Launched alongside the new 0311 GEN7 offering, PXG is releasing what the company bills as its first true game-improvement iron.
Confused?
My first reaction to that was: What about 0211?
Look, we could go back and forth on that all day but, labels aside, the point of distinction between what PXG has done to date and Black Ops is that the latter represents a sizable departure from PXG’s typical approach to iron design.
Going back to the original 0311, PXG’s design philosophy has been to pack as much performance as possible into a package that, by some measure, resembles a blade. And while nobody is going to confuse the new GEN7 XP with an 0317 Milled Blade, the larger point is that PXG has put extensive effort into hiding the size of its irons.
The company has sought to appeal to golfers who want the distance and forgiveness of a tech-rich iron with the refined looks, or at least the shaping, of a blade.
Said another way, PXG’s goal has been big performance and small footprint. Or at least a footprint that looks smaller than it is.
For my money, they’ve done it well.
With Black Ops irons, PXG is seeking to appeal to the golfer who wants big performance from a big iron. The company isn’t trying to hide anything. Black Ops is big AF for the golfer who wants it that way.
And so, at the risk of stating what should be painfully obvious, compared to anything PXG has made (except the 0311Z), the Black Ops iron is bigger, thicker and wider with plenty of offset.
“It screams ‘easy to hit’ and ‘forgiving,’” says Brad Schweigert, PXG’s Chief Product Officer.
Black Ops construction
Peeling back the layers, you’ll find similarities and differences compared to PXG’s other iron offerings.
Unlike the forged GEN7, the Black Ops features a cast steel body. You still get the ultra-thin HT1770 face with Power Channel along with robotic polishing to achieve tight tolerances.
The face is 4.3 percent larger than the GEN7 XP. PXG describes it as a bigger trampoline, which generally means more speed across the face.
Black Ops is a dual-cavity design that uses the same XCOR2 material found in GEN6 irons to support the face and add speed.
According to Schweigert, PXG experimented with using QuantumCOR polymer from the GEN7 irons but, with the larger footprint of the Black Ops irons, it got better results with XCOR2.
An aluminum cavity badge works to save additional mass.
Finally, as mentioned, the sole of the Black Ops iron is wide but PXG has trimmed a bit of material from the trailing edge to improve playability.
When all the pieces come together, you end up with a more forgiving iron. (PXG says MOI is 4.5 percent higher than Callaway’s Ai Smoke and 8.6 percent higher than TaylorMade’s Qi).
Black Ops irons – Performance expectations
As it did with the GEN7 Irons, PXG shared a fair amount of internal testing data on the Black Ops. While you might expect that the data would show that Black Ops is longer than anything else on the market, what it reveals is that Black Ops, while not far off, isn’t quite as fast or as long as Callaway’s Ai Smoke.
Where PXG’s data suggests Black Ops shines is with consistency. Like GEN7, the heart of the performance story is about narrowing the gap between good shots and bad and tightening the miss pattern.
Left to Right: PXG Black Ops 5-iron, 7-iron, and pitching wedge. (Note: image not perfectly to scale)
When those two things come together in a dispersion ellipse, PXG says it’s better than Qi and significantly better than Ai Smoke.
To sum it up, the meat of PXG’s Black Ops iron claims is similar distance, better total performance.
PXG Black Ops iron specs
Make no mistake about it, Black Ops is a strongly lofted offering. The 7-iron is 28 degrees and the pitching wedge is 42. Plus or minus a degree here and there, they’re in line with the competitors mentioned.
With that, the performance question that needs to be answered is whether golfers, particularly slower swingers, will be able to leverage the low and deep centers of gravity to generate enough height and steep enough descent angles to hold greens.
As many in the game-improvement category are moving away from strong lofts, with its first true game-improvement offering, PXG is leaning into them.
I’d be remiss not to remind you that stock lofts are simply a starting point. If you need more loft, the irons can be bent.
Availability and Pricing
Retail price for PXG Dark Ops irons is $149.99 per iron. Available now.
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