Though these forged cavity backs have the aesthetic cool of a tour-players’ club, they’re forgiving enough for even mid-handicaps

Miura is not a name widely known in America, but in Asia the name is uttered in hushed, reverential tones, so good is the company’s hand-precision forging process developed by founder and visionary Katsuhiro Miura. More than a few top tour pros have had Miura make their blades and stamp their sponsors' logos on them.

Miura doesn’t pay pros to play with his clubs, but there’s a few on tour who do anyway, like K.J. Choi, who won the Players Championship last May with the CB-501—Miura’s best iron to date, which is really saying something. Mr. Miura’s goal was to combine the best attributes of his all-time favorite clubs. Starting with an attractive satin finish and thin top line, the 501 features a cavity-back like the CB-202 but with a little more offset to improve playability. While the muscle-backed sweet spot comes from the CB-100, the sole grind is completely new, one that appeals to a wide range of players because of its favorable turf interaction. The result is a ball flight that has a more boring, blade-like trajectory when struck on the center of the face, and a higher, more correcting flight when struck more toward the toe or the heel.

Like Levi’s famous jeans of the same name, these 501s should stand the test of time, too.

$1,800 for set of eight, miuragolf.com