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This Legendary 2014 Golf Club Still Has It – Retro Review
Sep 22, 2025
This Iconic Club From 2014 Can Still Hit All The Shots - Retro Review. Next to go under the microscope in our Retro Review series is the Adams Pro DHY Hybrid Iron. First introduced in 2014, this was one of a vast number of utility iron style releases around this period, with the iron/hybrid combination coming very much into fashion. In this video, Joe Ferguson gets his hands on one for just £64.00 / $81.00 from golfclubs4cash and sees if it can still stand the test of time and hit all the shots off the tee, the fairway into and around the greens. Suffice to say, the results surprised him!
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0:00
Retro review time again
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and I've got a bit of a self-indulgent one today. This club, the Adams Pro DHY utility iron
0:06
was in my bag for about three or four years, so I'm really keen to see if it's still got the magic
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We've teamed up with Golf Clubs For Cash, one of the leading retailers of pre-loved equipment
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They've sent me some absolute crackers to test, so please take a look at those guys
0:19
down in the description below. But now, I've got this 6399, 18 degrees
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a really premium graphite shaft. Let's go and hit some balls and see what it can do
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so the pro dhy was launching around 2014 when we just sort of come out of the era
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where hybrids and rescues were new and exciting some people just didn't get on with them some
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people hit them left some people found them too floaty so companies started to introduce this kind
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of iron rescue combination club that satisfied a few things that people needed companies like
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titanus did the titanus tmb ping did the crossover taylor made had their udi their ultimate driving
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iron and Adams produced this the Pro-DHY but this thing had one very significant difference to a lot
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of those other ones and it was more of a blend between irons and woods and that is the face bulge
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Now you might have been hearing this term a lot lately with Bryson DeChambeau and his 3D printed
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irons so what does it really mean? So think about bulge as a bit of a safety net on your irons or
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even the more iron style utility irons the face will be flat and what can happen is you don't get
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the assistance of gear effect. If you hit the ball off the toe, face tends to deflect open and the
1:29
ball rolls more towards the centre of the face, creating excessive curvature and off the toe
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generally quite a hefty draw. Vice versa, off the heel, the clubface will generally deflect a little
1:40
bit closed and the ball will again roll to the centre, creating that excessive curvature from
1:44
left to right for a right-handed player. What we've got here and why I call it an insurance
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policy is we've got a face that's kind of curved, that the nearest point to the target is in the
1:53
center and it falls away on both the heel and toe. So what that does if you do hit it off the toe
1:59
it helps with your start line creating a little bit further right so it just gives you that little
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bit of insurance policy when that side spin does kick in that you've got the right start off the
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toe or the left start off the heel and it will create a tighter dispersion pattern. And down
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behind the ball you can actually see that bulge and roll. I can see the toe and the heel falling
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away a bit and because I know the benefits of gear effect that's actually quite confidence
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inspiring. It lets me know I've got a bit of margin for error here which I really like
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What else is confidence inspiring is the blade length. It's really really long. I've got plenty
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of surface area to hit the ball here Overall it just a really nice softly rounded profile So I got the bulge which I can see the back gently curves away and it just a really soft lovely head profile and what I do like about it as well is this kind of charcoal black colour It disguises
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what is quite a big head, it's actually quite slimming when you get this darker colour it doesn't
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look as large or game improvement in any way. We've got the help, we've got the real estate
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we've got the bulge but it doesn't look too cumbersome. So the first thing I wanted to know
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and this is crucial with any utility iron for me is is it going to be a good fairway finder
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So I've come down to the beautiful Saunton Golf Club at one of my favourite practice grounds in
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the world. I've got my full swing kit launch monitor and I've set up an imaginary fairway
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down there 25 yards wide between one of those yardage sticks and the bush on the left there
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I've got 20 balls in front of me here because I want to see a good average. I'm just going to hit
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them away see how many I can get between that particular parameter and see if it's going to be
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a good fairway finder for me. That was actually really good. Out of the 20 shots I hit there, 15 were within my parameters
3:57
That's essentially, well it's not, it's exactly 75% and that's really, really good for me
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There is a little bit of a right to left wind, so I could just hold my fade up against it, which was useful
4:07
So that needs to be factored in. But I did feel really confident in hitting a lot of fairways with this
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I don't know whether it's the psychology of having that bulge there that I knew I could get away with a few
4:15
or whether it's just a really nice fairway finding club. So it's a promising start, but I want more from this club
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I demand a lot from a club between my three wood and my iron set. It needs to be versatile
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Can I hit it high? Can I hit it low? Can I shape it a bit? So let's find out
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Sorry to interrupt, I hope you're enjoying the video. If you are, don't forget to subscribe
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to the channel, hit that like button and comment down below. Let me know about the retro equipment
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you play and that you've loved over the years. Okay, well those were great. Those 20 shots were
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really good. I'm really happy with the percentage of the fairways I hit there, but like I said
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I need a bit more versatility out of this club. Those were coming out of kind of a mid-launch
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mid-spin window, which is great and that's a nice starting ground for the club, but I need to know
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whether I can do some more with it whether I can get that high shot that might land softly on a
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par five or I'm going four in two or I've got to get over a tree or something like that so I need
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to be able to vary trajectory so I going to try and scoop one up here and it feels really amenable to that the face looks like it wants to just sit a little bit open I just going to move the ball a little bit further forward in my stance and go the little sweepier swing
5:21
that's great it's got a bit of a high fade on it but that's really coming down soft that's barely moved once it's hit the deck so
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that's interesting it's it didn't feel a problem getting it up let's see if we can get a little stinger with it so we've got that into wind scenario we need a more penetrating
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ball flight we're going to pop it back in the stance a little bit curtail that follow through
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a little bit more and just drive it down with that little low fade that's great there's got to be
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I don't know 50 40 50 feet between those trajectories so there does seem to be some
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versatility with this club as I said my sort of stock shot is a bit of a fade so it doesn't seem
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to be a problem doing that let's try and exaggerate that a little bit from left to right
6:01
no problem there it's not fading massively more than it normally would
6:09
interesting okay now my nemesis let's see if I can turn it over let's see if I can aim up the
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right toe the club in a little bit and get it releasing from right to left a little bit
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okay that's actually done a really nice job for me that not masses of curvature I was trying to
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play a big slinging hook there and a big carving fade so maybe the self-correction of the bulge is
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kicking in there more than I not necessarily want it to but yeah I'm struggling to curve it as much
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as I might think but the high and low wasn't a problem at all there but it's got more to do. I'm
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not always going to be on a nice clean line the fairway let's go to some trouble and see if it can
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extricate me out of some rough. Right those of you that have played any golf with me will know this is
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not an unfamiliar situation I'm off the fairway I'm in a bit of the thicker clag. Something I'm
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really interested to see here a couple of those ones I hit when in my 20 when I was hitting the
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fairway finder section were a little bit low off the face and I was expecting a lower reading in
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terms of ball speed and distance numbers and that maintained really well so I'm I've heard this about
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this club before and I remember it from when I played it any sort of low on the face strikes
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retained a lot of ball speed more than some others I've used so I'm in a situation here now where the
7:17
ball's lower than the club face really it's nestled down a little bit in this thicker stuff
7:21
So I just want to see whether that holds true and whether this clubhead will come smoothly through this grass and can get me out of a bit of trouble here
7:28
Because I do demand this from my sort of utility club That's chopped through delightfully actually it's come out with very little spin
7:37
And that's gone miles but you can see here that cut through the turf some pretty thick long grass here pretty pretty well
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So that that promising let get it a little bit worse let go in that divot from where I just been let see if we can chop that out You probably can even see the ball there That is not pleasant Like a little knife through butter
7:59
That was low on the face. Crikey, that's gone a long way. It was low on the face again, but
8:03
as off the fairway there, these lower off the face hits seem to really retain ball speed
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produce a really good result. And you can see this is some pretty yucky stuff. That had no problem getting through there. It seems very versatile. On the subject of versatility
8:17
Let's see, I've got one more little scenario I wanted to try the Pro DHY out in, and that's around the greens in
8:23
It's quite topical. I'm filming this just after the US Open at Pinehurst, where I saw Tiger Woods playing a lot of these little green side shots from scrubby little eyes with his four iron
8:34
So I often play this when I've got a little tough line, I've not got anything to go over
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I've got a bit of a sandy area here, which you often get on Lynx golf courses. I often play this with a hybrid or even a three wood just something that I can just bump forward
8:47
it's going to get the ball just above the grass and rolling towards the hole. This strikes me that
8:52
it might be the club for the job here it's got a slightly slimmer profile than a hybrid
8:55
and obviously a three wood so I don't feel like it's going to get caught up. I've got a reasonable
9:01
lie here but I'm just going to try and bump it along the ground and let's see if the hybrid can
9:05
work its magic. So it's done well it's not snagged up at all it's rolling nice
9:13
and safely towards the hole probably five five and a half feet that's actually a
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really good result from here so let's let's make it a bit tougher and give myself a really nestled down sandy lie that's not great at all so getting a
9:25
wedge into the back of that would be next to impossible so this might be
9:29
another really safe option from here so again just like a putting stroke bump it
9:34
forward it's got enough forward momentum running up towards the hole and that is absolute tapping
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range a couple of feet away so in summary not only is this a fairway finder off the tee
9:47
not only can it extricate me from horrible lies in the rough i can actually get up and down from
9:52
it from a really tricky situation there's ultimate versatility in this club i do a lot of these
9:56
retro reviews and i shouldn't really have a favorite but i think i just might as i said i
10:02
I used this club a few years ago and I'm really surprised at myself, having tested it today, that I ever let it go. It does so much for me
10:10
It's a really solid, reliable fairway finder. I can get out of trouble with it and I've even shown I can get up and down with
10:16
it for some tricky lies around the green. It might not be the perfect shaft for me
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although it is a nice premium Aldilla shaft. I need something a little bit stiffer, but I can take care of that
10:25
For £63.99, I'm not sure golf clubs for cash are going to get this back off me
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