Preview – CZ Czechmate

Photography by Suzi Nelson

Your Move…
Out of the Box, the CZ Czechmate Is a Race-Ready 9mm

Love them or loathe them, race guns represent the top of the pile when it comes to accuracy, speed, and power. At the 2012 Midway USA Bianchi Cup, I had the opportunity to shoot an Open Division 1911 pistol. My competitive shooting career has encompassed almost every form of shooting, and I’ve shot a lot of firearms — but none have impressed me more than that 9mm Open gun. I had admired and handled these types of guns before, but actually shooting a gun that’s designed specifically to be both fast and accurate with little regard to the eventual cost is memorable to say the least.

Competitive venues typically have various divisions for participants to enter, depending on the type of weapon they’re using and how extensively it has been customized. Most of the guns I’ve used in my life have been mildly modified to tweak their performance. In the case of an Open pistol, just about any modification is allowed; the only limit is how much money you have to spend. In my case, that amount was limited to around three grand, which in this game usually doesn’t get you a whole lot. Enter the CZ Czechmate.

Fully Loaded
Although CZ designed this pistol as an out-of-the-box race gun, it’s far from being a one trick pony. The Czechmate is quite a value, coming bundled with various options to allow the owner to configure the pistol in different ways. It arrives with a compensator, but there’s also an excellent set of iron sights and a spare barrel. The compensator is designed for high-pressure loads in 9mm cases, duplicating the ballistics of the .38 Super cartridge and bumping the Czechmate into the Major caliber category for USPSA and IPSC competitions. An extra barrel allows the owner to reconfigure it as a regular 9mm for events like Steel Challenge, with a much lower power factor.

Other bonus items in the package include four magazines, three that hold 20 rounds and one that swallows 26 rounds. This alone represents almost $300 of value with the current price of competition magazines. Additional parts include a loader, a spare extractor, an extra slide release, and four replacement slide release pins.

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