Gear: Cleveland Halo XL Full Face irons.
Price: $899.88 (7 clubs) with KBS Tour Lite steel shafts and Lamkin Crossline 360 grips; $999.99 with UST Mamiya Helium Nanocore 60 graphite shafts.
Specs: Hollow-bodied stainless steel heads with stainless steel faces. Available 4-iron through sand wedge.
Available: January 19, but available via pre-order NOW
Who It’s For: High-handicap and moderate clubhead speed players who want an easy-to-hit iron loaded with forgiveness.
The Skinny: These massive hollow-bodied irons have railed soles in the long irons, a low center of gravity and were designed to help high-handicap golfers get more distance, more height and more enjoyment on the course.
The Deep Dive: Grab a better-player’s iron, like a Srixon Z-Forged II or a ZX7 MkII, sole it behind a ball and then look down. What you will see is a super-compact blade length, a narrow topline and almost no offset. At this point, experienced golfers who routinely shoot in the 70s might be drooling, while golfers who are new to the game or who struggle to make consistent contact might be thinking about giving Pickleball a try. Those irons can be intimidating and offer almost no features to compensate for mis-hits or slow swings.
Shop new Cleveland XL Halo irons
The Halo XL Full Face irons look like miniature hybrids in the address position. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Cleveland, which is one of Srixon’s sister brands under the Dunlop Sports umbrella, specializes in clubs that are made to be easy to hit, fun and affordable, and for 2024, it has a new super game-improvement iron, the Halo XL Full Face.
The Halo XL Full Face irons are enormous, which should immediately give confidence to players who routinely shoot in the 90s and 100s. They are designed like small hybrids, so each club is hollow and made to allow the faces to flex easily at the moment of impact for increased ball speed. As the name implies, the entire hitting area is also covered by the groove pattern, which also features two white grooves on the bottom. The lowest, shortest white groove is there to help position the ball in the center of the face, while the wider groove can help players align more easily with their target.
Shop new Cleveland XL Halo irons
The hollow-body construction allows the Halo XL Full Face iron’s face to flex more efficiently. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
The large head size and sloped HiBore crown design helped Cleveland designers shift the center of gravity location down and back, away from the hitting area, to encourage a higher launch angle.
Many golfers who struggle with inconsistent contact also have trouble working the club through the strike without hitting the ground first. To help golfers who tend to hit the ball fat, Cleveland gave the Halo XL Full Face long irons (4-7) rails to help the sole skim over the turf. The short irons (8-9) have been designed with a V-sole that adds extra bounce in the center of the sole.
The railed sole in the long irons make the Halo XL Full Face irons easier to hit. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
To help players get consistent results, Cleveland has added a face-blast treatment called HydraZip. In the long irons (4-7), it is rougher to slightly reduce spin and encourage more carry, but in the short irons and wedges (8-SW), it is somewhat smoother to help golfers get more spin and stopping power on the greens.
