The Best New Iron - Full Maxfli XC2 Review

Right, everybody, welcome back to the channel

and I've got some news for you. MaxFly are back. So where on earth has MaxFly been

This is their first iron release in over 30 years, and I've got with me the XC2

They've also released an XC3 version, which is a bit more in the game improvement category

whereas this sits very much in the player's distance category, although there is a bit of a twist, which I'll explain as we go through the video

So Max Fly, for those of us who remember, had some incredible irons back in the day

The real purists will remember the Aussie Blades, the Australian Blades, and there was always a guy at a golf club I played at who had a set of Aussie Blades

and was a real ball striker. If they had those clubs, you should not have played them for money, that is for sure

I also remember irons like the Revolution irons, which are a slightly different category

but they really just made some great product, and they just seemed to kind of disappear

And Maxfly as a brand actually went through a few different iterations of ownership

It got passed around a little bit until in 2003, it was acquired by TaylorMade

who actually wanted a lot of the patents from the golf ball side of things

to help reestablish and grow their market share within the golf ball sector

And it's done really, really well for them. However, once they kind of got what they needed from it

in terms of patents, they sold off what was left of Maxfly to Dick's Sporting Goods, where it's sat for a while now as an in-store and online-only brand

within Dick's Sporting Goods portfolio. I said earlier I was pleasantly surprised when these

arrived and call me superficial, but here's why. I wasn't actually going to make this video

but when I popped a little post on social media, my DMs were packed out with heart eyes, flames

and it wasn't about me. It was about these golf clubs, and I can see why. I'm a sucker for a very

minimalist and clean looking an iron and these just absolutely epitomize that. This kind of brushed

matte finish I think looks absolutely fantastic and there's something about how sparingly they've

logoed this. The Maxfly logo looks great and also I love when iron companies just use one color

on their branding. I think it looks really premium and very sophisticated. When you go down into the

playing position they've got the proportions really very very good here. The longer irons I

think look a bit better than the shorter irons. For me in the playing position the shorter irons

look a little bit angular and the toes a little bit high for me but those longer irons look

absolutely great. So overall the aesthetic package is a very exciting one and it made me want to learn

a bit more about the tech. Now I said these sat in a player's distance category but with a slight

twist and a slight twist for me is in the construction. A lot of the irons we see in that

compact distance or player's distance category tend to be hollow bodied with high flexing faces

and maybe filled with some sort of foam. Well what we've got here is slightly different. This is more

of a single forging although it goes through a few processes to get to its final stage. So the first

three stages of forging is just to create the basic shape of a club head. Then the fourth stage

of the forging refines that a little bit more but actually creates some little gaps in the head where

they can insert some tungsten and ceramic which take care of some of the requirements of the CG the perimeter weighting and the feel And then the final stage of forging covers that hole up packs it all back in tight

for a nice, essentially overall, one-piece forged club. But if you're going to enter the player's

distance category, then you're going to have to take on some of the real big boys of the game

And probably for me, still the daddy of that category is the TaylorMade P790. Now, we've got

some very comparable lofts here. So the tailor-made P790, the 7-iron for example is 30 degrees

this is 30.5 and when you go through the set increments it is very similar. So what I've done

is I've brought with me some P790s so I think this would be a great chance to hit some balls

away and compare some data. Okay so let's get some away. I've got the max fly in my hands first

I've literally never hit a shot with this so I'm actually intrigued to see what we're going to get

here. Got 7-iron, let's get some away and get some initial impressions. Wow, that felt fantastic

It's a good first start. That was a really interesting, so in terms of numbers for that

first one, that was a 180 carry, which is pretty good for me. I'm kind of a high 170s with my own

clubs my own 7-iron so there's a bit of extra on that and a decent spin right there of 6,300 revs

it was soft but not buttery soft like a blade it felt like there was a bit of spring to it it felt

like a there was a bit of power in there it was kind of a kind of a springy soft that felt

absolutely fantastic truth be told that felt flushed so I'm gonna suggest that's gonna have a bit more carry on it that time so

yeah we're up at 187 there so that's a really meaty strike spin rate really good though

6600 revs nearly 6.7 so that's plenty plenty of spin to keep it in the air and give me a nice

pretty steep descent angle there, 49.7. So that's something to look out for in this category

Sometimes when we go stronger in loft, you can benefit in terms of you being flattered by the

distance number. But if you lose that descent angle and that spin, then you're not going to hold any green. So that's really interesting. Now that will be interesting because that felt

quite significantly out of the heel but that's done really really well for what was essentially

a misstruck shot that's given me 181 yards of carry spin 6,900 revs that's something really

encouraging for me because quite often when I do go into this category as I said that spin drops off

and my overall performance although it can look very flattering on a launch monitor

my overall performance can come down a little bit but that's a that's a genuinely very impressive

start for the Maxfly Club. So let's hit some with the P790 and compare those numbers. Right, sorry to

interrupt but I hope you're enjoying this video and I hope you're enjoying this look at these

Maxfly irons. If you are, if you could hit the like button, it really helps us and subscribe to

the channel. Also comment down below if you ever played Maxfly product and which ones did you play

Yeah that it very different An impressive output there We got 190 yards of carry lower on spin so 5 in the spin there sub 6 but just going purely on feel to start with I been a big

fan of this new P790 because some of the older ones to me have just felt a little bit clicky

a little bit tingy. They've done a really good lot of work on the acoustics and the feel

of the P790, making what was, as I said, kind of for me, the leader in this category, even better

But the difference between those two clubs, even straight away, which I'm going to investigate a

little bit further, this does feel springier. It does feel hotter off the face. And I guess

that is to be expected. This is, as I was talking about, one of those hollow body clubs

filled. It's going to have a slightly more flexing face. And I could genuinely

feel that impact there. So that was another good pass at it there. I feel that's gone a long, long way. Yeah, 192 yards

Spin's gone up a little bit there, 6,179 revs. So you've got a slightly different flight profile

going on here. I'm going to be really interested to get into these numbers a little bit deeper in a

second. We'll just hit one more. So that was a touch lower on the face, probably a couple of

grooves lower than I've been striking it but from TaylorMade as I expect I mean I've kept a good

considering as low as that was on the face 183 yards of carry 6-1 of spin again so very consistent

in terms of the spin numbers there so what I'm going to do now I'm going to go through hit I've

got the four iron of each model here and I've got the pitching wedge of each model here because I'd like to get a full flavor of the whole set so I'm going to hit a few away with all of them and I'm

going to get back to you with the data now. Well that was a really interesting data gathering

session. I'm not quite sure what to think yet, so I'm going to kind of make my mind up as I go

through, starting from the bottom. So we're going to start with the pitching wedge. The main numbers

I want to see here are spin, ball speed, and distance. So ball speed off the MaxFly pitching

wedge, I was getting nearly 115 miles per hour, 114.7, versus the TaylorMade P790 pitching wedge

basically 112. So a good two, two and a half plus ball speed difference there. I will caveat that by

saying the MaxFly is a little bit stronger in pitching wedge. So this is something I'm going

to talk about in a bit, but you've got to be wary of. So the MaxFly pitching wedge coming in at 43

versus the P790 at 44, we'd expect to see some ball speed drop off there. Because of that loft

difference, I'm seeing less spin out of the MaxFly, kind of 8,900 revs versus nine and a half

from the P790. And I'm seeing seven yards more distance from the MaxFly pitching wedge, 150 yards

I was carrying that pitching wedge on average, which is not a normal number for me

Whereas with the TaylorMade P790, 143, which is still a strong number for me

coming from what I normally play in So those are the differences in wedges Yet when we go to the 7 data it almost the other way around So or it gets a lot more similar Ball speeds

129.5 with MaxFly, 131.5 with TaylorMade. So two miles an hour jump in TaylorMade

6,600 and a bit revs from the MaxFly, basically 6,000 from the TaylorMade. So less spin coming

from the tailor-made there which is opposite to what it was in the pitching wedge and don't forget

these seven irons are very comparable in loft. In terms of carry I was getting more out of the P790

in seven iron 188 yards versus 183 yards. Finally in the longer irons a pretty distinct difference

here so again it's gone slightly the other way whereas the max fly was stronger in the shorter

irons, the tailor-made is slightly stronger in four iron, 20 degrees of loft versus MaxFly's 21

degrees. Because of that, I was seeing quite a big, big jump in terms of ball speed, 147.9 from

the tailor-made versus 141.3 from MaxFly. Spin numbers were basically identical, 4,200 revs

but I was seeing quite a significant jump in yardage in that tailor-made iron. So 218 yards

have carried from a MaxFly four iron 231 yards, which is massive from that tailor-made four iron

So a couple of takeaways there. For me, number one, you've got to be so careful with lofts. If

you're changing irons, you need to know what you're going through, not just that seven iron

number, because a lot of people, and I'm guilty of that in some of my reviews, I'll let you know what the seven iron loft is, but not all manufacturers create those increments equally

so you might get some spread here like we have in this particular scenario. That's one thing I want to take away

Another thing I'd like to take away is the feel difference. I alluded to it as I was going through

The Max Files are giving me a much more kind of traditional soft forged feel

So those of you, if you're thinking of going into the player's distance category, I kind of want you to think about which way you're coming into that from

If you're coming into it as someone who's maybe traditionally played forged clubs or blades

but you're getting a bit older and you're losing some distance so you need a bit of a boost, I think that's a really potentially good gateway into that category for you because you're going

to get that distance leap but you're not going to sacrifice that more soft forage feel that you

might become used to. The tailor-made gives you that very much more, it almost feels like a hybrid

you've got that hollow-bodied face flexing, a bit of power and you can really sense that and it is

an exceptional feeling iron and I still think 100% it's the category leader in terms of player's

distance but if you're someone who's maybe coming from the game improvement side of moving into the

player's distance category maybe your game's improving and you want something a little bit more playery looking and compact but you don't want to give up that distance you've gotten used to

then the feel of the tailor-made might be more suitable for you. So overall I have to say I was

seriously impressed with this MaxFly XC2i and it's gone up against the best of the best arguably

really good alternative in terms of feel at impact. And I'll tell you what else has really

impressed me. It's very sensibly priced, which you tend to see in this direct-to-consumer market

at $999. There's not much to dislike here. Great looks, great feel. MaxFly

where have you been for so long