Cleveland announced RTZ 2 on August 4, 2026, with presale starting August 21 and retail arriving September 4. That's close enough to launch that this isn't just a press release rewrite, independent reviewers have already put the club on a launch monitor, and the spec sheet is public down to the individual grind and loft combination. Two stories anchor this release: Roger Cleveland, the man whose name is on the company, personally returned to lead the redesign, and one of his own decades-old grinds is coming back as a result.
Why Roger Cleveland's involvement is the real headline
Roger Cleveland returned to the company as Founder and Advisor in early 2025, and RTZ 2 is the first main-line wedge release since then. Nearly 50 years after he introduced the original 588 Tour Action Wedge, he came back to work directly alongside Cleveland Golf's engineers and tour players on this redesign, revisiting every sole grind and refining every turf-interaction transition in the lineup. That's not a marketing footnote, it's the reason the 588 grind exists in this release at all. Cleveland Golf's own framing is direct: "I've been fortunate to design wedges that have been trusted by generations of golfers, but the work is never finished."
The 588 wasn't just workshopped internally either. Multiple PGA Tour players who aren't on Cleveland's own staff, including Justin Rose, Gary Woodland, and Rickie Fowler, were already playing prototype versions of the revived 588 Wide grind on tour before the official announcement. That's a real signal, tour pros with no sponsorship reason to play it chose to anyway.
The technology
RTZ 2 keeps the core material story from the original RTZ: Z-Alloy, Cleveland's proprietary carbon steel built specifically for a softer feel at impact without giving up durability, now in its second generation of use in Cleveland's blade wedges. UltiZip grooves and Rotex face milling carry forward as well, and independent testing backs up that the spin performance survived the transition intact, more on that below.
The genuine update is ZipCore iQ, an evolution of the low-density core weighting Cleveland has used to shift CG toward the face's sweet spot. Cleveland's own materials describe the shape and amount of that internal weighting as now optimized per loft and per sole grind, not just per loft as before. Independent reviewers who tested it describe the practical result a bit more simply, the core is tuned individually for each loft, and the effect shows up most clearly in how consistent ball speed stays on strikes that miss the center of the face. Whichever description is more precise, the on-course result independent testers reported was real: unusually consistent ball speed for a wedge in this category, even on mishits.
Five grinds, including one that's been gone a while
Across the full 46° to 64° loft range, that's 24 individual loft and bounce combinations, more than most wedge lines offer in one release. Not every grind is available at every loft or in every finish or handedness though, FULL and 588 in particular thin out at the lower lofts, and left-handed availability is noticeably more limited than right-handed across several grind and loft combinations, something at least one independent reviewer flagged directly as a real gap for lefties wanting a Full grind in their shorter wedges. The full chart below shows exactly what's actually available to order in each stock configuration.
Every stock configuration
If you already know roughly what grind and loft you want, this is the chart that tells you whether you can actually buy it, and in which finish. RH/LH means both handedness options are offered for that finish; RH alone means lefties aren't currently offered that specific combination. A dash means that finish isn't offered at all for that configuration.
Lie angle is fixed at 64° across every configuration, and length and swingweight scale down predictably as loft increases, so neither varies enough between configurations to affect which one you'd choose. Left out here for that reason.
What independent testing found
Plugged In Golf put a set through real launch-monitor testing ahead of release and summed it up bluntly: high tech, high performance tools hidden in a traditional package, with more consistency and forgiveness than you'd expect from a tour-style wedge. Spin numbers were high from the very first swing across pitches, half shots, and full swings, whether contact was centered or not. As the sample size grew, the ZipCore iQ weighting showed up clearly in the data too, ball speed stayed more consistent than the reviewer expected from a wedge built for tour-level players, useful context if forgiveness matters to you as much as workability.
On the two grinds directly compared, 588 and MID, the reviewer found them more similar than different in feel, both let the leading edge stay low enough to open the face for creative shots, with the main difference being the 588's slightly lower bounce and wider sole. Sound was described as a pleasant, medium-volume thud through a urethane-covered ball, with mishits giving clearer feedback rather than punishing the hands.
RTZ 2 vs. the current RTZ
If you're deciding between these two rather than just curious about the new one, here's the short version. What's new: the 588 grind, which didn't exist in the original RTZ lineup at all, ZipCore iQ's more granular weighting, and Roger Cleveland's direct hand in the redesign. What's carried over largely unchanged: the Z-Alloy material family, UltiZip groove technology, the rough toe milling that's become a visual signature of the line, and the ADAPT grind's full-face groove design.
The number worth knowing before you decide: price went up. The current RTZ runs roughly $160 to $170. RTZ 2 is $199.99 in Tour Satin or Black Satin, and $219.99 for the Tour Rack Raw finish, a meaningful jump, not a rounding error. If the 588 grind specifically or the extra weighting precision is what you're after, that's what the higher price is buying. If your swing and turf conditions are already well served by MID, FULL, LOW, or ADAPT, the current RTZ covers all four of those grinds too, at a real discount, and now likely to see further price drops as retailers clear inventory ahead of the new release.
Island Greens Pick
Take RTZ 2 if the 588 grind's moderate-to-shallow-swing profile actually matches your game, or if you want the tightest possible dispersion on mishits, independent testing backs that claim up with real data, not just a marketing line. Take the current RTZ if you're already well fit into MID, FULL, LOW, or ADAPT, since those four grinds carry over with the same core technology at a meaningfully lower price. This is a new release as of this guide, so there's no personal, hands-on experience to add here yet, everything above comes from Cleveland's own technical materials and independent pre-release testing.
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Want the full bounce and grind education, plus how RTZ compares to Vokey SM11 and TaylorMade MG5? Read Wedge Bounce, Explained.