The Green Fee As I say everytime I do one of these first look stories I love this time of year. I love opening my email and web browser to see new equipment. Then I love checking it out and telling you all about it! I will be honest and tell you I am slightly biased in todays release because I play a previous model and love them! Today we will talk about the new ZX series from Srixon!
Hack into the Mainframe!
The past few years we have been seeing A.I. creep into club design more and more. It was a HUGE part of the marketing for the Callaway Mavrik and this year Srixon is no different.
Srixon harnessed the power of AI to create what they are calling the Mainframe. What is Mainframe? The Mainframe is a frame (get it?) that was created to increase ball speeds around the face. Its a series of channels, grooves and cavities behind the face.
Srixon hasnt allowed AI to go crazy though. It still needed some guidance from the engineers. If it was allowed to go crazy it may not look very good or sound great. What Srixon did instead was give it a club head and tell it to make ball speeds faster. After thousands of simulations this is the design it came up with.
New Grooves
Srixon has also realized different clubs have different needs. A longer iron iron will launch lower because of the loft so it may need some more spin to help hold a green. It also needs to be maximised for distance. The short irons on the other hand need to land soft and hold the green. To combat these 2 massively different needs Srixon has made the long irons with grooves that are wider but a little more shallow while the shorter irons have deeper and closer set grooves to help get through all the debris you could see on an approach shot. If this sounds familiar its because we saw this same idea in the Clevland Zip Core wedges. That makes sense Srixon would be using this considering they own Cleveland and probably saw some big success with it!
ZX7 Vs ZX5
The ZX5 vs the Zx7 is a very interesting contest. The ZX5 is the obvious technology leader considering it has the Mainframe, new grooves, and the redefined sole. It will be the larger of the two though. If ball speed and forgiveness arent the things you necessarily need the ZX7 could be the one for you. While the ZX7 may not have the mainframe it does have an enhanced cavity design that puts a large amount of mass behind the sweet spot.
You could also create a combo set. As someone who currently plays a combo set of Srixons I can HIGHLY recommend it. They blend well in terms of looks. Srixon is making this easy too. They are offering a ZX5 and ZX7 set as well as a ZX Utility ZX7 set and finally a ZX Utility and ZX5 set.
Final Thoughts
While I dont want to get too excited until I hit them I am very excited for this set. Srixon does a great job making beautiful clubs that perform so I dont know why this would be any different.
[…] few weeks ago Srixon announced the stunningly beautiful ZX line up of irons. We also saw these out on tour a couple of months ago. I wrote about them here. While those were […]
[…] feel. While that is certainly part of the story of the ZX4 its not all of it. You may remember from my story on the rest of the ZX line up the ZX5 had something called “Mainframe”. To sum it up […]