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The new Miura Pass­ing Point clubs give higher-handicap play­ers forged iron performance.

Fabled for pro­duc­ing what are arguably the world’s highest-quality forged irons since the company’s found­ing in 1957, Japan’s Miura Golf doesn’t often release new prod­ucts — - at least not as rou­tinely as Amer­i­can com­pa­nies on a rigid cycle.  Only when Founder and Chair­man Kat­suhiro Miura is fully con­vinced that a design, its tech­nol­ogy and man­u­fac­tur­ing qual­ity is right does the com­pany release a new model.  And so on April 1, Miura offi­cially intro­duced its Pass­ing Point 9003 forged cavity-back irons.

With the look and feel of clubs used by skilled play­ers, Pass­ing Point per­forms remark­ably well for golfers who typ­i­cally could not get a ball air­borne with a forged blade.

PGA Mas­ter Club­fit­ter David But­ler, who today makes only Miura irons at his shop near Half Moon Bay, Cal­i­for­nia, secured sev­eral sets of Pass­ing Point heads a cou­ple months in advance of their release, and already has nearly a half-dozen clients ready to pur­chase a custom-assembled set.  “These clubs have a very nice sight-line,” he explains.  “The cen­ter of grav­ity is back fur­ther than other Miura irons and the sole is wider.  There’s also a lit­tle more mass in the toe, which helps cor­rect the toe shots that are com­mon with average-ability players.”

The club drew its name from the notion that golfers pass through stages at dif­fer­ent times of their lives.  The casual com­peti­tor can turn into a fierce com­peti­tor, while other play­ers must make con­ces­sions to age or infir­mi­ties.  Golf clubs, too, can rep­re­sent a pass­ing point.  With the 9003, it may well be a golfer headed in either direction.

“For the seri­ous player it’s not an improve­ment over Miura’s 501 irons,” adds But­ler.  “But my first two sets went to women who are in their 50s, and I have a cou­ple of older male clients who just love them.  They get the look and feel of a forged club, but one with a low cen­ter of grav­ity that allows a per­son with a slower swing speed to get the ball into the air.”

In a release announc­ing the new prod­uct, Miura con­tends that in the company’s “tra­di­tion of meld­ing func­tional golf design with an artis­tic eye, the wider sole helps with effec­tive turf inter­ac­tion, yet is an ele­gant shape that doesn’t look over­sized.  Like­wise, the release con­tin­ues, “the off­set is designed to flow nat­u­rally into the club­head to pre­serve a con­fi­dent look at address, but still ben­e­fit play­ers who need some help squar­ing the club­face at impact.”

Miura-san and his sons, Yoshi­taka and Shinei, set out to cre­ate a “friendly” golf club. With that wider sole, higher launch angle and off­set, Pass­ing Point is quite kindly to seniors, women and high-handicappers.  And as with all Miura clubs, the weight and bal­ance are obses­sively con­sis­tent through­out the set.

Indeed.  The total qual­ity man­age­ment minded But­ler, who is also known as Doc­tor Grip, con­firmed this by bal­anc­ing each Pass­ing Point 9003 club­head on a pin.  That’s right, he first bal­ances the face of the club on a pin­head and marks the point, and then bal­ances the bot­tom of the club­head on the same pin.  “It can some­times take up to a half-hour to get just one point,” But­ler explains, “but when you find that the two dots are aligned, the club­head has per­fect bal­ance.  You find that align­ment in nearly every Miura iron, but not often in off-the-shelf sets from any­one else.”

But­ler will be fit­ting most of the Pass­ing Point sets with an ultra-light graphite shaft, suited to the swing speed of golfers suited to this spe­cific club­head.  Pass­ing Points are avail­able in right-hand con­fig­u­ra­tions only, and in 4-iron through pitch­ing and gap wedges.  Pric­ing begins at $225 per iron.

Half Moon Bay’s Mas­ter Mirua Club­maker David Butler.

“My only wish is that Miura would also made a sand wedge and lob wedge in the same design,” laments But­ler.  “The same is true of the other iron lines.  Now, Miura makes great wedges, but it would be bet­ter to have a com­plete set where each club looks the same.” Ah, the perfectionist.

Besides the new PP-9003, Miura Golf’s cur­rent prod­uct line also includes the CB-501 (Cav­ity Back Model); Blade (Tour­na­ment Blade Model); MC-102 (Mid-Size Cav­ity Model); CB-202 (Cav­ity Back Model); CB-301 (Cav­ity Model); and IC-2003 Util­ity Long Irons) irons; Wedges (Wedge Series and Black Wedge Series, each avail­able in six lofts); Series 1957 By Miura Cus­tom Grind Wedges; Small Blade model irons; Blade and Clas­sic put­ters (two mod­els); Pre­cious Edi­tion Dri­ver, Fair­way Wood and Util­ity Wood. Head­quar­tered in the Japan­ese city of Himeji, where the high­est qual­ity samu­rai swords where forged in century’s past, Miura Golf’s cor­po­rate office is located in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia. More infor­ma­tion on Miura prod­ucts can be found at www.miuragolf.com.