The
face, the
front of a
golf club is called the
clubface. It typically has
grooves on it, and this is commonly believed to impart additional
backspin onto the golf
ball when struck by the clubface. Recent studies with
smooth clubfaces seem to indicate that the grooves do not significantly add to the backspin of the ball, contradicting this notion. My bet is that grooves don't help impart backspin on the full swing, but probably impart much of the spin on a greenside
pitch.
Modern-day clubfaces are designed with either workability or playability in mind. If you're a newbie to golf, you probably want to buy irons with
game improvement features in mind. So-called
cavity-back irons seem to impart a larger
sweetspot to the clubface. They do this at the
expense of not feeling a poor shot, however, and reduce the workability (ability to create different shot types with the same club) of the club.
Blade irons are favored by better players. They won't improve a poorly struck shot, but will
feedback to the good player the
quality of the shot, and allow the better player to create shots at will.