Srixon ZXiR Irons: Game-Improvement irons with Srixon FEEL

Srixon ZXiR irons are the first truly game-improvement clubs from the Japanese golf equipment maker that is known for precision, feel-oriented clubs that are loved by major winners like Hideki Matsuyama, Keegan Bradley, Brooks Koepka and J.J. Spaun. Discover what Srixon did with the ZXiR irons to help them provide more distance, more height and forgiveness while still offering the high level of feel that Srixon irons are known for.

My Golfweek.com Article – https://golfweek.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/equipment/2025/11/19/srixon-zxir-irons-higher-launch-more-forgiveness/87350235007/
00:00 Introduction
00:30 ZXiR – Srixon’s first game-improvement
01:35 i-Alloy
02:26 MainFrame
03:25 Laser milling and variable grooves
04:27 V.T. Sole
05:29 ZXiR HL
06:45 Hitting ZXiR – Feel, Height
12:28 Comments or Questions?

Hideki Matsyama, Keegan Bradley, Brooks Kepka, JJ Spawn. These are all elite golfers who use Stricks on irons because they love the feel of them. They love the turf interaction and they love the control that those golf clubs give them. But if you put those stricks on ZXI7 and ZXI5 irons into the hands of a golfer who shoots in the ‘ 90s or the 100s, that’s a recipe for disaster because those are better player irons designed to optimize control and feel. So, for several years, there really has been a hole in the Stricksson iron lineup until now. Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. So, this is the Stricksson ZXIR iron. There’s also a Stricksson ZXIR HL iron. In this video, I’m going to explain to you everything you need to know about this club, which is the first true game improvement club from the Japanese maker in many, many years. Now, before we even get into it, there are a couple of questions that might immediately pop into your head when it comes to game improvement products. And Stricks Golf. Stricks, as some of you may know, is a part of Dunlop Sports. And Dunlop also includes Cleveland Golf as well as Zexio. This club, however, is not something that was made by the folks either at Cleveland or at Zexio and then simply brought over to the Stricks lineup. It was 100% built from scratch to fit in with the Rex of the Stricks iron lineup by Stricks designers in Japan. And those people worked really hard to make sure that a lot of the playing qualities and characteristics that better players really love in their strix irons found their way into the strixon ZXI are. However, obviously they cooked into it a lot more playability, a lot more distance, and a lot more of what players who traditionally shoot in the ‘9s and 100s are looking from in an iron set. Okay, so let’s cover off some of the basics first. These clubs are cast and they’re cast from a very interesting material that Stricks is referring to as the eye alloy. Now I alloy is a derivative of the Cleveland material Z alloy that was used in the most recent wedges. That material however for the irons gets a heat treatment that firms it up and hardens it up a little bit so it’s a little bit better for applications in iron. Now according to Strixon the big reason or the appeal to its designers for going with eye alloy is that it’s going to give it the feel of a forged iron. It’s going to feel at the moment of impact with the uh with the ZXIR like you’re getting the impact you would receive either with the ZXI7 or the ZXI5. And that’s something that they really wanted. They didn’t want a game improvement club to feel like you’re hitting something with a 2×4. They wanted it to feel like a forged iron and this material allowed them to do that. So designed into the face of the irons a couple of different technologies, some of which you can see and some of which you cannot see to help improve performance. The first one is going to be mainframe. Now, on the interfacing side of the hitting area, there’s a channel that goes around the perimeter, and that helps to broaden out the ideal hitting area, the sweet spot. So, you get better performance, not just on well struck shots, but for players again who were battling inconsistency, they want ball speed protection on mits. So, if they hit it a little bit more towards the heel or out towards the toe, the mainframe technology is designed to normalize ball speed and give you a little bit better performance. So, your your mis hits aren’t going to be punished nearly as much. And according to Stricks, it’s going to work especially well on low struck shots, which is actually really important because while many players hit all over the face, when you miss a shot low on the face with your irons, it’s really challenging to get the ball up in the air, especially for players again that this club is going to be targeting golfers who shoot in the 90s and hundreds. And so getting a little bit better performance out of low struck or thin struck shots is going to be really helpful for them. Now, something else that’s really unique about the ZXIR irons that you can see with the naked eye, but you would never really be able to detect is the fact that the grooves in different irons are different. The grooves in the long irons are just a touch wider to promote again a little bit higher launch, which is something that you want out of a four, five, or 6 iron. But the grooves when you get into the 7iron, the 8 iron, the nine iron, the pitching wedge, they get a little bit more narrow. So, you get more grooves numerically onto the golf ball to create a little bit more spin and a little more bite on your approach shots. Again, for players who are in the market for a game improvement club, this isn’t usually the type of a detail that you’re going to find. And in between those grooves, there are laser etchings in there to help get a little bit better performance and a little more consistency in damp conditions as opposed to dry conditions. Typically, in damp conditions, the ball is going to make contact with the grooves, probably slide up the face a little bit. You’re going to get the high shot you’re looking for, but it’s going to be a knuckle ball, and it’s going to probably come up short. That laser edging provides just a little bit more friction or resistance to try and get more consistency when you’re comparing shots hit in dry conditions with wet conditions. And then there is the really unique sole on the bottom of these clubs. Now, this is going to be very familiar to people who have seen the ZXI7 and ZXi5s. This is Strixon’s VT sole. You notice that there is a seam that’s running right down the middle of that sole. And what it does is to helps to add a little bit of bounce and it pushes the bounce position a little bit more forward towards the leading edge. For golfers who get a little bit steep or get kind of choppy with their irons, um, who really come down on the ball, maybe not in the best way, um, this is going to be a godsend. This is something that for more accomplished players, it helps them get in and out of the turf quickly with a relatively thin sold iron like you’re going to see in the ZXI7, for instance. But with this iron, it’s going to really help players to avoid digging into the turf. So even though this sole is obviously wider than the sole that you’re going to see in the better player irons and the pro and the irons that are designed for pros, you get the benefit not only of the wider sole, but you also get the benefit of that seam and the VT sole design. Now, as I said at the beginning, there is the standard ZXIR iron and there’s also an HL version. What’s interesting is the HL version, which stands for high launch, has weaker lofts than the standard issue ZXIR iron. And that is something that is reflective of a trend that we’re starting to see from many manufacturers, which I think is actually a really good thing. You see, for golfers who struggle to generate a lot of club head speed and therefore generate uh a lot of height on their irons, they need help hitting the ball higher up in the air. For a long time, the thinking was, well, if we get the center of gravity location so far down and back, the CG location is going to help to give those types of players the launch they want with a lot more distance. And it sounds like a really good idea. But in practice, what many manufacturers are starting to realize and what they’re starting to adopt into their irons is that if you simply add more loft to these irons, instead of really making them ultra strong when you’re getting into the max game improvement category, that that’s just an easier way for players who struggle to generate club head speed to get the height that they’re looking for. They’re actually going to be able to get more distance because they’re going to get more hang time, more carry distance for that type of player generally gives them more overall distance. So, in the ZXIRHL, the loss are all through the bag going to be about 4° weaker than they are in the standard ZXIR. So, Stricks made a set of the ZXIR irons available to me. And unfortunately, the weather conditions around my area here in New England have taken a turn for the worst. So, I went indoors to my buddy Chris Cody’s golf shop in Portland, Connecticut, hit a series of shots with this iron using a launch monitor, and this is what I found. Boy, that just feels dynamite. That’s cut thin. But again, 162. What’s really impressive to me is these numbers right here. That wasn’t a great strike. So 155.2, 2, but 159 62 63 62. Not a great strike at 155. Awesome. Really good. That’s really good. That ball certainly got up there. 115 ft for an apex is plenty high. A little bit lower spinning, but I think a lot of times when you get into game improvement clubs, they are going to be less spinny than better player clubs. That is to be expected for golfers who are going to be looking to shape shots. They want spin. So, they’re going to need higher spinning clubs to be able to work draws and fades, high, low, etc. The golfers that the ZXIR irons are really designed for are not looking to work the ball. They want to hit the ball high up in the air. They want to hit it far. They want something that’s going to go straight. These kind of numbers are exactly what they’re looking for. they’re not really worried too much about spin rates matching, you know, the the numbers. So, for example, a 7 iron in the hands of a better player might produce around 7,000 RPM of spin. 6 iron around 6,000. This 8 iron going to 5500 is a touch low, a little bit lower than the the irons that I typically play. But if you’re somebody who is really struggling to get the ball up in the air, if you’re somebody who struggles with distance, this is exactly the kind of iron that you want. something that’s going to get the ball up in the air easily, that’s going to get it out there with a lot of distance, and it’s going to give you some level of consistency with performance. Okay. Now, all right. So, we’re going to switch it up and we’ll hit a couple of six irons here. Again, I’m anticipating low spin, but now after uh hitting those eights, I’m anticipating that uh this is going to get out there a little bit. It just feels so solid. I mean, that’s ridiculous. 184.9. Really low spin. 4386. But the ball gets up in the air. 111 ft. So that ball is definitely going out there. 179 carry, 184.9 with a 6iron. It’s just the ball feels like it’s sitting on the face. 197. The ball feels like it’s sitting on this face forever. I mean, you literally feel the iron bending back and then springing itself forward. You know, there’s a lot of internal technologies that that’s that are inside here that really helps to get a lot more face flex around the entire hitting area around a bigger part of the face. Okay. So, coming inside, what did I learn about the ZXI Rons from Stricks? I think that for a person who’s going to be in the market for a game improvement club, max game improvement club, the type of golfer who really is looking for a lot more distance, a lot of forgiveness, they want height in their shots, um, this iron is definitely going to deliver that. It feels like a stricks iron. It feels like to me when you hit a ZXI uh five or the seven irons. Well, that that feeling that really just sort of resonates in your palm. All golfers get that feeling when they strike the ball just right. You’re going to get that with this iron. Now, it’s a little bit difficult for me to evaluate the turf interaction. Um the VT sole, the way that it’s actually going to sort of cut through the turf. I’m obviously indoors. The weather now in New England is lousy. So, it’s going to be difficult for me to judge exactly how effective this sole is going to be. But, I have to believe that looking at the width of this sole along with that seam here, which pushes a little bit of the bounce forward. This type of sole for a person who gets a little bit steep is going to definitely be beneficial. The players who have really repeatable, very high quality swings love this type of sole, thinner in the five and the seven, for example, than than it’s going to obviously be in in the ZXIR. They love this sole. think it will work also well for higher handicapped players, less accomplished golfers. The critical thing though is that this iron is definitely built for and is designed to provide the type of numbers and the type of shots that higher handicap golfers are really looking for. They’re not looking to to hit lots of curvy draws and fades. They’re just looking to get the ball out there. They want something that’s easy to hit. ZXIR delivers that. They want something that’s going to go high. It delivers that. If you’re in the market for a g uh an iron that’s the equivalent of a sort of a point andoot camera, not a big DSLR that’s going to give you tons of different features that you’re not going to use, but you just want something that’s going to make the game of golf a little bit easier and a little bit more fun for you to play to hopefully get your scores maybe from the hundreds into the to mid and low 90s. something that’s going to give you a sense of feel, a little bit more sense of touch, a little bit more confidence because you’re going to be hitting better shots more consistently, then I think this is the type of iron, the Strixon ZXIR, you’re definitely going to want to consider. Okay, so I think that’s probably just about everything you’re going to need to know about the Strixon ZXIR irons. But if you do have a comment you would like to give me, if you have some feedback, please feel free to drop in the comment area below. I do try and monitor my comment areas as best I can. I do try and answer questions from people. If you have any questions at all about uh the ZXIR iron from Stricks, Stricks irons or irons in general, I want to be a good resource for you to make sure that we get the best equipment that matches your game into your bag. Also, if you did get some good information out of this video, if you did find it to be informative and helpful, it’d be really helpful to me if you would smash that like button as well as subscribe to my channel. It helps me out tremendously. Thanks a lot, and I look forward to seeing you again really soon.