Not all Limited Edition Clubs/Sets are Created Equal

The Cleveland 588 Wedge with modern tech is a very special and very limited offering. If you can find a box, you might want to consider buying a lottery ticket, too

By Tony Dear

We golfers know very well we have our little foibles – our hard-to-explain eccentricities that, no matter how ridiculous, are fixed for the foreseeable future and about which we are pretty inflexible. The phenomenon explains why Tiger Woods had a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 in his bag for so long. Same with Matt Fitzpatrick’s Ping S55 irons, Patrick Cantlay’s Titleist 915F 3-wood, and Harris English’s Ping Hohum putter. Jordan Spieth had a Scotty Cameron 009 for over 20 years before experimenting with a T.P. Mills model earlier this year.

Few of us can claim to have reached the heights to which these golfers have ascended (by comparison, we’re struggling to make any progress in the foothills), but at the same time, we’re very much alike. We find something that fits us like a glove (and yes, sometimes amateurs are guilty of keeping gloves in the bag for way too long), and we don’t want to part with it. For whatever reason, we just seem to hit better shots with it than we do our other clubs.

I was reminded of this late last week when Cleveland Golf announced it was releasing a limited-edition box set of 588 wedges. I think I may have mentioned this at some point over the last few years, but my 56-degree 588 has been a part of my set-up since the late 1990s. Cleveland has released numerous new models and introduced more effective technology since then, of course, but I feel that as long as I replace the grip every year and keep the grooves clean, it will continue to perform. If I played for two or three million dollars every week or had an equipment contract that required me to update my wedges with every new release, then it would obviously be long gone. But I don’t, so it isn’t.

These beautiful wedges, first released in May 1988 (5/88 – it was also Roger Cleveland’s fifth wedge design after forming his company in 1979), retain the same compact teardrop shape as the original but feature a number of Cleveland’s advanced wedge technologies – Z-Alloy (a soft and light, but extremely durable, proprietary steel), ZipCore (a low-density material in the hosel to shift the Center of Gravity closer to the impact area), Rotex (face-milling to roughen the face and increase friction/spin), Hydrazip (pressurized face-blast and extra milling to create maximum spin in the wet), and UltiZip (deeper, sharper grooves for strong, consistent spin from the fairway, rough, and sand).

It almost sounds too good to be true, so, like many limited-edition offerings, you will probably need to get your skates on if you are to have any chance of claiming yours. Especially as only 588 boxes were made.

We’ve scoured the internet over the last few days and, sure enough, a number of outlets no longer have them. And everywhere else may well have sold theirs by the time you read this. You never know when a box might appear on an auction website, though. And if the price is right (not too inflated), don’t think too hard before clicking ‘Buy’.

$588
Lofts – 52˚, 56˚, 60˚
Shaft – True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue S400
Wherever you can find them