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Z-TX Fairway more forgiving than expected...

The new Srixon Z-TX Fairway Wood showed up along with the driver and irons for me to test last week and I must say I was pleasantly surprised with the Z-TX fairway as it provided more forgiveness than what I had expected from an athlete model.  Srixon has gone with a shallower head, 2.0mm shallower than the previous Z-Steel II and a shorter neck for more control and less twisting.

High Maraging Face!

What is very interesting is that while typically Stainless steel is the choice material for fairway woods aimed at better or athlete players thanks to its thicker more solid feel, the Z-TX fairway features thin and explosive high maraging steel (Custom 455). The Z-Steel featured a face with thickness ranging from 2.4mm to 2.7mm while the Z-TX maraging faced is a very thin 1.8mm. Maraging in fariway woods has similar characteristics to titanium, a crisper sound and more pop off the face like the very popular PRGR GN502.

Srixon acknowledges that design choices in the Z-TX were in fact to make it more explosive and forgiving at the same time. The lower CG matched with the shallower face really help launch the ball in the air and while I usually struggle with 3 woods 15* or less in loft (I do not play one in my bag as I play a 17* FW), I was able to hit the Z-TX 15* very well off the tee and fairway alike.

Traditional shape and small size.

While the face is shallower than the Z-Steel II it is still mid height compared to many shallow average golfer models on the market today. It has a very nice shape at address and as a mid sized wood it really borders on compact size with a small 156cc 3 wood and 136cc 5 wood.

As is with the driver, the Z-TX is available with two shaft choices. A T-55 (55g) and T-65 (65g) which are not bad a shaft for those not wanting to spend more on an upgrade. The SV3020J shafts feature a dual kick point, high and low which help produce a lot of feel as the shaft unloads.  Faster swingers who desire more weight should go for the T-65 while more average golfers would be better off with the T-55. If you are a low capper with a fast swing you can also opt for shafts like the Kai'li instead.

Thumbs up on a well rounded fairway wood.

I wish I had more time to spend with the club, but due to time limitations I only had one test session with it. To briefly sum it up, in my opinion:

1. More forgiving than expected - a mid capper should have no problems playing this despite it's smaller size
2. Great looking at address with a mid to compact pear shape
3. Very crisp pop off the face due to the thin high maraging material used
4. Easy to get in the air due to a mid toshallow face height and low center of gravity, both off the ground and tee.
5. Acceptable stock shaft for the average golfer

You can check out the Z-TX listing here in the pro shop!

Here are more pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Tario (aka gocchin) joined Tourspecgolf back in 2008 after spending over a decade in technology and business operation roles at a major Canadian financial institution. Before joining TSG and following his dream of moving to Japan, Tario and Chris (aka Tourspecgolfer) hit it off though their similar passions for Japanese culture. Chris hired Tario to manage TSG online operations, sales and marketing. While those are Tario's primary responsibilities, he has also taken up the role of blogger and custom club tester and fitter along the way. Tario's hobbies include golf (of course), gadgets and technology, cars, Japanese pop culture and idols, photography, sweets and walking the dog.

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Spoon to the rescue...

Low lofted fairway woods don't have to be hard to hit. In Japan, most golfers don't call these fairway woods by their number ie "3 wood", they say "spoon".  Hence the name EGG Spoon from PRGR. These so called spoons rival your driver in distance and are made to be silly easy to hit off the fairway or the tee. I would have to say that the EGG Spoon is my number one performing club as it saves me with a long second shot that nearly equals my driver in distance. Spoon's aren't just for average golfers though but for anyone who wants a mini driver off the grass or rough including pros like Shingo Katayama and Hideto Tanihara who both carry the EGG Spoon in their bags. Soon PRGR won't be the only one offering a hot Spoon to Japanese consumers.

FricOff... no its not a swear word.

Yamaha has decided to enter the Spoon picture and add the new Inpres D Power Spoon to their standard Inpres fairway wood lineup. The new 2010 Spoon shares some features of the Inpres D Fairway wood like the Fric Off  sole I spoke about earlier this year in the blog, a slight hump in the leading edge of the club that is the only point to make contact with the ground at impact thus reducing friction that slows down your swing speed.

43.5" long and 208cc head?!?!

The Power Spoon is made of precision 6-4 Ti all around. This thin and lightweight Ti allows for the sole to have an incredible 72g of tungsten weighting creating optimal launch and spin. The weights are purposely not placed far back in the head to keep a balanced CG and launch with lower spin. Note the 43.5" length and 208cc head size. This is no compact fairway wood nor does it pretend to be. This clubs is made to produce confidence and has one purpose in mind, DISTANCE and it is designed to perform. At address it looks nearly like a 350cc driver as the head is long from face to back and features a rather shallow face.

The Spoon is made in Japan and is only available in one loft 15* and has a slightly closed 0.5* face angle. It features the new multi kickpoint Orbit shaft that really squares the face to the ball at impact. This is a mid kicking shaft and also rather lightweight which makes the entire club feel like a little driver at just under 310g.  Interestingly the lie is rather flat which may appeal to some better golfers who are always looking for flatter lie FW's. The Power Spoon has a lie of 57.5* which is even flatter than the pro model Inpres V FW.

The new Power Spoon will launch literally on December 5th and TSG should have the pre orders for this club soon. We hope to also get our demos in for some testing and real live pics!

Tario (aka gocchin) joined Tourspecgolf back in 2008 after spending over a decade in technology and business operation roles at a major Canadian financial institution. Before joining TSG and following his dream of moving to Japan, Tario and Chris (aka Tourspecgolfer) hit it off though their similar passions for Japanese culture. Chris hired Tario to manage TSG online operations, sales and marketing. While those are Tario's primary responsibilities, he has also taken up the role of blogger and custom club tester and fitter along the way. Tario's hobbies include golf (of course), gadgets and technology, cars, Japanese pop culture and idols, photography, sweets and walking the dog.

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Living in Japan, I follow the Japanese tour even closer than I do the PGA tour. All the websites here and magazines cover pro players and the gear they use extensively. One thing I noticed at the beginning of the season was the number of pro players on the JPGA carrying the PRGR Egg Spoon PX-03.  Top players including Hideto Tanihara and Shingo Katayama use the Spoon as their choice 3 wood.  This peaked my curiousity and being a big fan of PRGR or Pro Gear as it is known here in Japan (Pro Gear is the golf wing of Yokohama Rubber Industries), I decided to pick up a Spoon for my bag around 2 months ago.

So after two months of play, I'm ready to report back on this interesting fairway wood.  The EGG Spoon was originally released last year with 13, 15 and 17* lofts. It became so popular in Japan that this year, PRGR expanded the line to include the EGG Fairway Woods which included 5, 7 and 9 woods. Both Tanihara and Katayama use the PX-03 as a 15* 3 wood but many Japanese amateurs who struggle with the driver have picked up the 13* strong 3 wood to even replace their driver off the tee. I typically play a 4 and 7 wood in the bag along with a higher lofted driver so I grabbed the Spoon with a 17* loft.

The EGG Spoon PX-03 is a mid sized fairway wood with all lofts being 165cc in size. The head however looks bigger because of its shape and design. It has a similar concept to the Cleveland HiBore. While the crown and back isn not exactly "scooped out" ala HiBore, the head is tapered towards the back stretching the head from front to back and pushing CG deeper in the head.  It does have an aligbment mark on the top, a big red EGG like dot, that I am not a fan of but I quickly got used to and forgot was there.  The face is on the shallow side, while not ultra shallow like many woods today, I would call it mid shallow which makes it easy to hit the sweet spot which is higher on the face.

Design aside, what really sets the Spoon PX-03 apart from other fairway woods is the materials it uses. The Spoon has a Ti-6AL-4V Titanium Crown and Face laser welded to a SUS630 Stainless Steel sole plate.  With the Crown and Face being light weight Titanium, this allows PRGR to use a heavier SUS630 Sole to again bring CG deep in the club. Also while its common to see Ti faces in fairway woods these days, they are typically paired with SUS630 bodies meaning both the sole and crown are SUS630.

What the combination Ti Crown and Face does is create driver like performance. I must admit, when  I first got the EGG Spoon the sound and feel took getting used to. It does not sound or feel like the typical fairway wood. Impact is more of a solid "THWOCK" unlike some woods today that emanate a higher pitched metallic "TINK". I realized after a while that the Spoon sounded and felt like older sub 400cc drivers. In other words a very solid confident feel which many players crave for.

Performance wise, this is a mini driver. Distance for fairway wood is above average. Even with the deep CG, trajectory is piercing, starting low and slowly climbing, peaking then still coming down with roll.  The low spin Spoon is made to go far.  It's performance makes it the go to club for reaching par 5's in 2 shots. The square angled face produces very straight shots (fade and draw at command) and I found that I could almost equal my driver distance on several occasions!

One thing some people may not like and some may love, is the overall weight of this club. The Spoon is light, which again gives the impression that it was meant to be a mini driver.  The heaviest 13* barely breaks 310g on the scale which is the equivalent of some drivers today. This light weight really contributes to distance. Lately I have been experimenting with light weight clubs and found that they do in fact allow average golfers with very average swing speeds like myself to swing faster and hit longer. I'll be honest here that sometimes on a hot summer day, by the 15th hole, my clubs feel heavy and I wish they were lighter.  The EGG does the trick and paired with the stock PRGR EGG graphite, the Spoon is a very controllable distance performer.

As for the stock shaft, it is available with M-35 (80mph), M-37, M-40 and  M-43 which in PRGR's ratings mean 43m/s or just under 100mph for the stiffest stock shaft. PRGR originally released the club with only these stock shafts available but found that better and faster swinging players were yearning to play this club so the EGG Spoon is now available with all the top shafts directly from PRGR.

I rely on my PRGR 7 wood for accuracy and I want a stronger wood for distance. The Spoon fits that bill perfectly and I have grown to really like the feel and sound.  I average around 230y with my driver and last week I hit a shot from the fairway with my Spoon that traveled nearly 230y as well. Needless to say I was very happy and this club will stay in the bag for quite a long time coming. Looking for a mini rocket launcher behind your driver? The PRGR EGG Spoon PX-03 is ready for take off!

Tario (aka gocchin) joined Tourspecgolf back in 2008 after spending over a decade in technology and business operation roles at a major Canadian financial institution. Before joining TSG and following his dream of moving to Japan, Tario and Chris (aka Tourspecgolfer) hit it off though their similar passions for Japanese culture. Chris hired Tario to manage TSG online operations, sales and marketing. While those are Tario's primary responsibilities, he has also taken up the role of blogger and custom club tester and fitter along the way. Tario's hobbies include golf (of course), gadgets and technology, cars, Japanese pop culture and idols, photography, sweets and walking the dog.

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If you liked the previous videos featuring the Yamaha drivers for 2009, you'll love this one featuring the 2009 Inpres X fariway woods and utility. Both these clubs feature Yamaha's new Fric Off Sole, a concave sole and bounce on the leading edge. The problem with many players and fairway woods is that they make too much contact with the ground before impact and this friction slows the clubhead and decreases distance and creates a far less desirable impact.

Fric Off minimizes the amount of the club that makes contact with the ground by only allowing the leading edge of the club to glance off the ground right before impact. This creates far better contact and increases club head speed through the impact zone. Because of the Fric Off design and the fact that Yamaha clubs have always been know to be great feeling and cutting edge design clubs, the Yamaha Inpres X line of fariway woods has been the number one selling FW for the average golfer in Japan for 2009. Check out Yamaha's woods and utility in the pro shop and this awesome 5 min and 34 sec video featuring the clubs and Fric Off.

Tario (aka gocchin) joined Tourspecgolf back in 2008 after spending over a decade in technology and business operation roles at a major Canadian financial institution. Before joining TSG and following his dream of moving to Japan, Tario and Chris (aka Tourspecgolfer) hit it off though their similar passions for Japanese culture. Chris hired Tario to manage TSG online operations, sales and marketing. While those are Tario's primary responsibilities, he has also taken up the role of blogger and custom club tester and fitter along the way. Tario's hobbies include golf (of course), gadgets and technology, cars, Japanese pop culture and idols, photography, sweets and walking the dog.