Ping i240 irons blend tour-inspired shaping with enhanced forgiveness and feel

Gear: Ping i240 irons

Price: $217 with Nippon N.S. Pro Modus3 Tour 115 shafts

Specs: Cast 431 stainless steel body, tour-preferred groove design, activated elastomer insert, cavity-back construction.

Available: Pre-sale begins July 15, full retail launch July 29

Who it’s for: Golfers who want a compact, tour-inspired iron with added forgiveness and improved feel.

What you should know: Designed to bridge the gap between Blueprint S and the i530, the i240 offers refined sound and feel, trajectory control, and more forgiveness in the long and mid-irons.

The deep dive: At first glance, the new Ping i240 irons might look like a simple replacement for the i230, but there’s more going on here. While the i240 maintains the same compact, tour-inspired footprint that helped the i230 find success on both the PGA and LPGA Tours, Ping’s engineers have subtly made it more playable while retaining its better-player iron qualities.

Cast from 431 stainless steel, the i240 delivers about 2.5 percent more moment of inertia (MOI) than the i230, thanks largely to something most golfers rarely focus on — the back of the club.

Turn the Ping i240 around and you’ll see a small slot that runs from the heel to the toe on the back of the head, filled with a silver-toned material. That’s an injection-molded piece of elastomer that soaks up vibrations and enhances sound and feel. It also weighs less than the steel that would otherwise be in that location.

Above the elastomer is a multi-material back badge that is 8.5 grams lighter than the badge on the i230.

Combine all that with tip and toe weights that Ping adds to many of its irons, and without increasing the blade length, the company’s designers were able to remove mass from the middle of the head and redistribute it down and to the edges of this perimeter-weighted design. That boosts the MOI and makes the i240 more stable on off-center strikes.

Lowering the center of gravity (CG) helps the i240 achieve a higher launch angle than the i230, allowing accomplished golfers to obtain a more vertical angle of descent and enhanced stopping power on approach shots.

Ping has also revised the grooves in the i240, moving away from the Micromax grooves used in the i230. That groove system added more grooves to enhance spin, especially from the rough — a feature that sounds like something elite players would want. However, some tour players found it was too effective, making it harder to judge how balls in a “flyer lie” might behave. In response, Ping shifted the i240 to a wider-spaced, “tour-preferred” groove configuration, aiming to deliver more predictable spin characteristics for players who mostly hit from the fairway but still want enough bite when shots are played from thicker, taller grass.

Unlike Ping’s game-improvement offerings, the i240 will be available in 3-iron through pitching wedge and utility wedge, giving fitters and players flexibility in how they configure their bags.

Ping is also making the i240 available in a standard loft configuration, along with a Power Spec that makes long irons 1 to 1.5 degrees stronger, and a Retro Spec that makes the lofts 2 degrees weaker than standard. Again, it’s all about giving players and fitters options — whether they’re building a full set or blending long and scoring irons from different models.

Ultimately, the i240 is a measured evolution. It doesn’t aim to reinvent the players' cavity-back category, but it does sharpen and expand what was already a very successful formula for Ping. For accomplished golfers who want modern forgiveness and trajectory control in a compact, confidence-inspiring shape, it’s a compelling option in a space that continues to attract some of the game’s most discerning players.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Ping i240 irons: Tour-inspired shape with more forgiveness and control