In last week’s post, I dissected the wedge into its relative component parts to explore what really makes a wedge work. Like any golf club, wedges are a combination of components – head, shaft and grip – assembled to a certain set of specifications for length, overall weight, shaft flex, lie angle, swingweight, etc. And like any other golf clubs, if any of these components or specifications are not right for an individual golfer, performance will suffer. What’s amazing to me in my 30-plus years of studying wedge performance and the wedge category as a business and golfers’ relationships with their wedges is how little attention this “stepchild in the bag” gets from the top down.
I realize that “stepchild” moniker is pretty tough, but an objective review of wedge designs and models over the past five decades shows this category is the least evolved of the entire golf equipment industry. And as I have taken sneak peeks into golfers’ bags for over 40 years, I’m constantly amazed at how mis-matched and ill-suited most of their wedge set make-ups really are. But back to my observation of five decades of golf equipment evolution.
Over that period, we’ve seen drivers evolve from persimmon to the original metal woods, to Big Bertha-sized heads, to the current 460cc standard, to adjustable hosels, to composite construction, adjustable weights, high MOI, and ever-increasing technologies to make faces faster and faster.
Fairway “wood” technology has essentially kept pace with drivers.
Iron designs have evolved from one piece forged blades and a smattering of very simple perimeter weighted designs to the modern multi-piece marvels that deliver ever-increasing distance, higher ball flight and much more forgiveness.
And hybrids came out of nowhere only 20 years ago and now have achieved what must be 100% adoption by golfers at all skill levels.
Maybe the putter category has been the most changed of all. The Ping Anser and all its copies replaced the Bullseye and 8802-style blades almost overnight. Mallets got ever larger and delivered a higher MOI than had been thought possible. Face-balancing, lie angle balancing and other technologies have never stopped evolving. Milled manufacturing, various face inserts, broomstick, armlock, belly putters…the variety in the category is staggering.
But what about the old bottom-of-the bag wedges? Compared to these other categories, most models of wedges in the stores today are not all that different from wedge designs as far back as the 1960s. A simple, one-piece head, either forged or cast into shape, with the only serious attention having been given to CNC-milling of grooves to exact specifications and the creation of a practically endless selection of specialized grinds. And when you tear them down to shaping, one brand pretty much looks like another…and they all pretty much work the same, too.
In reality, wedge performance is not all that different from that of any other golf club category.
The exact distribution of the 290-300 grams of mass in the clubhead is what determines ball flight performance, i.e. trajectory, overall distance, spin and forgiveness. Wedges are not immune to the “laws” of golf club design:
- Weight low in the clubhead produces higher ball flight with minimal spin.
- Lack of mass behind off-center hits reduces the smash factor and therefore distance is lost and spin is reduced.
While wedges were mostly unchanged – except for graphics and finish – from the 1980s to the early 2010s, almost all manufacturers have begun to migrate a slight bit of mass higher in the clubhead over the last couple of generations. Look at the offerings from all major brands and you can see this, and you can see that they are all still almost just alike.
This modest movement of mass puts a slight bit more “oomph” behind that shot hit a bit higher in the face, but moving as little mass as most have done really doesn’t do all that much, but it does help a little.
This image illustrates just how much different the thickness is in the typical mainstream wedge head design from the lower part of the face to the upper 2/3. Elite players have learned how to consistently (but not always) make contact between the 2nd and 5th grooves (A), so that the amount of mass behind and above the point of impact is optimized. But even those players occasionally catch one a bit higher (B) and the result is that smash factor is reduced by up to 20%, and the ball pops up higher and doesn’t fly as far or with as much spin.
When you see a tour professional come up 3o to 50 or more feet short in wedge range, understand they just do NOT misjudge their swings by that much. No, those shots happen when they miss that low-face impact point by as little as a quarter inch . . . because that result is built into the clubhead itself and the laws of golf club physics do not know who the golfer is. High-face impact causes serious impact degradation for anyone.
It really is that simple…and that challenging. If you really want to change wedge performance, you simply have to significantly change your wedges…not just the brand, but the clubhead design, shaft and specifications must be optimized.
And that’s what has been keeping me up nights for over 30 years…
