The PGA Tour’s Las Vegas stop has become a preview of what’s to come in the gear industry – and this year is no different.
Titleist’s 2025 Pro V1 and Pro V1x balls made their every-other-year appearance early in the week. Odyssey debuted a myriad of Ai-One putter head shapes. Bettinardi entered the zero-torque game. And Cobra quietly released a Darkspeed prototype driver for Tour feedback.
Cleveland also showed off its latest wares, in the form of an RTZ prototype wedge that’s already turning heads.
For more than a decade, the brand’s flagship wedge lineup has included three letters emblazoned on the head: RTX. Short for “Rotex,” the wedge technology has played a pivotal role in enhancing greenside spin and control.
The decision to replace RTX with RTZ hints at a shakeup to not only the name, but what’s housed inside. Like most Tour releases, Cleveland refrained from offering concrete details regarding the wedge design. But that doesn’t mean the scoring tool is a total mystery. A few things can be gleaned from recent images of the wedge.
The most obvious place to start is with the RTZ naming. It’s fair to wonder if Cleveland is moving away from specific Rotex and ZipCore naming and into something possibly combining the two, or if it’s a new groove technology altogether.
Along with changing up the letters stamped on the head, designers added “Z-Alloy” to the hosel – all but confirming a material change of some sort – and cleaned up the overall appearance and shaping of the head to give it a minimalist look.
Based on initial Tour feedback, the appearance and performance have impressed pros in the field at the Shriners Children’s Open.
Changes aren’t official until Thursday (local time), but it’s likely 7 or 8 names in the field could switch the first week, which would make it one of the fastest adoptions Cleveland has ever seen for one of its wedges.
