Tour Edge Exotics C721 Irons Review - A Superstar in the Players Distance Category

Players Distance irons became a big story in the equipment industry about five years ago.  The idea being to combine the playability of cavity back irons with the looks of better players irons.  Distance, workability, control, forgiveness, and feel are all part of the equation, but sacrifices are usually made in one area for another.

Well, Tour Edge apparently decided to take a different approach to players distance irons, one that sacrifices nothing.  And their new Exotics C721 irons should be on everyone's shortlist as a candidate for best players distance irons of 2021.

There's a lot of technology packed in the C721 irons.  In fact, I'd call them a technological tour de force.  Dual VIBRCOR for feel, Diamond Face 2.0 for forgiveness, and military grade maraging steel for faster ball speeds to mention just a few.  You can read about this tech here.

Technology is always a cool backstory, but like you what I care about most is performance.  Do they perform as advertised?  And I can tell you Tour Edge overdelivers with the C721 irons.  I fact, I'd put C721 in the upper percentile for every performance category we're about to cover.

If you're looking at players distance irons, obviously there's no such thing as too much distance.  And the C721 are easily one of the longest irons I've hit over the past year.  And that includes more than a dozen irons in the players distance category.

 

C721 are stronger lofted irons, but they launch with rising trajectories and have plenty of backspin to hold greens even with long irons.  You feel immediately at impact these are hot face irons, but to merely call these hot or spring-like honestly doesn't do them justice.

At impact with C721 you get more of that strong, bullet-speed feel like when you pure a blade.  Only with C721 it's a lot easier to do, and the distance is a lot more effortless. 

 

Which brings me to forgiveness, and an area where the C721 arguably might be best in class.  For a players distance iron, the C721 has the widest area of forgiveness (or call it sweet spot if you like) of any iron I've played or tested in this category.

Hit one out towards the toe or high on the face (and I'm talking a good full ball away from center), and the forgiveness is nothing short of exceptional.  C721 irons essentially give you abundant mishit protection by keeping dispersion and distance in particular very consistent with your good strikes.  Even shots struck low on the face still launch higher than you'd expect and give you very playable distance.  You get a large enough hitting zone to do pretty much anything you want, yet without needing to be perfect.

 

So what about feel you might be thinking?  These are hollow body irons after all, and feel is what's often sacrificed most when irons are extremely forgiving like C721.  Well, here again, Tour Edge impressed the heck out of me.  These are iron equivalents of a smooth handling car.

Feel is anything but hollow with the C721 irons.  At impact it's like a silky soft sensation and very solid.  Not quite as solid as a pure blade, but solid enough that you probably wouldn't guess they are hollow just by hitting them.  But that's only part of the feel story.

 

The C721 irons also have incredible feedback, and this is an area where they again stand out in the players distance iron category.  I mentioned earlier how center strikes and mishits deliver consistently similar performance in distance and direction.  But you can clearly feel when you don't hit one dead center.

It's a clickier vibration feel when you miss out on the extreme areas of the face.  Nothing harsh like a blade, but enough to let you know exactly where you made contact.  For a 22 handicap player maybe this doesn't mean much.  But for say a 2 handicap?  This means everything.

 

So you get the distance, you get the forgiveness, and you get the feel.  What about the shape?  This is always subjective to talk about, and I prefer to let the pictures do the talking.

I will say however C721 have a small enough head shape to easily work the ball.  And the sole just plows through turf and rough.  Short iron control is exceptional, and it's very easy to control trajectory and hit more boring shots when you need them.  These won't be mistaken for blades, but still have an overall very clean look.

 

Tour Edge's growing reputation as a heavyweight in equipment industry and even on professional tours is largely based on outstanding performance of their drivers, woods, and hybrids.  And the acclaim is wholly justified.

So I don't say this lightly when I tell you the Exotics C721 irons in my opinion are the best clubs of any kind Tour Edge has ever created.  C721 are big-time performers in the players distance iron category that will appeal to and satisfy the demands of a broad range of skills.