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RLS to the Rescue
by Kevin
Kossman
It’s 115 to the pin, water in front, bunkers long. Hit
the sand wedge and you’re going fishing, hit the pitching wedge
and you’re on the beach. So, what’s it gonna be?
Welcome to the gap. Not the yuppie white boy store with bad
commercials, but the gap in your iron set. It’s a problem
we have all faced at one time or another.
Enter Innovex
Golf and the new RLS (Revolutionary Loft System) irons.
Instead of adding some new space age metal or merely fattening up
the sole, Innovex decided to something crazy… they filled the
gaps in your iron set. According to Innovex, the distance
“gaps” through an iron set should be consistent from the long
irons through the wedges. Most iron sets today have larger
gaps in the short irons and wedges than in the long irons, leading
to minimal distance gaps in the long iron portion of the set. This
leads to unused clubs taking valuable slots in the bag while your
scoring clubs are subject to distance gaps.
To put them to the test, I received the Innovex RLS irons 4
iron through 64* wedge with Accuflex stiff steel shafts.
 Looks
The RLS irons are very traditional looking at address with a thin
top line and progressive offset. To me they actually
didn’t look very forgiving, but having played a lot of Callaway
irons with a thick top line recently, that shouldn’t come as
much of a surprise. Overall the irons are extremely clean
looking and just aesthetically pleasing in general.
Playability
When I put the RLS irons in the bag for the first round, it was
almost like I had been playing them for weeks. No awkward
adjustment period ensued, no crazy distance losses or gains, just
very comfortable & surprisingly accurate ball striking (I’d
like to think I had something to do with that, but I “like” to
think a lot of things).
They are loads more forgiving than they look (at least to me).
The trajectory was good, just slightly higher than my own Hogan
CFT’s, which resulted in the ball landing a little softer on the
greens (or in the bunkers from time to time).
With the wedge setup (including a 60* & 64*) I really felt
like I had a full swing club in the bag for nearly every distance.
I was a little concerned at the prospect of hitting a 64* wedge
but not only did I find that those concerns were unfounded, the
64* wedge turned out to be an absolute money club for me.
Who’s it for?
A solid set of irons with significant game improvement features
means the Innovex RLS irons are a great fit for the vast majority
of weekend golfers. Their playability should also land them
on the list of many of the better young players that have grown up
playing cast cavity backs.
Value
 At
$469 the Innovex RLS irons are priced significantly less than
the major OEM players and they are in line with some of the minor
OEM irons on the market. The quality and the R & D that
have gone into these irons makes them an excellent value and the
custom fitting options make it easy to get the set that is perfect
for your game. The value is made even more evident by the
fact that now you will actually use every club in your bag (and
not just for alignment & punching out from under a tree.)
In Summary:
Not only are they a solid high quality set of irons but the price
is right too. They don’t quite have the bag cachet of some
of the major OEM’s but they don’t have the big price tag
either. The extra wedges included in the set make them an
even better deal from an overall value perspective. In my
opinion, the Innovex RLS irons should not be overlooked when
evaluating the latest & greatest sticks available.
More information about the
Innovex RLS irons can be
found at:
http://www.innovexgolf.com
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