Clone Irons P-28 Action/Ping G25s

At the beginning of June 2013, I was in the final stages of organising my family holiday to Florida, making sure car parks were booked at the airport, printing tickets, making final payments for accommodation, etc. I had of course for some time been thinking of new irons, but had decided to wait until 2014, when I could justify spending even more money on golf clubs, having bought two wedges, a driver, hybrid and putter already this year. The thought crossed my mind one day in early June, that I could save myself expensive shipping from the US if I had iron heads shipped from California to Florida, and then bring them home in my suitcase. It didn't take me long to convince myself that this was a splendid idea.

There wasn't really a decision to be made with regard to what clones I would go for. The Ping G25s, which I had hit in the golf store had the thinner top line that I was looking for, while still offering the forgiveness of the game improvement club. Plus Pings, with their shot peen finish are fantastic looking. So I got clicking and found two clones of the G25s. The Turbo Power Z-2.5 and the P-28 Action, (for which the manufacturer seems to be totally anonymous.)

Turbo Power Z-2.5

P-28 Action

The first thing to notice of course is that while the Turbos have the darker shot peen finish, similar to the genuine Pings, the P-28s are mirror finished. This would seem to have made my decision a no brainer, right? Wrong. When I looked at the specs of both clubs, I found that the Turbos had slightly more offset than the Pings, everything else, loft, lie, weight, being very close. The P-28s on the other hand had exactly the same specs as the Pings. This left me with a strange decision to make. Do I go for something that looks like the real thing but is slightly different, or do I go for a club which is identical in everything except looks? When I first got clone irons nearly a decade ago, the G2 clones I selected, not only had the same specs but looked like the Pings. Looking from above, you could not tell the difference. The question became, how important is the look of the club, and somewhere in the back of my mind that question was, do I want to make people think I'm playing with Pings?

What I like to thing of as rational thought won the day. I had hit the Pings in the store, yes the look and the psychological confidence it brings is important but Ping doesn't make too many mistakes in it's clubs so those specs must mean something. Additionally the P-28s had a rounded finish to the hosel and so required no ferrule. I decided to go for the mirrored P-28s.

I bought grips as well from California and had them delivered to the management office of the villa in which I was staying in Florida. We arrived in Orlando on the Friday and the following Monday I had my iron heads and Winn Dri-Tec grips. This would give me something to look forward to when the holiday was over. The following week, while still in Florida, I ordered the shafts, standard Apollo steel shafts with a mid kickpoint from the supplier I use, based in Sweden, knowing that it would take four or five days to get delivered. Ideally they would arrive the day after we got home.

Long story short, the shafts arrived on the Tuesday, I epoxied them up with high strength shafting epoxy with a shear strength of 4500 psi (3000 psi is recommended for shafting,) and set them aside to set. This is not a difficult process and I was already down the learning curve from my experiences with wedges, driver, hybrid and putter. On Wednesday I cut the shafts to length, using a tool I bodged together from a bit of pvc window sill. I cut them half an inch longer than standard as recommend by a calculator I discovered on the internet, and then I gripped them. On Thursday, I admired them and had a few swings out in the back garden. On Friday, I played them.

Throughout the bag, I found them to be easy to hit, like the Pings. The ball strike seemed to feel better than my old G2 clones, and immediately I seemed to be getting 5+ yards more distance from them. They looked fantastic in mirrored chrome and that top line was pretty thin looking too. The longer clubs looked a lot thinner as I had been used to a 3, 4 and 5 iron with a fat sole on the G2 clones. These almost looked like blades to me and I had to get used to being confident that I was going to hit a good shot with them.

After a month and more of playing them, I still haven't totally confirmed my distances but that 5 yards extra I mentioned above seems to be not far off. Quite honestly, I believe I could have bought ANY gamy improvement iron on the market and been happy with how I hit it - that's what they're designed for, but I'm glad I went for these clubs, clones of Pings, mirrored finish and all.

The finished clubs, 3-PW.