Ping’s limited-edition G740 Midnight irons pair a slimmer-looking dark finish with the same high-launching, forgiving design.
Black is slimming. Fashion designers have known this for years, and now Ping is applying the same principle to the largest iron in its lineup.
The new, limited-edition G740 Midnight irons are dressed in a dark, glare-reducing finish with silver and black paint fill. Underneath, they are the same large, ultra-forgiving G740 irons Ping introduced earlier this year, but the darker tone makes the head appear slightly smaller, the topline a little thinner and the overall package less imposing.
That is not an insignificant detail because golfers who need maximum forgiveness do not always want an iron that looks like it came with training wheels. They may benefit from a wide sole, long blade and generous amount of offset, but they still want to look down and see something that appears sleek and purposeful. The G740 Midnight attempts to do that.
The original G740 was designed for golfers who shoot in the 90s and 100s, struggle to launch their iron shots high and don’t find the center of the face with metronomic regularity. That describes a lot of golfers, even if relatively few are eager to admit it.
The G740 is Ping’s super-game-improvement iron, and nobody should confuse it with a compact blade like the Blueprint T or the Blueprint S, which are designed for carving shots like low fades into back-right hole locations. The G740’s job is more practical. It is supposed to help a golfer hit the ball higher, preserve speed on mishits and turn less-than-perfect swings into useful shots.
To accomplish that, Ping made the G740’s sole 22 percent wider than the sole of the G440 and increased the blade length by 3 percent. The topline is thicker, too. Those proportions allow more weight to be positioned around the perimeter of the head, increasing the moment of inertia (MOI) and helping the club resist twisting when contact is made toward the heel or toe.
The wide sole also helps Ping position the center of gravity (CG) lower and farther back. That promotes a higher launch, which can be especially helpful for golfers who tend to strike their irons low on the face. Those shots normally come out low, weak, spiny and disappointing. The G740 is designed to give them a better chance of getting airborne.
Ping gave the sole a dual-camber shape, with contours intended to help the club enter and exit the turf more efficiently. A golfer with a steep swing or an inconsistent low point may still take a sizable divot, but the sole should reduce digging and help the head maintain more speed through impact. It cannot prevent a bad swing, but it may make the consequences less severe.
The G740 also has a shallow face and a shorter hosel, which saved weight that was then repositioned in the back of the cavity. Behind the thin, flexible face is a three-piece PurFlex badge. It is designed to control unwanted vibrations and improve sound and feel without preventing the face from flexing.
The G740 Midnight irons cost $202.50 per club with steel shafts and $217.50 with graphite shafts. The dark finish will be offered for a limited time, and fitting options are slightly restricted. The irons are available within one color code of Ping’s standard lie angle and only with traditional lofts. Power Spec and Retro Spec lofts are not offered.
So while the Midnight finish does not make the G740 smaller, and it does not turn a 22-handicapper into a Tour player, it does make Ping’s largest iron look a little sleeker while retaining all the help built into the original.
David Dusek is a senior writer at Golfweek covering golf equipment.