Titleist’s new CNCPT CP-01 and CP-02 irons: 'Leashes off' and a huge price tag

Titleist’s new high-end CNCPT CP-01 and CNCPT CP-02 irons were born without limits. When building the CNCPT irons, Titleist’s Research and Development team was allowed to use any materials and processes, with no regards for a budget.

“CNCPT is the result of our R&D team having the leashes taken off,” Kelley Moser Jr., Titleist’s Brand Manager of CNCPT Clubs told PGATOUR.COM. “ ‘Hey, you guys go find whatever you can find that’s really cool -- new materials, new processes, whatever it takes -- to give our customers a product worth the price tag that they’ll be paying for.’ ”

In recent years, it seems the floodgates have opened for high-priced irons on the domestic retail market. It’s no longer uncommon for a single iron to sell for more than $400. Titleist, however, says some of its competitors had a product that didn’t match the price points.

“We sat back and watched some of what our competitors have done with the price point, and the product themselves [were] not what we thought was worth that price point,” Moser said. “But they sold a lot of it. So we said ‘Alright, if we could go ahead and build anything we wanted, what would we do?’”

Titleist’s new CNCPT irons are the result of that no-holds-barred process.

Most notably, the hollow bodied irons use a face insert – Titleist is calling it a “Super Metal L-Face insert” -- that’s made from a mysterious, high-strength material that’s “never been used before in golf,” according to Moser.

“It’s the highest strength material that we’ve ever tested,” Moser said. “It allows us to make the thinnest unsupported face in golf. I can’t say what the name of the material is at this point; we don’t have exclusive rights to it. It’s very expensive, very rare, and you have to buy a lot of it at one point in time so it’s an expensive endeavor, but it’s worth it when you watch the ball flight.”

The thin inserts, unlike most face inserts throughout the industry, have uniform thickness from heel-to-toe and top-to-bottom, rather than a variable thickness. As Moser explains, this helps to reduce hot spots, or in other words, areas of the face that produce higher ball speeds than others.

In general, having a very thin, high-strength face helps to raise ball speeds, but it also reduces unwanted weight from the face area to be utilized in other, more effective areas. Titleist used this discretionary weight to add Tungsten – a high-density material -- to the clubs’ perimeters. In fact, Titleist reports that Tungsten makes up “nearly 50 percent” of the total head weights in the lower lofted irons. This design means more forgiveness for golfers because the perimeter-weighted head leads to higher MOI (moment of inertia, a measure of energy transfer), and with the positioning of Tungsten low-and-rearward, the irons are designed for higher launch, as well.

The CNCPT irons come in two different head models: the CP-01 and the CP-02. The CP-02 head shape is for players who enjoy the look and sound of a traditional blade, but with higher performance than the traditionally unforgiving blade constructions.

“This would be a product for guys who maybe used to play blades – we’ve all played blades at one point or another,” Moser explains. “But since the advent of cavity back, high-MOI, all the Tungsten you use now, you sacrifice a lot by using traditional blade. Most people know, ‘I want to use a blade but I know I shouldn’t.’ So they’ve graduated and moved onto maybe AP2 or AP3 or something along those lines. But they still would really like to have a blade in their bag. So we can do that. With all the Tungsten and how dense the tungsten is, we can cram a lot of weight in the perimeter of this golf club, and still use that super thin metal face to get the speed that they want. So what you have here is an MB look, with AP2 workability, but an AP3 speed. So it’s a homerun for us. We’ve had a lot of fun showing consumers this product because it’s so vastly different from anything we’ve ever made in the past.”

The CP-01, on the other hand, is more of a performance-first design with a slightly larger profile, more offset and a thicker topline; it’s made for maximum performance.

“The performance of [the CP-01] is unparalleled,” Moser said. “There’s nothing in the market that’s going to come off the face faster with the ball flight characteristics that you want to see, than this.”

Both of the head models are made with hollow-bodied constructions. There have been other high-end irons on the market from various companies that use material between the face and the body for durability, or sound/feel benefits, but Titleist decided to keep the irons hollow.

“When you put something to support a thin face, you’re essentially taking away the benefit of a thin face,” Moser said. “So we wanted to make sure as thin as we can go, we wanted to keep it unsupported from the inside. That was a big component for us.”

As for the price tag, Titleist will sell the CNCPT CP-01 and CP-02 irons for $500 per head.

Moser explains the price point:

“We’re going to sell them for $500 per club, which, in our opinion there’s a market there at that price point. But we didn’t want it to be a marketing story. We wanted it to be about product and performance first. So you’re not going to hear us talking about it a lot. We’re not going to be on TV. We’re not going to be in your face marketing in a traditional sense. This is going to be more word-of-mouth, underground. We’re going to find the right people first. We’re going to fit them, we’re going to get them excited about the equipment, and we’re going to let them tell their friends and we’re going to let it grow organically that way, because we want all the money to go into the product and the research to develop products like this, rather than talking about the products."

Titleist has a special concierge to setup fitting for the CNCPT irons.