TaylorMade Just Cut $200 Off the P790 — and That's My Signal to Shop, Not to Rush

TaylorMade Just Cut $200 Off the P790 — and That's My Signal to Shop, Not to Rush

I have a rule for myself, and it has already saved me a lot of money: I don't buy a club the week it comes out. I buy it the week everybody else stops talking about it. So when I saw that TaylorMade had cut $200 off its P Series irons this month, I didn't feel the usual rush. I felt something better. I felt patient.

Here's the deal, as it was reported on October 13: seven-piece sets of the P7CB, P770, and P790 are $200 off — about $28.72 a club. The P790, the one everybody knows, dropped from $1,399.99 to $1,199.99. The P770 got the same cut. The P7MB? Already sold out. That last detail tells you everything about how fast the good stuff moves when a price like this shows up.

Now, $1,199.99 is still a lot of money. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. That's roughly what I spend on golf in a good couple of months, green fees and all. But context matters here. The P790 is, by most accounts, the most recognizable player's-distance iron on the planet. MyGolfSpy called its following a cult following, and honestly, they're not wrong. Walk around any range in Alabama and you'll see a set of P790s in somebody's bag. They've earned that. They're forgiving, they launch high, and they look like a proper iron instead of a shovel.

The P770 is the quieter sibling — a player's iron with a bit more precision and control than the P790, still forgiving, just not quite as much. And the P7CB is the feel player's choice, a tour cavity-back profile with the best feel of the three and a touch less forgiveness. If you know which of those three descriptions sounds like you, you already know more about your iron game than most golfers shopping this sale do.

Why a price cut is a signal, not just a sale

Here's the part I keep coming back to. A $200 cut on irons this popular doesn't happen for no reason. MyGolfSpy said it plainly: a discount like this usually means TaylorMade has something new on the horizon. A new P Series generation is coming, and the current one has to make room.

That doesn't make the current P790 a bad club. It makes it a known club. Every flaw, every strength, every shaft pairing has already been argued about online for years. There are no surprises left, and for a mid-handicapper like me — I play slightly better than bogey on a good day — no surprises is exactly what I want from a $1,200 purchase.

It also does something else, and this is the part that matters most to me: it pushes the used market down. When a new set drops to $1,199.99, the guy selling his year-old P790s for $900 suddenly has to think again. And the guy selling his two-year-old set for $700 has to think even harder. That's where I live. I play used balls, I buy used clubs, and I have never once felt like the previous generation cost me a shot that the new one would have saved.

What I'd actually do with this information

First, I wouldn't buy on the first day of a sale. I'd go hit them. The P790 and P770 feel different enough that a fitting — or even twenty minutes on a launch monitor at a shop — tells you more than any review will. Pay attention to the things that actually change your score: launch, spin, and whether your distance gaps make sense. A 7-iron that goes 10 yards farther means nothing if it leaves you with a 40-yard hole between your pitching wedge and your gap wedge.

Second, I'd check my current set honestly before I spent a dollar. My irons are not the reason I shot 98 at Grand National Links on Saturday. My wedge play from 90 yards and my habit of compounding one bad hole into three are the reasons. A new set of P790s would not have fixed either of those. If your irons are genuinely worn out, or the shafts are wrong for your swing speed, that's a real reason to upgrade. If they're fine and you're just bored, that's a reason to go play more golf instead.

Third, I'd watch the used listings for the next few weeks, not just the retail sale. The pattern with a launch cycle like this is pretty reliable: retail cuts first, then trade-ins flood in as people upgrade, then used prices soften. If you're patient — and this sale gives you a reason to be — the best deal on a set of P790s might not be the $1,199.99 set at all. It might be the barely-used set somebody trades in next month for $800 or less, with the grips still fresh.

The one thing I wouldn't do

I wouldn't stretch my budget to buy the P7CB just because it's on sale. Feel is wonderful, but forgiveness pays my bills on the scorecard. A tour cavity-back is a beautiful thing in the hands of a player who strikes it pure. I don't strike it pure often enough for that to be my everyday iron, and I'd rather be honest about that than own a gorgeous set that punishes me every Saturday.

That's the whole lesson of this sale, really. A $200 discount doesn't change what kind of golfer you are. It just changes what that golfer has to pay. The P790 is still the forgiving player's-distance iron it always was. The P770 is still the precision option. The P7CB is still the feel option. The only thing that changed is the price tag — and, if you play it right, the used price tag a few weeks from now.

So here's my plan: I'm going to hit the P770 and P790 side by side the next time I'm near a shop with a launch monitor, I'm going to check the used listings the way I check the weather before a round, and I'm not going to buy anything until one of them clearly beats what I already have. If it does, great — I'll have bought a proven iron at a discount. If it doesn't, I'll have saved $1,200, which buys a lot of rounds in Alabama in November.

Either way, I win. And that's the best kind of golf deal there is.

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