You’ve probably noticed most wedges on the market meet the modern definition of a “blade” and, for the most part, they don’t look much different than wedges of the past.
That’s not to say nothing has changed but the evolution of the wedge seldom manifests itself in the form of visible technology. And when there is technology you can see, it’s rarely found where golfers are looking for it.
Why do most wedges look like blades?
On its face, the ubiquity of blade-style wedges may seem a bit odd.
The use of blade irons on pro tours is in decline. And while there are a few misguided blades will make me a better ball striker types among us, the category accounts for the smallest percentage of iron sales.
By contrast, the game-improvement iron category is the most popular at retail. You can chalk that up to larger, more forgiving and, ultimately, easier-to-hit heads. Most of us need all the help we can get and, with that, it may seem a bit odd that game-improvement wedges are few and far between.
That’s caused more than one golfer to wonder: Do I need a more forgiving wedge?
We touched on this question when we offered our comparison of set wedges vs. specialty wedges, but a comment on a recent article got me thinking that it might be worth a deeper dive.
That question was in response to our recent story on the new Callaway Opus wedges. A reader wondered if the Opus Platinum was more forgiving than the standard Opus.
That sounds like a should be a simple yes or no question but there’s some complexity here that I thought was worth exploring.
What is forgiveness?
Ask 10 R&D guys to define golf club forgiveness and you’ll get 10 different answers. That said, forgiveness is often used interchangeably with MOI (moment of inertia). At best, it’s a simplification but that’s understandable. Golfers can easily wrap their heads around the idea that higher MOI=more forgiving, even if the realities of forgiveness are plenty more complex.
Simply put, moment of inertia is a measurement of an object’s resistance to twisting along a given axis.
In the golf club world, twisting is what happens to a golf club when you miss the center of the face. The trap that golfers fall into is believing that higher MOI guarantees straighter ball flight.
While more MOI can help with straight flight, when poorly executed, it can actually work against it. At the most basic level, MOI doesn’t preserve straightness. It preserves ball speed. In testing across all club types, we often find the highest MOI clubs have among the tightest standard deviations for ball speed but aren’t always among the straightest.
It’s all about the collision
What’s perhaps most relevant to this discussion is that the faster and more direct the collision, the more MOI matters.
With a driver, the collision between ball and club happens at high speed and comparatively low loft. It’s direct. Under those conditions, MOI matters a bunch.
With wedges, however, the collision happens at much lower speed and, because of the higher loft, the collision isn’t so much a direct impact as it is a glancing blow. Under those conditions, MOI matters significantly less.
I should also mention that as loft increases, there’s a greater opportunity for the ball to slide up the face, resulting in distance loss. It’s the reason why data from shot tracking platforms suggests that most average golfers would be well served by avoiding high-lofted wedges.
But anyway, to bring this full circle, while you might want a more forgiving wedge, you probably don’t need a higher MOI wedge.
Let’s tweak the previous question just a bit.
What is wedge forgiveness?
With most clubs, forgiveness is anything that helps achieve a decent result when you miss the sweet spot.
With wedges, it might be helpful to think of “forgiveness” as the thing that helps you find the sweet spot more often.
It’s the reason Vokey says forgiveness comes from the grind.
Not to harp too much on the fitting element of this again but the grind (simply, the shape of the sole) that fits your swing (and course conditions) will help you find the center of the face more often. The grind is the thing that helps you reliably live in the sweet spot between thinning and chunking and that creates more forgiveness.
Where it gets tricky is that, because we likely don’t deliver club the same way, my most forgiving wedge (the one with the grind that allows me to hit sweet spot most often) likely isn’t yours.
Unlike MOI, we can’t just put a number on it and call it good.
That said, in the interest of simplifying things a bit, I’m willing to paint with some broad strokes today.
And so, prefaced with generally …
Wedge forgiveness exists on a spectrum.
Narrow soles with generous relief – the stuff that’s often classified as extremely versatile – are almost invariably low-bounce. These designs can be considered less forgiving because, while the sole design creates opportunities to hit a variety of shots, it also introduces an exceedingly small margin for error.
The best example right now is the Vokey SM10 T Grind. The most popular lob wedge on the PGA Tour, the T Grind offers generous heel, toe and trailing-edge relief. Those elements allow the leading edge to sit tight to the ground in nearly any orientation. If you love manipulating the face around the green, picking balls of tight lies, hitting high flop shots or generally going nuts because you can, there’s nothing better.
Take a full swing in conditions that are a little soft or come in just a bit steep and welcome to Chunk City. The T Grind will reward your creativity and punish your arrogance.
On the forgiving side of our spectrum are wedges with full wide soles and minimal relief. These are almost always high-bounce options and what you’ll find on perimeter-weighted game-improvement wedges like the Cleveland CBX, Callaway CB and COBRA SNAKEBITE-X. And while the larger, more perimeter-weighted, heads are often credited with boosting forgiveness, the wide sole is where a good bit of it actually comes from.
If you’re more comfortable with a larger profile and aren’t looking for versatility around the green, there’s no reason not to play an oversized wedge but what I want you to understand is that you can find similar forgiveness from the more compact traditional wedge designs found in nearly every lineup.
Last month, our Connor Lindeman wrote a short piece about how moving to the Vokey K Grind improved his wedge play significantly. The K Grind isn’t a perimeter-weighted or cavity-back game improvement club but it does offer a full, wide sole. And, hey, if you’re not a Vokey fan, nearly every manufacturer offers something similar.
If you want something you can reliably hit from a fairway or reasonable rough, wide-sole wedges generally offer the best protection against chunking and, because those same wide soles tend to glide across the turf more than they bounce off it, they can sometimes help prevent sculling, too.
And that brings us back to the original question …
Is the Opus Platinum more forgiving than the standard Opus Wedge?
If we’re basing our analysis of wedge forgiveness strictly off the grinds, then the answer is no. Take, for example, the Opus Platinum Z Grind. It’s not quite as aggressive as a T Grind but it does have a narrow-ish sole with generous relief.
The Opus Platinum S Grind is a mid-to-high-bounce offering but the sole isn’t as wide as the W Grind found in the standard lineup. With that, there’s an argument to be made that the most forgiving option is found in the standard Opus lineup.
There is a bit of nuance here. (So much for broad strokes.)
The benefit of finding the sweet spot on your wedges is lower launch, more spin and a flatter trajectory (seriously, you probably want to hit your wedges lower than you do). That’s the recipe for precision and control in the short game.
The challenge in that is that amateurs tend to deliver wedges with more loft than Tour pros. They deloft significantly. We don’t. To put reasonable numbers on it, you want your launch angle to be half the loft minus two. For example, the ideal launch angle for your 54-degree sand wedge is 25 degrees (54/2-2). That’s what’s going to give you ideal ball flight.
What Opus Platinum does is use a giant chunk of tungsten in the top line to raise the center of gravity. Essentially, that improves performance higher on the face and if it works as intended, it should help average golfers generate closer to Tour-like launch conditions without the burden of swinging like a Tour pro.
As an aside, this approach doesn’t lend itself well to wide soles because a wider sole drags weight lower in the head, working against the efforts to raise the center of gravity.
For the road
If you struggle to make consistent contact, it’s worth taking the time to find the right grind. That said, if broad-stroke forgiveness is what you’re looking for, a wider sole with more bounce is likely your best bet.
If you generally make solid contact but deliver your wedges with more loft than is desirable, then something like the Opus Platinum might make sense. It’s designed to provide something closer to Tour-like launch conditions for swings that are less than Tour-like.
I suppose all of this gives us two reasonable ways to think about wedge forgiveness.
Notably, neither relies on perimeter weighting and higher MOI to any significant degree.
The sole and center of gravity – that’s where you’ll find forgiveness in the wedge category.
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