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This Iconic Club From 2014 Can Still Hit All The Shots - Retro Review.
Next to go under the microscope in our Retro Review series is the Adams Pro DHY Hybrid Iron. First introduced in 2014, this was one of a vast number of utility iron style releases around this period, with the iron/hybrid combination coming very much into fashion. In this video, Joe Ferguson gets his hands on one for just £64.00 / $81.00 from golfclubs4cash and sees if it can still stand the test of time and hit all the shots off the tee, the fairway into and around the greens. Suffice to say, the results surprised him!
Next to go under the microscope in our Retro Review series is the Adams Pro DHY Hybrid Iron. First introduced in 2014, this was one of a vast number of utility iron style releases around this period, with the iron/hybrid combination coming very much into fashion. In this video, Joe Ferguson gets his hands on one for just £64.00 / $81.00 from golfclubs4cash and sees if it can still stand the test of time and hit all the shots off the tee, the fairway into and around the greens. Suffice to say, the results surprised him!
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00:00Retro review time again, and I've got a bit of a self-indulgent one to date.
00:03This club, the Adams Pro DHY Utility Iron, was in my bag for about three or four years,
00:08so I'm really keen to see if it's still got the magic.
00:11We've teamed up with Golf Clubs for Cash, one of the leading retailers of pre-loved equipment.
00:15They've sent me some absolute crackers to test, so please take a look at those guys
00:19down in the description below.
00:20But now, I've got this 6399, 18 degrees, a really premium graphite shaft.
00:26Let's go and hit some balls and see what it can do.
00:29So the Pro DHY was launching around 2014 when we'd just sort of come out of the era
00:34where hybrids and rescues were new and exciting.
00:38Some people just didn't get on with them, some people hit them left, some people found them too floaty.
00:42So companies started to introduce this kind of iron rescue combination club
00:48that satisfied a few things that people needed. Companies like Titleist did the Titleist TMB,
00:53Ping did the crossover, TaylorMade had their UDI, their ultimate driving iron,
00:57and Adams produced this, the Pro DHY.
01:00But this thing had one very significant difference to a lot of those other ones,
01:04and it was more of a blend between irons and woods, and that is the face bulge.
01:09Now, you might have been hearing this term a lot lately with Bryson DeChambeau and his 3D printed irons,
01:14so what does it really mean?
01:16So think about bulge as a bit of a safety net. On your irons or even the more iron style
01:20utility irons,
01:21the face will be flat, and what can happen is you don't get the assistance of gear effect.
01:26If you hit the ball off the toe, face tends to deflect open and the ball rolls more towards the
01:31centre of the face, creating excessive curvature, and off the toe generally quite a hefty draw.
01:37Vice versa off the heel, the clubface will generally deflect a little bit closed,
01:40and the ball will again roll to the centre, creating that excessive curvature from left
01:45to right for a right-handed player. What we've got here, and why I call it an insurance policy,
01:49is we've got a face that's kind of curved, the nearest point to the target is in the centre,
01:54and it falls away on both the heel and toe. So what that does, if you do hit it off
01:58the toe,
01:59it helps with your start line creating a little bit further right, so it just gives you that little
02:03bit of insurance policy when that side spin does kick in, that you've got the right start off the toe,
02:08or the left start off the heel, and it will create a tighter dispersion pattern.
02:13And down behind the ball, you can actually see that bulge and roll. I can see the toe and the
02:17heel
02:17falling away a bit, and because I know the benefits of gear effect, that's actually quite confidence
02:23inspiring. It lets me know I've got a bit of margin for error here, which I really like.
02:27What else is confidence inspiring is the blade length. It's really, really long. I've got plenty of
02:32surface area to hit the ball here. Overall, it's just a really nice, softly rounded profile. So I've got the
02:37bulge, which I can see. The back gently curves away, and it's just a really soft, lovely head profile.
02:43And what I do like about it as well is this kind of charcoal-y black colour. It disguises what
02:48is
02:48quite a big head. It's actually quite slimming when you get this darker colour. It doesn't look as large
02:54or game improvement in any way. We've got the help, we've got the real estate, we've got the bulge,
02:59but it doesn't look too cumbersome.
03:02So the first thing I wanted to know, and this is crucial with any utility iron for me, is,
03:06is it going to be a good fairway finder? So I've come down to the beautiful Saunton Golf Club at
03:11my,
03:12one of my favourite practice grounds in the world. I've got my full swing kit launch monitor,
03:16and I've set up an imaginary fairway down there, 25 yards wide between one of those yardage sticks
03:21and the bush on the left there. I've got 20 balls in front of me here, because I want to
03:25see a good
03:26average. I'm just going to hit them away, see how many I can get between that particular parameter, and see
03:31if it's
03:31going to be a good fairway finder for me.
03:52That was actually really good. Out of the 20 shots I hit there, 15 were within my parameters,
03:57so that's essentially, well it's not, it's exactly 75%, and that's really, really good for me.
04:02There is a little bit of a right to left wind, so I could just hold my fade up against
04:06it, which was
04:06useful, so that needs to be factored in. But I did feel really confident in hitting a lot of fairways
04:11with this. I don't know whether it's the psychology of having that bulge there that I knew I could get
04:15away with a few, or whether it's just a really nice fairway finding club. So it's a promising start,
04:20but I want more from this club. I need, I demand a lot from a club between my three wood
04:24and my iron
04:24set. It needs to be versatile. Can I hit it high? Can I hit it low? Can I shape it
04:29a bit? So let's find out.
04:31Sorry to interrupt. I hope you're enjoying the video. If you are, don't forget to subscribe to
04:36the channel. Hit that like button and comment down below. Let me know about the retro equipment you
04:41play and that you've loved over the years. Okay, well those were great. Those 20 shots were really
04:45good. I'm really happy with the percentage of the fairways I hit there. But like I said, I need a
04:48bit
04:48more versatility out of this club. Those were coming out of kind of a mid-launch, mid-spin window,
04:53which is great. And that's a nice starting ground for the club. But I need to know whether I can
04:57do
04:58some more with it, whether I can get that high shot that might land softly on a par five, or
05:01I'm
05:01going four in two, or I've got to get over a tree or something like that. So I need to
05:05be able to vary
05:06trajectory. So I'm going to try and scoop one up here and it feels really amenable to that. The face
05:11looks like it wants to just sit a little bit open. I'm just going to move the ball a little
05:14bit
05:15further forward in my stance and go with a little sweepier swing.
05:21And that's great. It's got a bit of a high fade on it,
05:25but that's really coming down soft. It's barely moved once it's hit the deck. So
05:29that's interesting. It didn't feel a problem getting it up. Let's see if we can get a little
05:32stinger with it. So we've got that into wind scenario. We need a more penetrating ball flight.
05:36We're going to pop it back in the stance a little bit, curtail that follow through a little bit more
05:43and just drive it down with that little low fade. That's great. There's got to be,
05:48I don't know, 50, 40, 50 feet between those trajectories. So there does seem to be some
05:53versatility with this club. As I said, my sort of stock shot is a bit of a fade, so it
05:57doesn't seem
05:58to be a problem doing that. Let's try and exaggerate that a little bit from left to right.
06:06No problem there. It's not fading massively more than it normally would.
06:10Interesting. Okay, now my nemesis. Let's see if I can turn it over. Let's see if I can aim up
06:14the
06:15right, toe the club in a little bit and get it releasing from right to left a little bit.
06:21Okay, that's actually done a really nice job for me, that. Not masses of curvature. I was trying to
06:26play a big slinging hook there and a big carving fade. So maybe the self-correction of the bulge is
06:32kicking in there more than I, not necessarily want it to, but yeah, I'm struggling to curve it as much
06:37as I
06:37might think. But the high and low wasn't a problem at all there, but it's got more to do. I'm
06:42not
06:42always going to be on a nice clean line in the fairway. Let's go to some trouble and see if
06:46it
06:46can extricate me out of some rough. Right, those of you that have played any golf with me will know
06:50this is not an unfamiliar situation. I'm off the fairway. I'm in a bit of the thicker clag.
06:55Something I'm really interested to see here, a couple of those ones I hit in my 20 when I was
06:59hitting the
07:00fairway finder section were a little bit low off the face and I was expecting a lower reading in terms
07:04of
07:04ball speed and distance numbers and that maintained really well. So I've heard this about this club
07:09before and I remember it from when I played it, any sort of low on the face strikes retained a
07:13lot of ball speed more than some others I've used. So I'm in a situation here now where the ball's
07:17lower than the club face really. It's nestled down a little bit in this thicker stuff. So I just want
07:22to see whether that holds true and whether this club head will come smoothly through this grass and
07:27can get me out of a bit of trouble here because I do demand this from my sort of utility
07:31club.
07:34That's chopped through delightfully actually. It's come out with very little spin
07:38and that's gone miles but you can see here that cut through the turf. Some pretty thick long grass
07:44here pretty pretty well so that's that's promising. Let's get it a little bit worse. Let's go in that
07:48divot from where I've just been. Let's see if we can chop that out. You probably can't even see the
07:52ball there. That is not pleasant.
07:56Oh, like a little knife through butter. That was low on the face.
08:01Crikey, that's gone a long way. It was low on the face again but as off the fairway there,
08:05these lower off the face hits seem to really retain ball speed, produce a really good result
08:10and you can see this is some pretty yucky stuff. That had no problem getting through there. It seems
08:14very versatile. On the subject of versatility, I've got one more little scenario I wanted to try the Pro
08:20DHY out in and that's around the greens in. It's quite topical. I'm filming this just after the US
08:26Open at Pinehurst where I saw Tiger Woods playing a lot of these little green side shots from scrubby
08:32little eyes with his four iron. I often play this when I've got a little tough line. I've not got
08:37anything to go over. I've got a bit of a sandy area here which you often get on Lynx golf
08:41courses.
08:42I often play this with a hybrid or even a three-wood. Just something that I can just bump forward.
08:47It's
08:47going to get the ball just above the grass and rolling towards the hole. This strikes me that it might
08:52be the club for the job here. It's got a slightly slimmer profile than a hybrid and obviously a
08:57three-wood so I don't feel like it's going to get caught up. I've got a reasonable lie here but
09:02I'm
09:02just going to try and bump it along the ground. Let's see if the hybrid can work its magic.
09:10So it's done well. It's not snagged up at all. It's rolling nice and safely towards the hole. Probably
09:16five, five and a half feet. That's actually a really good result from here. So let's
09:20let's make it a bit tougher and give myself a really nestled down sandy lie. That's not great
09:24at all. So getting a wedge into the back of that would be next to impossible. So this might be
09:29another really safe option from here. So again, just like a putting stroke, bump it forward. It's
09:35got enough forward momentum running up towards the hole and that is absolute tapping range. A couple of
09:41feet away. So in summary, not only is this a fairway finder off the tee, not only can it extricate
09:48me from
09:49horrible lies in the rough, I can actually get up and down from it from a really tricky situation.
09:54There's ultimate versatility in this club. I do a lot of these retro reviews and I shouldn't
09:58really have a favorite, but I think I just might. As I said, I used this club a few years
10:03ago and I'm
10:04really surprised at myself having tested it today that I ever let it go. It does so much for me.
10:10It's a really solid, reliable fairway finder. I can get out of trouble with it and I've even shown I
10:15can
10:15get up and down with it for some tricky lies around the green. It might not be the perfect shaft
10:19for
10:20me, although it is a nice premium Aldila shaft. I need something a little bit stiffer, but I can
10:24take care of that. And for £63.99, I'm not sure golf clubs for cash are going to get this
10:29back off me.
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