I’ve been playing the Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons for almost two months now and I’m hooked and wish I could justify the cost of purchasing a new set of irons! I’m inclined to send them an email saying the demos were lost in the mail… 🙂

Playing with the Cleveland CG7’s has been an interesting and baffling experience.. I’ll explain later in the post.

The Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons feature pretty cool, game enhancing  Zip Grooves technology which is also found on Golf Digest’s Hot List gold rated Cleveland CG15 Wedges. This technology is the consistent milling of each groove to maximum conforming dimensions. The integrity of the grooves is maintained by the application of a proprietary coating to each groove for protection during the face sandblasting process. The resulting Zip Grooves are pristine, shiny and Cleveland Golf’s biggest, most precisely milled grooves ever.

My favorite piece of technology in the Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons is the laser milled club face. Using the precision accuracy of a laser, 4 perfectly calibrated texture lines are milled between each groove exactly to the conforming roughness limit. This breakthrough surface roughness application optimizes ball-to-face friction and maximizes spin under the Rules of Golf. Not to mention that they look way cool!

Feel comes in the form of 360° Gelback Technology; a one piece injection molded lightweight visco-elastic insert that covers the entire perimeter of the cavity and the base of the club providing vibration dampening across the entire face.

Superior Distance is the result of Dynamic Microcavity Technology; progressively sized microcavities for optimized CG location in each head. This technology allows movement of discretionary weight lower and deeper for increased distance, ball speed and accuracy. This is similar to what they did in the Cleveland Launcher DST Driver where they moved nine grams of weight from the clubface and put repositioned it low and deep into clubhead to create a deeper center of gravity for higher MOI and reduced side spin on drives.

Heel / Toe Muscle Weighting in the Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons provides Forgiveness with 6% greater MOI than traditional irons for maximum performance on off center hits.

I think the black pearl finish and the black inserts on the CG7 irons look freaking awesome and I affectionately refer to them as my Batman gamers. 🙂

Alright, so back to my experience. In my bag, I’m wielding a set of 2009 TaylorMade Burner Irons that were custom fitted to me at the TaylorMade Performance Lab. These clubs are also a lot of fun to play and I hit them very well.

As you can see by the table below, they have the more modern/aggressive lofts which should equate into greater distances than a set of more traditional lofted clubs like the Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons. In addition, they have longer shafts which again, should equate into greater distance.

My experience with them is the opposite… I’m hitting the CG7’s between one to two clubs longer than the Burner Irons and I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out why. I sometimes have the propensity to over-analyze things like this..

Burner Irons

CG7 Black Pearl Irons

I put an email in to Cleveland regarding this and here’s the response I received.

Actually, our CG7 Black Pearl irons are build with more “traditional” lofts than the Burner’s (which are about 2 deg stronger, almost a club) than typical irons. In some cases, the lower loft actually reduces carry distance for players – in addition to being less consistent on dispersion. What probably happened is that the CG7 Black Pearls were just a better match (as they are for many players) as the CG7s are designed as an “all-around” club (good distance/accuracy combination).

I have trouble with the concept that certain clubs are a “better match” than others, but I have no other explanation for why I’m getting so much additional distance from the Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons.

If anyone has any insight, please leave a comment and shed some light on the subject.

Here’s a pretty funny story about the clubs.. I’m one of those players who avoids the hitting the low irons, anything below a 5I usually gets replace with a hybrid. The demo set I received included a 3I and I thought to myself “If I can hit this club, it’ll be a testimony to these clubs.” Well, it was a par5, my drive went about 280 yards leaving me about 210 to the green. With a deep sigh, I thought to myself, ok, well, here goes nothing… 3W (now permanently in my bag) is the Cleveland DST Launcher Fairway Wood which travels about 220 yards and my 3H travels about 190 yards. I took a generous amount of practice swings and pured the 3I which overshot the green by about five yards.. Ended up parring the hole, but man I had an awesome Birdie op!

So yeah, Cleveland CG7 Black Pearl Irons = awesome, they look great and are easy to hit (coming from a high handi) and if you’re like me, you are most likely going to see some increased distance on all of your irons.

While I was researching the technical specs on the clubs, I noticed there’s a $100 off + free dozen golf balls coupon for the CG7 Black Pearl Irons on the Cleveland Golf website.

The coupon is good for in-store only and ends July 31st, so if you’re interested don’t wait too long..