Cleveland RTX-4: A versatile performer from a well-known name in wedges

The Cleveland RTX-4 wedge line has been on the market for a few months now, and you have probably already read a number of reviews of this new offering from Cleveland Golf. I might not have bothered to add to the list, but I have enjoyed this club so much that I felt that I had to chime in.

Of course, Cleveland Golf is a name that golfers associate very strongly with wedges. Roger Cleveland, who now designs wedges for Callaway Golf, built the company largely on the quality of the wedges they produced. Now a part of the Srixon family, Cleveland continues to produce innovative products that keep the company on the leading edge of the wedge market.

The RTX-4 features “Tour Zip” grooves, which Cleveland describes as “sharper and deeper” (though we all know that the USGA and R & A define groove configuration limits); laser face milling in the spaces between the grooves that takes face roughness right to the conforming limit; and additional Rotex face milling that extends to the toe of the club for that extra little bit of bite.

I was lucky enough to obtain an RTX-4 test club from Amazon.com through their Amazon Vine program. The club I got for review is a bog-standard mid-bounce 56/10 Cleveland RTX-4 in the Tour Satin finish, with a Golf Pride Tour Velvet grip on a True Temper Dynamic Golf Tour Issue shaft—straight-up, no bells and whistles. It felt good in my hands as soon as I took it out of the box, and that good feeling carried over to its performance on the golf course.

The Mid-Bounce grind is advertised as being suitable for medium to soft conditions (which describes my usual daily-fee course to a tee) for players who want stability on full shots and who like to open the face when the shot warrants. I played the RTX-4 from sand, rough and fairway lies, and was very happy with its performance. It flowed smoothly through moderate rough, glided cleanly across tight fairway lies, and worked through the not-always-ideal sand conditions in my local course’s bunkers with ease.

While I am a decent wedge player, I have never had the kind of wedge shot that zips the ball back on a string—I just don’t get that kind of super-spin on the ball with my slightly shallow angle of attack. The combination of swing weight (D5), well-situated center of mass, and optimized face milling in the RTX-4 seemed to suit me, however, and I was hitting beautiful drop-and-stop shots from bunkers and on short-approach fairway shots, with both straight and open face.

A nice illustration of the RTX-4’s drop-and-stop capabilities. This was a straight-face, 3/4-swing, 80-yard approach from a fairway lie to a slightly elevated green (≈six feet). (Photo by author.)

The Mid-Bounce RTX-4 is available in 2° loft increments from 46° to 60°, with the Full grind in 56° to 60°, Low in 56° to 64°, and Extra-Low in 58° to 62°. Retailing for $139.99, the RTX-4 is available in Tour Satin, Black Satin, Tour Raw finishes. A wide range of optional shafts are offered, in both steel and graphite; numerous grip options are available, as are loft, lie, and grip customization, all at additional cost.

As the most versatile grind in the RTX-4 range, the Mid-Bounce is probably the best all-around choice for most golfers. The RTX-4 is recommended for low- to mid-handicap golfers (three dots on their four-dot low-to-high handicap range), but it suited this 24-handicap player quite well.

Bay Area golf fans face a decision next September

2019 holds the promise of being a very good year for Bay Area golf fans. The 119th U.S. Open will be played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, in the storied seaside course’s centennial year; a new PGA Tour event sponsored by the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry will appear on the schedule, played at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City†; and the LPGA will return with the second year of the reboot of their Bay Area tournament of recent years, also at Lake Merced.

However, a week before the Steph Curry event, in the last week of September, Bay Area golf fans will have a decision to make. In late September, as the 2019-2020 PGA Tour season is starting up, and the 2019 PGA Champions season is winding down, both tours will be playing in Northern California, at the same time, 160 miles apart. The PGA Tour will be kicking things off with the Safeway Open, at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, and the PGA Champions will be bringing along the next generation of golfers in the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting the First Tee, at Pebble Beach and Poppy Hills in the Del Monte Forest.

How did this happen? Aren’t the PGA Tour and the PGA Champions part of the same organization? Do their scheduling people talk to each other? Do they own a calendar—and a map?

Call it a first-world problem for Bay Area golf fans: Which world-class destination do we head to that week to watch golf—the Silverado Resort & Spa in America’s most venerated wine region, the Napa Valley; or Pebble Beach, the ne plus ultra of American public golf, on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula? Do we want to see the young guns of the PGA Tour (but probably few, if any, big stars), or the old-pro PGA Champions, playing alongside youngsters the same age as their grandkids?

What’s a golf fan to do?

Actually, there’s no wrong answer here—either choice results in a great time at a beautiful venue. Late September is prime time for visiting either the California coast or the Napa Valley; the weather is ideal: neither too hot nor too cold, generally sunny and clear, and there’s rarely any fog at the coast. It’s a shame that this scheduling conflict prevents local golf fans from possibly enjoying two weeks of great golf, but we’re still lucky that we have the choice of these two great events at beautiful destination venues.

† (Correction: In early January it was announced that talks with the potential title sponsor of the Steph Curry-sponsored event, Workday, had fallen through, and that the event would not be held in 2019. There is hope that the event will appear in the schedule in 2020, potentially at TPC Harding Park, in San Francisco.)