Mizuno JPX 923 Hot Metal, 923 Hot Metal Pro, 923 Hot Metal HL irons

Gear: Mizuno JPX 923 Hot Metal, 923 Hot Metal Pro, 923 Hot Metal HL irons
Price: $137.50 each
Available: Oct. 13 (available for pre-sale Sept. 23)

Specs: Cast nickel chromoly heads. Hot Metal, 4-LW; Hot Metal Pro, 4-LW; Hot Metal HL, 5-SW.

Who it’s for: Golfers who want the looks and feel of better-player’s irons but need distance enhancement, forgiveness and spin.

The Skinny: The three JPX 923 Hot Metal irons were designed to cosmetically mix and match seamlessly so golfers and fitters can blend clubs to make a set. The offset and sizes vary, but all three have thin, fast faces for more ball speed and sound-enhancing features to go with sleek, modern looks.

The Deep Dive: For decades, Mizuno was known as a company that specialized in some of the finest muscleback blades for accomplished players and professionals. They were aspirational. Golfers with single-digit handicaps and powerful, repeatable swings loved the soft feel and control, while players who typically shoot in the mid-80s and higher yearned to be good enough to play them someday.

With the release of several JPX models of irons, most of which offered perimeter-weighted game-improvement clubs alongside a pro version for low-handicappers, Mizuno found a larger audience. The Japanese company started using different materials, such as Chromoly, stainless steel and tungsten, to get better performance and more forgiveness out of the JPX lineup without making the clubs so big that they no longer looked like the Mizunos golfers wished they were good enough to use.

With the release of the newest JPX Hot Metal family – the JPX 923 Metal, 923 Hot Metal Pro and 923 Metal HL – Mizuno is trying to expand its footprint across an even larger segment of the market, all while making clubs that look and feel (as much as possible) like the musclebacks used by Keith Mitchell, Luke Donald and other tour pros.

The 923 Hot Metal irons are all cast using a new material called nickel chromoly. Mizuno has used chromoly for several years, but adding nickel, according to Mizuno, makes the chromoly alloy 35 percent stronger. It is so strong that it is used in airplane landing gear assemblies and gears in automobile transmissions. 

Nickel chromoly allowed Mizuno to make the faces thinner and lighter without worrying about durability, so the center of the JPX 923 Hot Metal’s cup-face hitting area is just 2.05 millimeters thick, with the perimeter being 1.75 millimeters. That allows the hitting area…