Gear: PXG Desert Golf Club
Price: $99.99
Specs: 36.5-inch shaft, 44° loft, mid-bounce sole, made from raw hardened 17-4 stainless steel
Who It’s For: Golfers who frequent desert terrain or who often find themselves in a bit of a rugged predicament after a wayward drive.
What You Need to Know: PXG has crafted the Desert Golf Club specifically for shots where your golf ball might be a little too cozy with cacti, rocks or desert brush and you don’t want to damage or gash your clubs.
The Deep Dive: One of the great things about desert golf is after hitting a wayward shot that slices right of the fairway or goes over the green and into a nature area, finding your ball can be surprisingly easy. The bad news is you may not like what you see once you have found that ball. Rocks, rooks, cacti, sand, pebbles — it’s all out there, waiting to damage your shiny new irons and wedges.
PXG’s new Desert Golf Club doesn’t shy away from off-road adventures, it was designed for them. When wise judgment says, “Declare the ball unplayable and take a drop,” the Desert Club sits in your bag, gleaming, covered in saguaro cactus stamps, whispering, “Go ahead, I’ve got this.”
The Desert Club has 44 degrees of loft, like a pitching wedge. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
The Desert Club is made using 17-4 stainless steel, a harder material than the 8620 carbon steel and 431 stainless steel PXG uses in the body of its irons and wedges, so it should be more durable. It comes standard with the length of an 8-iron (36.5 inches) and the loft of a pitching wedge (44 degrees). A combination like that should allow players to make a fast swing, get the ball over trouble and back into play.
The 8-iron length and extra loft are designed to help golfers escape trouble. (David Dusek/Golfweek)
Is the PXG Desert Golf Club something every golfer needs? No, it’s not. It is, however, a clever alternative to the old, beat-up iron that many golfers in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and the desert regions of California commonly carry for handling off-the-fairway trouble shots.