XXIO 13 Irons: Lighten Up, Francis

If the new XXIO 13 irons were an overly dramatic love story set in Prague in 1968, we could call them The Unbearable Lightness of Being irons. 

If they were a Tennyson poem, we could call them golf’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

Or if they were a Doors song, we’d be singing “… c’mon baby, light my fire.”

(One week into Launch Season and we’re already punchy as hell.)

But every two years, XXIO gives us something to, ahhh, light up and talk about. XXIO as a brand is targeted toward a very specific golfer: those with driver swing speeds below 90 miles per hour. You may think that makes XXIO a niche product and it may very well be.

But it’s one hell of a big niche. We’re talking most women and a greater number of men than you’d think, particularly seniors. That may not be you now but, rest assured my friends, it will be.

And while XXIO isn’t exactly “value-priced,” the irons are a lot closer to its competitors’ lightweight offerings than you might think. So let’s look under the hood and see what’s what.

XXIO 13 Irons: Lighten Up, Francis

No, XXIO didn’t invent “lightweight” golf clubs. Those have been with us for years, going back to super-light aluminum shafts and lightweight offerings from Karsten Solheim and Dave Pelz in the ‘70s and ‘80s. What was true then is true now: lighter clubs are easier to hit and can help low to moderate swing speed golfers hit the ball a little farther.

But ever since it launched in 2000, XXIO’s whole reason for being is to design clubs from grip to tip specifically for the under-90 mph crowd. No one else. It’s more than just sticking an outsourced A-flex shaft into a standard clubhead and calling it a day.

Everything from the grip to the shaft to the clubhead is proprietary and purpose-driven for the target golfer. The goal? To help them have more fun playing golf.

“Every woman golfer out there has a swing speed that’s good for XXIO,” says Jeff Brunski, XXIO’s Director of R&D. “And, mathematically speaking, 50 percent of the men out there have below-average swing speeds.”

None of XXIO’s clubs, save for recent fairways and hybrids, have tested particularly well for MyGolfSpy. But that’s hardly surprising since it’s a specifically targeted product. But while data tells us one thing, it doesn’t tell us everything. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence from target golfers who’ve put XXIO in their bags to suggest the performance benefits are real and noticeable.

What’s New With XXIO 13?

There doesn’t appear to be any major XXIO 13 iron updates compared to the 2022 XXIO 12 model. That model was the first to use a Super TIX® 51AF Titanium face, the same material found in XXIO and Srixon driver faces. It’s one of those space-age golf materials that’s stupid-strong and stupid-tactile at the same time. It also makes super-thin and flexible faces possible which is a very good thing for a game-improvement iron.

“It’s really cool to use a titanium face,” says Brunski. “It’s hot, flexible and lighter than steel. However, bonding the titanium face to the steel body is challenging. You can’t just weld it.”

For XXIO 13, Brunski and his team enhanced face flex by removing material from the body’s toe. That made for a thinner, more flexible joint with the titanium face.

“That creates a bigger trampoline,” Brunski explains. “The marketing team calls it Rebound Frame but it’s simply a way to make the face more flexible.”

Rebound Frame, if you’ve been following along with this week’s avalanche of launch stories, is Srixon-Cleveland-XXIO’s signature face flex/ball-speed technology. In metalwoods, a series of flex zones backed by stiff zones give the ball a little extra boing off the face. In the XXIO 13 irons, it’s just the flexible face and rigid body for a single boing.

But when the iron face is the same material as your driver face, that’s going to be some significant boing-age.

Of Lofts and CG

Absent clubhead speed, the recipe for getting game-improvement long irons to fly is loft and a low center of gravity. And with long-iron CG, it’s a race to the bottom. XXIO 13 pushes CG to damn near subterranean levels with that light titanium face and a heavy dose of tungsten.

“How low can CG go?” says Brunski. “Well, you need a face and a hosel to connect to the shaft. But other than that, get the rest of that mass as low as possible.”

Then there’s loft. The XXIO 13 irons feature lofts that are fully in line with today’s modern game-improvement irons. You could say “jacked” but it is important to consider lofts relative to the type of player playing them.

Golfers in this category are, more or less, habitual club flippers at impact. Without a certain level of hip rotation and shoulder tilt, hitting down on the ball is virtually impossible. Age robs us of both. To make up for it, a golfer tends to flip at impact, leaning the shaft back instead of forward. That golfer now is adding loft to the club, effectively turning a 7-iron into an 8-iron.

By strengthening those lofts and lowering the CG, that golfer can get the ball up in the air more easily. That loft also helps send the ball a little further on its way green-ward. It’s not loft-jacking for the sake of loft-jacking. And it’s not so a golfer can brag he hits it farther than you. It’s about what’s typical for the type of golfer who’s playing this kind of club and how club design might make the game a little bit more fun for them.

Golf is a game, remember. And games are supposed to be fun.

AI Undercover

As with its metalwoods, XXIO isn’t blasting AI-this or AI-that at us. But make no mistake, XXIO is leaning heavily on its AI tools to maximize performance.

“We look at impact patterns that we collect from all our player testing,” says Brunski. “Then we filter down to the target player we’re designing for. Then we have AI help us determine where to put mass to optimize performance for that player.

“If we go too low with CG, there can be an MOI tradeoff and maybe the sweet spot moves. And if we want to maximize carry, what does the algorithm tell us to do from a CG/MOI standpoint?”

And that’s the thing with supercomputers, artificial intelligence and machine learning. We may worry machines are taking over but look at it another way. The computer, in reality, is simply doing the math for us. And it’s doing way faster than 100 engineers hopped up on Red Bull with turbo-charged calculators could. Those computers are doggone smart but they’re more obedient than anything else. They still need a skilled product designer to tell them what to do and to decide where to go next.

They aren’t running this damned show … yet.

XXIO 13 Irons: Final Thoughts, Specs, Pricing and Availability

If XXIO 13 or any other lightweight offering might fit your game, consider one thing during your demo. Lightness will have some distance benefit during the demo over a more standard weight option. Just remember you don’t play golf in the demo bay. Light and easy is nice, but the real test is how much distance you maintain on the back nine. Or over three or four rounds over a three- or four-day trip.

“That’s a truer test of lightweight and easy to swing,” says Brunski.

The new XXIO 13 irons come in men’s and women’s models. And true to XXIO form, there’s virtually no customization available or, according to XXIO, needed. They say stock is premium already and should work for most golfers.

On the men’s side, XXIO 13 is available in a 22-degree 5-iron through a 56-degree sand wedge. However, only the 6-iron through pitching wedge is available for both lefties and righties.

The men’s set features XXIO’s proprietary 47-gram MP-1300 graphite shaft in regular flex (stiff is available through custom order). The U.S.-sized XXIO grip weighs 56 grams.

Women, by the way, make up 40 percent of XXIO’s sales so there’s no “shrink-it-and-pink-it” here. The ladies get all the same tech, just with two-degree strong lofts through the gap wedge. The stock MP-1300 shaft weighs in at 35 grams while the XXIO grip is 38 grams. The entire line is right-handed only.

Pricing is unchanged from the two-year-old XXIO 12 lineup at $219.99 per iron. A five-club set sells for $1,099.

XXIO 13 will be available at retail on Jan. 26.

For more information, visit the XXIO website.