create those increments equally. So you might get some
11:57spread here, like we have in this particular scenario. That's one thing I want to take away.
12:01Another thing I'd like to take away is the feel difference. I alluded to it as I was going through,
12:05the MaxFly's are giving me a much more kind of traditional soft forged feel. So those of you,
12:12if you're thinking of going into the player's distance category, I kind of want you to think
12:16about which way you're coming into that from. If you're coming into it as someone who's maybe
12:21traditionally played forged clubs or blades, but you're getting a bit older and you're losing some
12:25distance, so you need a bit of a boost, I think that's a really potentially good gateway into that
12:30category for you, because you're going to get that distance leap, but you're not going to sacrifice
12:34that more soft forged feel that you might become used to. The TaylorMade gives you that very much
12:41more, it almost feels like a hybrid. You've got that hollow bodied face flexing, a bit of power,
12:45and you can really sense that. And it is an exceptional feeling iron, and I still think 100%
12:51it's the category leader in terms of player's distance. But if you're someone who's maybe
12:55coming from the game improvement side of moving into the player's distance category, maybe your
13:00game's improving and you want something a little bit more player-y looking and compact, but you don't
13:04want to give up that distance you've gotten used to, then the feel of the TaylorMade might be more
13:09suitable for you. So overall, I have to say I was seriously impressed with this MaxFly XC2i,
13:15and it's gone up against the best of the best, arguably within this category, and produced some
13:20really comparable data, but giving me a really good alternative in terms of feel at impact.
13:27And I'll tell you what else has really impressed me, it's very sensibly priced, which you tend to
13:31see in this direct-to-consumer market at $999. There's not much to dislike here. Great looks,
13:39great feel. MaxFly, where have you been for so long?
Recommended
10:29
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