A wedge fitting is something that every golfer should go through. For the sake of an hour or so it will improve your scoring, confidence and give you a greater understanding of your scoring clubs.
Moortown’s Eddie Hammond, a PGA Professional, explains how it works and how it will benefit you.
Where to start?
It starts with the pitching wedge. Everyone loves a full swing club and most amateurs are uncomfortable hitting three-quarter and half pitching wedges and they have this huge gap between their pitching and sand wedge.
Irons are getting stronger these days and it’s leaving bigger and bigger gaps at the other end of the bag so we would really look at a proper gapping session.
So how are they hitting their pitching wedge and then we’d work out from there what we need to do in terms of how many clubs and how much space they’ve got in the bag.
What does that look like?
We will usually look at four or six degree increments between each wedge. You might have 16 degrees to fill which will often mean having an additional three wedges in there.
For some people it can feel like a minefield, there’s all this bounce, letters and grinds to consider but it is straightforward during a fitting.
I would always try and get the gap wedge to fit best and go from there. The gap wedge is the easiest one because, usually in whichever manufacturer, there’s one grind and there’s two options of bounce. It’s really easy. It’s more are you a shallow to medium divot person who plays on firm golf courses or are you a very steep, large divot person who plays on parkland, golf courses?
I would then look at angles of attack and where they’re hitting the ball off the face. If someone starts hitting the ball high up the clubface, the chances are there’s too little bounce so the club’s going in too far and getting it higher up. So you’d play with that a bit but mainly it’s the yardage off the pitching wedge.
What about a higher lofted wedge?
The conversation would probably begin with what club they like using out of the sand and some questions around that. Most people use their most lofted club out of the bunker so…
– Are you a good bunker player?
– Are you confident?
– Are the bunkers soft and fluffy?
– Or are they dry and fairly bare?
So soft and fluffy ones you are looking at more bounce with maybe a wider sole on the club in particular.
You’d be looking at 12-14 degrees of bounce for the golfer who struggles out of sand but you can get some good players who might be fine with a six or eight degrees of bounce.
What about the wedge between the gap and lob?
This will generally be a wedge of around 54-56 degrees. An initial question would be are you somebody who likes to pitch and chip with a square face all the time or are you somebody who likes to open it a little bit? So we would be looking to scale down the options in terms of the bounce. With a couple of couple of questions, you can go from six to four and then four to two.
So in the Titleist range, you’ve got the M and D grinds. So you’re looking at 12 degrees on the D and eight on the M. They’re the versatile ones.
Then you go back to the player’s course conditions – is it soft or firm? If you’re playing it forward, would you take a divot? Then you would ideally head to the chipping green and have a play around.
Does it matter if you’re a poor chipper?
A fitting will really help every golfer, even those who struggle with chipping or don’t think they’ve got any feel. If you give them a wedge at one end of the scale with high bounce and something a bit wider in the sole and then give them something a little less forgiving with a sharper, narrower sole and less bounce, they will be able to tell what is happening. Usually you can even see by the ball flight but they will be able to tell how it feels through the turf.
Why do we need new wedges?
The biggest thing most people see is how fast the ball stops because their wedges are far too old. On tour some players will change their lob wedge four times a year, sand wedge three, gap wedge two and pitching wedge once. They’re not wanting to maximise spin with the pitching wedge because they’re very good ball strikers and they can generate a lot of spin. But then in the lob wedge they want as much spin and as much control as possible.
I had a customer come in recently and his gap wedge was about five years old and his full swing had 5,500 revolutions of backspin, which is incredibly low because the grooves were so worn. He tried a new one and straightaway it was up to 9,900.
READ MORE: How Matt Fitzpatrick’s cross-handed chipping technique can help your short game
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