Ping introduces i525 players-distance irons
Equipment

Ping introduces i525 players-distance irons

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Ping is always a solid choice. In keeping with their ethos, Ping doesn't do anything flashy, but it does almost everything well. Reliability means something, namely that they're not going to let you go astray.

With that in mind, the Ping i525 players-distance irons are here, and they're building on and improving upon the i500 irons. The big goal with the i525s was to inject some of the feel that can be lacking in players-distance irons, often in favor of more distance and higher ball flight.

There are a few ways to go about making an appreciable improvement in feel in a hollow-bodied iron, and the i525 represents Ping's playbook for a compact-looking iron that still delivers strong ball speeds (without just strengthening lofts).

For Ping, feel in this class of iron begins in the face, using a maraging steel for the face insert that's plasma-welded onto a 17-4 stainless steel body. The idea is the maraging steel, often found in fairway woods and hybrids, can flex to improve launch conditions, and the body, with an undercut sole, helps facilitate that. The face insert is strong, but the feel is better. Meanwhile, the more wood-like nature of the total clubhead allows for forgiveness across the hitting zone.

Ubiquitous in this category is the use of performance-enhancing filling material in the head to improve feel and acoustics while helping preserve the ball-speed increases from the insert by improving face deflection. Ping injects an EVA polymer material behind the face of the i525s to do just that, though the material is really just behind the face and not filling the full space.

Rounding it all out is tungsten weighting in the toe and a shaft tip weighting system to offer the forgiveness players need, even in a more compact-looking package compared to the i500 in terms of topline, blade length and overall footprint.

The i525s feature a machined face insert with the MicroMax grooves introduced in last year's i59 irons. The MicroMax irons have tighter spacing and shaping that nets out for additional grooves per club to reduce fliers and perform better in wet conditions, including the Hydropearl 2.0 finish.

The Ping i525 irons are available in 3-9, pitching wedge and utility wedge with a wide variety of stock steel and graphite shafts available, including from Project X, Ping's own lineup, Dynamic Gold and KBS. The irons are $205 each with stock steel shafts and $220 each with stock graphite shafts.

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Ryan Ballengee

Ryan Ballengee is founder and editor of Golf News Net. He has been writing and broadcasting about golf for nearly 20 years. Ballengee lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his family. He is a scratch golfer...sometimes.

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