Ben Hogan Legend Irons Course-Tested Review

It’s no surprise that the Ben Hogan Legend irons, the company’s first hollow body iron, has an incredibly clean look. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say it’s one of the best-looking heads in the Hogan lineup, including the musclebacks.

I tested the new Ben Hogan Legend irons both on Trackman and multiple rounds on the course. These irons are performers, and surprisingly even more workable than I anticipated.

Here’s my complete review of the Ben Hogan Legend irons.

Pros:

• Bold, clean look
• Very forgiving on mis-hits toward the toe or heel
• Foam-filled hollow body creates a soft feel to go with forged body and face
• Lots of customization options, including grip, shaft, lie, loft, and shaft length and flex

Cons:

• Only available online currently means no true custom fitting
• Only available in right-handed for now

It used to be that game improvement irons were clunky, with large soles and obvious perimeter weighting. If you go all the way back to the Ping Eye 2s (which did have a beauty for the beholder who hit them well), they were all about function, not looks.

With the onset of players distance irons, which are arguably every bit as forgiving as “game improvement irons,” the looks have dramatically changed for the better. Just look at the hollow-bodied choices like the TaylorMade P790 and its successors.

The Legend irons are indeed Hogan’s first hollow-bodied, foam-filled head. The high-performance foam is injected at a specific mass and density for each club. Ben Hogan did this to optimize launch conditions for every iron. 

The foam is also largely responsible for the club’s soft feel, dampening the strike even though the face and the body of the iron are forged. 

The Legend heads are a little larger than Hogan’s PTx Tour irons, which I reviewed last year. What struck me right off the bat was the beautiful angular design on the back of the Legend irons. They feature the iconic Ben Hogan logo and lightly engraved “Legend” against a totally clean backdrop of chrome. No club in the Ben Hogan lineup looks cleaner.

Fortunately, the new Ben Hogan Legend irons' beauty runs more than skin deep. 

The lofts are comparable to other players distance irons. The 7-iron has 30.5 degrees and the pitching wedge has 44 degrees of loft. Of course, that’s a bit stronger than the clubs of 40 years ago.

Each club features the V-sole design found in other Hogan irons. The soles are fairly wide, meaning these are pretty forgiving from most lies (not sure they are best from hard pan). 

There’s a good bit of offset built into these as well to help eliminate slices. The offset of Legend 5-iron is 4.1mm, compared to the 0.140 offset of the 5-iron of the PTx Tours. The 9-iron still has 2.7mm of offset, while the PTx Tour 9-iron has virtually none at .09mm.

I generally don’t like much offset, but while there is definitely a healthy dose, I didn’t think it was that noticeable looking down at them at address.

I verified the distance of these irons on Trackman and I could immediately tell that they were as long as any irons I’ve played, and it’s not because the lofts are super strong.

My normal 9-iron carry with another players distance iron is around 140 yards, and I consistently carried the Hogan Legend iron between 142 yards and 145 yards with little roll-out and plenty of height.

I never came up short on a well-struck shot, and a couple of times, I went a little long, but nothing crazy like I’ve seen with some other irons that seem to have a hotspot in them.

I was able to get the longer irons up in the air, while the short irons didn’t balloon; they create a nice trajectory. In addition, I found I was able to work these clubs despite the offset. Maybe it was just the way they set up at address for me, but I felt confident that I could move the ball each way, which is saying something since I predominantly play a draw.

All in all, these irons are boring in a good way. If you hit them in the center, they go as far as they are supposed to. If you hit them toward the toe or heel (the latter is my miss), they still tend to go as advertised. 

You can get away with some slightly heavy shots thanks to the wide V-shaped sole that doesn’t dig. That V-sole is designed with a high-bounce leading edge and soft, lower-bounce trailing edge, which means it’s pretty good out of the rough, too.

If you hit them thin or super fat, however, all bets are off.

You can get the Hogan Legend irons in either a 5-PW or 4-PW set. Since I play a 4-hybrid, I didn’t need a 4-iron, but the Legend 5-iron is one of the easiest 5-irons to hit that I’ve ever played. 

Although Ben Hogan clubs are direct-to-consumer, you have plenty of custom options. Ben Hogan lets you choose from various grips, have the lie and lofts adjusted to your needs, and select your shaft preference and length.

If you’ve been fit before and have a pretty good idea of your ideal specs, you can assemble a set of Ben Hogan Legend irons that’s in tune with your swing fairly easily.