Callaway X Hot & X Hot Pro Irons Preview

Buckjob said:

if you had to pick one today which way are you leaning? looks like good distance on the Pros also...

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If I had to take 1 of these after the time spent today I'd have to go with the X Hot pros dude. I hit that one so much more solidly and further than the X Forged. I obviously didn't have my best stuff until later on when I got the Pros in my hand, I should have pulled the X Forged back out for a few before I left but I didn't. I'm dumb!

My word, those look good. The top line is thinner than I expected. Looks like those are traveling over 170 yards out of doors. Thanks for sharing Jake

I need to hit these ASAP. I love the picture of the ball framed by the club, thanks Jake!

Puttin4Bird said:

If I had to take 1 of these after the time spent today I'd have to go with the X Hot pros dude. I hit that one so much more solidly and further than the X Forged. I obviously didn't have my best stuff until later on when I got the Pros in my hand, I should have pulled the X Forged back out for a few before I left but I didn't. I'm dumb!

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how much further? just curious i truly believe if you go with one set of irons or drivers you might need to get that set of irons to match due to distance and gapping i'm curious about that for myself if ones a good distance farther than the other the gapping between irons and driver could be huge depending on how it works out. i am getting freaking stoked about getting a fitting now and seeing distances and such.

I went out to Golfsmith today, and they didn't have any of the new irons, I was seriously depressed. I'll be trying Golf Galaxy tomorrow.

I'm definitely going to have to find a way to try these out. Definitely got me intrigued.

Puttin4Bird said:

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Wow, that looks pretty good.

I was able to hit both the X hot and X Hot Pro today. I started out with the X Hot Pro with PX 95 and the X Hot with the stock TT shaft. The XHP worked much better for me, I was much more consistent with the Pro over the XHOT, and wasn't seeing an advantage in distance. I was a little disappointed in the distance I was seeing, I wasn't seeing any distance gains over my current gamers. Then I put the KBS Tour shaft in it and got MUCH better results. I was seeing better distance, better ball fight, and for some odd reason less fat shots. I've had poor results in the past with lightweight shafts, and it doesn't seem to have changed. I definitely will be giving the Forged a go, and will do some more shaft testing with the X Hot, but I really liked the XHP. It looked great at address and still seemed to have quite a bit of forgiveness. I look forward to hitting it in the real world.

Wake said:

I was able to hit both the X hot and X Hot Pro today. I started out with the X Hot Pro with PX 95 and the X Hot with the stock TT shaft. The XHP worked much better for me, I was much more consistent with the Pro over the XHOT, and wasn't seeing an advantage in distance. I was a little disappointed in the distance I was seeing, I wasn't seeing any distance gains over my current gamers. Then I put the KBS Tour shaft in it and got MUCH better results. I was seeing better distance, better ball fight, and for some odd reason less fat shots. I've had poor results in the past with lightweight shafts, and it doesn't seem to have changed. I definitely will be giving the Forged a go, and will do some more shaft testing with the X Hot, but I really liked the XHP. It looked great at address and still seemed to have quite a bit of forgiveness. I look forward to hitting it in the real world.

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Interesting, I wonder what caused the increase of fat shots with the PX vs the KBS?

I also got a chance to hit the X Hot and X Hot Pro irons today on an outdoor range. I was walking by after my round, and the Callaway tent was set up at the far end of the range. They had a decent selection of left handed clubs and I pulled the X Hot Pro 6-iron to hit. PX95 shaft in 6.0 flex. I play regular flex R11 irons now with the KBS 90 shafts. Well, the stiff shaft wasn't working well for me and didn't hit the pro version of the iron well at all. Next up the X Hot with the stock steel 85g regular flex shaft. I hit that 6 iron very similarly to my R11 6i, which I was able to hit on the range as well. In pictures of the X Hot and XHP irons, the Pro version looks terrific and the X Hot seems a bit clunky by comparison. I will say that in person, sure the XHP is sleeker, but there's nothing wrong with the X Hot, the topline is medium, the grip feels great, and the club sits up to the ball really well. I hit about ten shots with the six iron, a bit of a draw (same as my R11) and the ball flight was fairly similar, with the tour 90 shafts probably putting the ball a bit higher. All in all, I was impressed with the X Hot, and if I were in the market for irons, they'd be right there at the top. But not enough for me to move out of the R11 irons I currently play.

I was leaving the demo area and for whatever reason I checked out the left hand bag again and pulled out an X Hot 6i with the standard graphite shaft, just to give it a rip. What an eye opener! I absolutely LOVE that club. Ball flight was medium and penetrating, and when I connected well, the ball was traveling 190 yards! I was hitting the steel shaft version of the club maybe 165-170. I came away thinking that I must own the X Hot with the graphite shaft sometime this year. It normally takes me a while to get used to new clubs, but this one was love at first hit. I was totally impressed with the graphite shaft in this club in stiff flex. It worked wonders for me.

Awesome to hear RR, sounds like you have a great experience and a new shaft that works well for you. Nothing better than the feeling of finding something that works really well for you.

Havent hit a calloway iron but these look sweet. Look good at address

Made a quick trip into Edwin Watts as I was coming through Birmingham yesterday, and they had both sets of XHot Irons on the shelf (didn't see any demos available). My visual impressions were very similar to RadRob in that I thought the XH Pro was very sleek and beautiful, but while the topline on the regular XH was thicker, it wasn't ridiculously so. I have little doubt that if I decide to get new irons, it will be one of these two sets...after an appropriate demo where I can try shafts.

On a side note, both of the employees in the store went out of their way to gush over the new Callaway lines, particularly the new XHot lines.

Wake said:

I was able to hit both the X hot and X Hot Pro today. I started out with the X Hot Pro with PX 95 and the X Hot with the stock TT shaft. The XHP worked much better for me, I was much more consistent with the Pro over the XHOT, and wasn't seeing an advantage in distance. I was a little disappointed in the distance I was seeing, I wasn't seeing any distance gains over my current gamers. Then I put the KBS Tour shaft in it and got MUCH better results. I was seeing better distance, better ball fight, and for some odd reason less fat shots. I've had poor results in the past with lightweight shafts, and it doesn't seem to have changed. I definitely will be giving the Forged a go, and will do some more shaft testing with the X Hot, but I really liked the XHP. It looked great at address and still seemed to have quite a bit of forgiveness. I look forward to hitting it in the real world.

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Great to hear that when you added the KBS shaft you were seeing better results and fewer fat shots. I am curious, Like Oregon Golfer, what you think was causing the fat shots? Just the shaft weight?

RadRob said:

I also got a chance to hit the X Hot and X Hot Pro irons today on an outdoor range. I was walking by after my round, and the Callaway tent was set up at the far end of the range. They had a decent selection of left handed clubs and I pulled the X Hot Pro 6-iron to hit. PX95 shaft in 6.0 flex. I play regular flex R11 irons now with the KBS 90 shafts. Well, the stiff shaft wasn't working well for me and didn't hit the pro version of the iron well at all. Next up the X Hot with the stock steel 85g regular flex shaft. I hit that 6 iron very similarly to my R11 6i, which I was able to hit on the range as well. In pictures of the X Hot and XHP irons, the Pro version looks terrific and the X Hot seems a bit clunky by comparison. I will say that in person, sure the XHP is sleeker, but there's nothing wrong with the X Hot, the topline is medium, the grip feels great, and the club sits up to the ball really well. I hit about ten shots with the six iron, a bit of a draw (same as my R11) and the ball flight was fairly similar, with the tour 90 shafts probably putting the ball a bit higher. All in all, I was impressed with the X Hot, and if I were in the market for irons, they'd be right there at the top. But not enough for me to move out of the R11 irons I currently play.

I was leaving the demo area and for whatever reason I checked out the left hand bag again and pulled out an X Hot 6i with the standard graphite shaft, just to give it a rip. What an eye opener! I absolutely LOVE that club. Ball flight was medium and penetrating, and when I connected well, the ball was traveling 190 yards! I was hitting the steel shaft version of the club maybe 165-170. I came away thinking that I must own the X Hot with the graphite shaft sometime this year. It normally takes me a while to get used to new clubs, but this one was love at first hit. I was totally impressed with the graphite shaft in this club in stiff flex. It worked wonders for me.

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Totally jealous of you as a fellow lefty coming across a Callaway event, but glad to hear you had such good results, especially with the graphite shaft in the X Hot.

It is awesome hearing some varied opinions on these irons already. They won't be released here till the end of this week. I'm really looking forward to getting these in my hands SOON

So I walked into Golf Town today looking to hit the X Hot stuff. I look around and all of the drivers, fairway woods, and hybrids are out. I ask one of the employees where the irons are, and he says "let me check in the back, they're not out on the floor yet." Not a promising start, so I keep walking around the store.

A couple of minutes later, he puts a X Hot 7 iron in my hands. I told him that I was more interested in the Pro line of these irons, so he goes to the back again to look for those while I go into the simulator bay with the X Hot 7 iron. I look down and see that it's a regular flex in the stock shaft...not exactly my normal setup, but I figure that I'll take some swing to loosen up. Anyways, first swing was a big foul ball to the right and I'm not happy. Second swing is much better, and I look up at the carry: 172 yards. I'm shocked by this, my regular 7 iron is around 160 yards on a good strike. I hit about 10 more balls, and even get some more carry than on my first swing at times! I actually took the tape off of the bottom of the club to make sure that it was a 7 iron and not a 6 iron. Picture below is the shot display on the simulator, sorry for not getting averages of my shots (ball speed, carry distance, spin, etc.), I didn't know how to get those to display on this simulator. Quick summary: if you want irons that are stupid long but aren't obnoxiously gigantic at address, these are your irons.



After this, the employee comes back and tells me that they don't have an X Hot Pro set of irons in house, but does have the X Hot Pro 6 iron head to use with the fitting cart. Of course, he also tells me that they don't have the PX 95 shaft (stock in the X Hot Pro) on the fitting cart, and also doesn't have a KBS Tour shaft on there either, which is my preferred iron shaft. So out of the options that they have, we decide to put a DG S300 shaft in there because I've played that shaft in the past. Others have described the looks of this club, and I didn't grab pictures, but I'll sum it up like this: they mean business, and they hit that sweet spot between not being too big and not being too intimidating to hit. They reminded me of my old R11 irons in that respect. I hit about 15-20 balls with this setup, and on good shots I was seeing carry distances over 180 yards. As you can see from the picture below, the dispersion could be improved, but I was loving the looks of the clubs and the distances that I was seeing. I think that putting a different shaft in these irons could help out, but these irons are already high on my list for new irons in 2013. I think that a lot of the Callaway staff in the Morgan Cup will be really lucky to play either set of these irons.



Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try to answer them as soon as I can.

Jeez Ary that's some deep 6i's there man.

Great post Ary, its interesting because I also played the R11's, but thought the topline of these was MUCH smaller than the R11 irons, closer to the J40's than R11's to me.

mward2002 said:

Jeez Ary that's some deep 6i's there man.

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I know that the wind wasn't a factor in the simulator, but I'm pretty sure I was hitting distance balls and who knows what the elevation was set up for on the simulator, maybe it was set up for Denver instead of Boston. However, I was still pretty shocked by some of the distances. I've never considered myself to be a big hitter, but have always been able to hit irons a little further than what you would think based on my driver distances.

Wake said:

Great post Ary, its interesting because I also played the R11's, but thought the topline of these was MUCH smaller than the R11 irons, closer to the J40's than R11's to me.

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Interesting you say that, it's been a while since I played the R11 irons so I don't remember the topline very well. I will say that they are just a little bigger at address than my current 588 CB irons. I don't know what else to say except that they have just enough mass in the clubhead to make me feel confident, but I don't feel like they have a ton of offset where I'm going to hit moonballs with them or hook them off the planet.

How are the lofts and lengths compared to your gamers?

Very nice Ary. I'm glad you liked those irons. Pretty sweet clubs.

mward2002 said:

How are the lofts and lengths compared to your gamers?

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X Hot Pro lengths look to be 0.25 inches longer that my 588 CB irons. Lofts are the big difference, up to 3 degrees stronger for the X Hot Pros in some of the clubs, so that explains a good bit of the length differences. That said, I didn't have an issue with launch angle with the 6 iron in the X Hot Pros.

The XHP's are some sexy looking irons, one of the better offerings I have seen lately. For me, the i20's are safe in their spot in my bag, but if they weren't...these would be the top dog on my radar along with the Rocketbladez.

COG might be lower than the 588's, you'd probably balloon em if you played at same lofts. I'd like to hit a 180yd 6i that dropped like a butterfly with sore feet

Ordered my X-Hot Pros today. Surprised me, as I went to the Golf Shop leaning towards JPX-825s (pros and reg), the i20, the CB-3, or perhaps the Rocketbladez. The closer was hitting them with STOCK Project X95 shafts. Lightweight, easy to control, and with this clubhead provided a combination that fit me perfectly. I ended up with the 6.0 shaft. In the end, it was between the i20's and these, but the Cally's were just too consistent to turn away from!