Black embossed Srixon Golf logo on matte antique gold, the house of XXIO

XXIO, PRGR and Yonex: Clubs Built for Ease and Speed

Forged blades and gold-trimmed sets are one face of Japanese golf. The other, far larger in sales, is a body of clubs designed around a different question: how does an ordinary golfer, perhaps older, perhaps swinging at moderate speed, get the ball airborne and a long way down the fairway with the least effort? Three houses have shaped that answer more than any others: XXIO, PRGR and Yonex. This chapter of The Atlas of Japanese Golf sets out what each did, and when.

XXIO: the best-selling range in Japan

XXIO is the premium range of the Srixon group, whose parent Sumitomo Rubber Industries is based in Kobe. The brand launched in Japan in 2000 and reached the United States in 2014. In March 2020 the company said that XXIO had been the best-selling range of clubs in Japan for twenty consecutive years, a claim for which no supporting data was named, and it should be read as the company’s own.

  • Who it is for. The brand’s own materials say XXIO is made for players of moderate swing speed, and its ladies’ line for women who swing at 90 mph or less.
  • Weight Plus. XXIO says this technology concentrates more of a club’s weight in the grip, which reduces the force needed to support the club in the takeaway and makes the top of the swing easier to reach.
  • Flat Cup Face. A face design that, by the company’s account, improves rebound.
  • The driver. A 2021 buying roundup noted that XXIO designed the head of its X driver to maintain ball speed on strikes all over the face.

These are the maker’s descriptions. What is observable is the positioning: XXIO is priced as a premium product and aimed at the golfer who wants ease, rather than at the one who wants to shape shots. A 2018 profile of Mizuno names XXIO and Honma as the competitors in the ultra-premium senior market; see the Honma chapter.

PRGR: head speed as a design brief

The Yokohama Rubber Company, founded in Yokohama in 1917, launched the PRGR golf brand in 1983. In the same year, according to a 2017 profile, PRGR developed what it called Head Speed Theory, the idea that the whole club should be designed to maximise clubhead speed, and made golf balls differentiated by swing speed. The profile notes that the premise is now universal in club design. The milestones that followed, as PRGR itself lists them, show an unusual consistency:

  • 1984. The M-1 and M-2 drivers with carbon heads.
  • 1986. A lightweight driver at a standard length of 44 inches, when most of the industry used 43.
  • 1988. The INTEST iron series, which PRGR cites as the launch point for utility irons designed as part of a set.
  • About 1992. A driver with its head flipped upside down, lowering the centre of gravity and moving it back, to raise launch and add forgiveness.
  • 2003. The DUO driver, in composite carbon and titanium.
  • 2007. The Sweep women’s line, and the Egg franchise as a home for edgier designs.

PRGR keeps its lines few, four against the ten that some rivals run. Red is aimed at older golfers, with a face technology and Fujikura shafts; RS is the player-oriented range, with RS Forged irons built on a hollow S25C forged body and a maraging-steel face, and wedges offered only in 51 and 57 degrees; Sweep is for women; and Egg is made of non-conforming designs, which are explained in JDM Golf Clubs and the Rule Book. In 2017 the RS Forged irons cost about $175 a club and the RS driver just over $700.

Yonex: from nets to carbon

Yonex was founded in 1946 by Minoru Yoneyama as a maker of wooden floats for fishing nets. It moved to aluminium badminton rackets in 1969 and introduced a tennis racket in 1971, and the graphite shafts it tested for rackets, it found, would also serve golf clubs. The company’s own history dates its entry into the golf industry to 1982.

  • 1982. Yonex announces the first golf club to combine carbon graphite and persimmon, developed as the CARBONEX.
  • 1983. The CARBON IRON goes on sale, and a 36-tee driving range opens in Nagaoka City, Niigata Prefecture.
  • 1989. The A.D.X. clubs go on sale with what the company calls the industry’s first wide-body head. By Yonex’s account, the A.D.X. driver hit 412 yards, a record for the longest drive at an official PGA tournament. It also founds a research company in Nagaoka City to study golf course construction.

Yonex’s history is, in miniature, the Japanese pattern described in Why Japan Became Golf’s Great Workshop: a company that mastered one material for one sport and carried it into another.

What these three share

  • The player. The target is chiefly not the tour professional but the club golfer, and the design brief starts from swing speed.
  • The means. Light shafts, light heads, weight moved to the grip or the back of the head, and faces designed to preserve ball speed across the face.
  • The outcome. Clubs that feel different from their Western equivalents, and shaft flexes that run softer and lighter than their labels might suggest. The buying guide explains how to read them.

Read next: Bridgestone, Srixon and Cleveland: Japan on Tour, and the Japanese Golf Brands Compared: Forging, Faces and Feel.

In the archive

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Index terms: xxio golf japan best selling · prgr head speed theory · prgr egg non conforming · yonex golf carbon iron 1983 · yonex a.d.x. wide body · japanese clubs for moderate swing speed · lightweight japanese golf clubs · srixon xxio history

References

Dates and figures in this chapter were checked against these pages. Where accounts differ, the text says so.

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