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The Wedge Guy: What’s in a name?

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There was an extremely romantic line from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare that professes, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” That may be so, as it implies that the name of the rose has nothing to do with its quality as a beautiful, fragrant flower.

Shakespeare aside, though, the fact is that we do assign meaning to the names of things. We know what “beer” is (or at least should be). Likewise, the words shovel, hammer, water, and so on pretty clearly tell us what to expect when we see it and use it. A rake cannot pass for a shovel, a hair brush makes a pretty poor hammer, and a tall glass of sand wouldn’t really quench your thirst, would it?

But when it comes to names of things, the golf club industry has ventured far afield, especially when comes to the “pitching wedge.” Hear me out and you just might improve your scoring range performance.

This week’s post was “inspired” by a long-time golf industry friend of mine — a former PGA Professional and industry rep — who was coming back into golf after a few years off to tend to a young family. I was flattered that he called me to chat about wedges, leading with “What the h— has happened to irons?”

He went on to explain that he had just been through a fitting and was “prescribed” one of the new iron models from a major brand (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty). He was floored that the “P-club” which most people call a “pitching wedge” was built to 42 degrees of loft.

Let’s venture back a few decades when iron sets took on numbers. That last club after the 9-iron – the one with the highest loft of 50 to 52 degrees – eventually came to be known as the “pitching wedge.” MacGregor often numbered that iron “10”, and others simply put “W” on it, but the club was the same, about 35 inches long and loft of 50 to 52 degrees.

Those professionals of the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s learned to be masters with their “pitching wedges,” hitting all kinds of magical scoring shots from about 115-120 yards and in. They could hit them low, high, and in between. They could turn the ball over or hit a little cut. They could make the ball hit and stop on a dime, or release and roll out a bit.

Even though they all carried a “sand wedge,” the legends recognized it as a specialized tool for bunker play and only certain shots around the green where the enhanced bounce and loft would give them a bit more flexibility with their creative shotmaking. For most, the “pitching wedge” was the prime scoring club.

But as perimeter weighting evolved, iron lofts began a path of constant strengthening, to a point where the “P-club” really wasn’t a wedge at all. It can be argued — no, proven — that true “pitching” capability ended when the loft of that club dipped below 48 degrees. By the way, those legendary pros and elite players also mastered bump-and-run shots, most often turning to their 8-iron or 9-iron, which had loft of, you guessed it, about 42-44 degrees of loft.

So, here we are in the 2020s. Golf hasn’t changed all that much, but your bag of tools sure has. You certainly need a selection of clubs in your bag in a range of lofts from 20 to about 45 degrees for your full-swing approach shots to give you consistent distance gapping so your approach play can be optimized. It’s your preference as to how many of those are irons, hybrids, or high-loft fairway woods – whatever makes you better.

But you also need a true “pitching wedge” of 49-53 degrees of loft, in addition to one or two wedges of more loft for those more challenging greenside recoveries. In modern golf club parlance, you might call that club your “gap wedge,” but it can be so much more than just the club you use when you are inside “P-club” range.

Our research indicates most golfers will see more consistent distance control and improved spin if you will learn to hit your less-than-full wedge shots with your “true pitching wedge” of 49-53 degrees of loft. The dynamics of that club greatly reduce the ball’s tendency to slide up the clubface, which always costs you distance control and spin. And it is actually more forgiving of shots hit slightly fat or thin. So there’s that, too.

I’ve been accused of being “old school”, and maybe I am, but calling a golf club one thing doesn’t make it something it isn’t. And your “P-club” is no longer a true pitching wedge any more than calling your 5-iron a driver makes it one.

More from the Wedge Guy

 

Terry Koehler is a fourth generation Texan and a graduate of Texas A&M University. Over his 40-year career in the golf industry, he has created over 100 putter designs, sets of irons and drivers, and in 2014, he put together the team that reintroduced the Ben Hogan brand to the golf equipment industry. Since the early 2000s, Terry has been a prolific writer, sharing his knowledge as “The Wedge Guy”.   But his most compelling work is in the wedge category. Since he first patented his “Koehler Sole” in the early 1990s, he has been challenging “conventional wisdom” reflected in ‘tour design’ wedges. The performance of his wedge designs have stimulated other companies to move slightly more mass toward the top of the blade in their wedges, but none approach the dramatic design of his Edison Forged wedges, which have been robotically proven to significantly raise the bar for wedge performance. Terry serves as Chairman and Director of Innovation for Edison Golf – check it out at www.EdisonWedges.com.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. Nathan Riggle

    May 31, 2023 at 1:26 pm

    This is a good article, but in reality, the set “gap wedge” is a old school spec’d pitching wedge. So yes, a PW is no longer a “traditional” PW but the “gap w” is, so things have changed but at the same time, all that really has changed is the number that is stamped on the bottom of a sole.

  2. Pingback: The Wedge Guy: Are you making the game too hard? - Fly Pin High

  3. Pingback: The Wedge Guy: Are you making the game too hard? – GolfWRX

  4. ericsokp

    May 20, 2023 at 12:36 am

    Personally, I was saddened to see the Ben Hogan Company go out of business (again!) as they were about the only OEM that typically started their iron sets at around 22* and then proceeded in even 4* increments. This gave consistent gapping and you ended up with a 46* PW and a 50* Utility/Gap Wedge, with Sand Wedges then available in the 55* – 60* range.

    If I was to buy a newer set of irons with the stronger lofts prevalent today, I’d have to have a cheat sheet to remember what irons are for what distance.

  5. Pickles

    May 4, 2023 at 4:12 pm

    Terry, why are you so partial to the name of the club?
    I disagree with you on three points. If TLDR: let’s just name it a 10 iron like Honma and move on, who cares.

    1. You want to emphasize that it’s a Pitching wedge because that’s it’s name, but undermine your own argument when you mention that the club had varying names historically:
    “And your “P-club” is no longer a true pitching wedge any more than calling your 5-iron a driver makes it one.”…”MacGregor often numbered that iron “10””. If all manufactures stamped it as a 10 iron, would you be happy?

    2. You argue that golf is the same, but our equipment has changed. “So, here we are in the 2020s. Golf hasn’t changed all that much, but your bag of tools sure has.”
    I agree the equipment is hugely different, but so too is the game. The courses are hundreds (if not near a thousand) of yards longer. The agronomy can be much more extreme with faster greens, tighter fairways and aprons. Longer, thicker rough. The top level pro/amateur players are stronger and smarter with advanced analytics that trickle down into the regular game. So no, I don’t believe the game is the same, no game is the same compared to 75 years ago. That little chippy 8iron you mention wouldn’t be playable for 98% of the shots I hit in tournaments.

    3. You note golfers are best with partial wedge shots: “Our research indicates most golfers will see more consistent distance control and improved spin if you will learn to hit your less-than-full wedge shots with your “true pitching wedge” of 49-53 degrees of loft.”
    This finding is opposite to Dave Pelz’s, that golfers can more easily replicate consistent distances with full swings. He notes this as the catalyst of his invention of the lob wedge, it was easier for players to make a full swing 80 (or whatever) yard shot than a partial swing to produce the same distance.

    • Reality Check

      May 15, 2023 at 9:57 pm

      LOL – “that little chippy 8 iron wouldn’t play on 98% of my tourney rounds.”

      You might want to tell that to Jim Furyk, who made a career (and won a major, and shot 58 on tour) by being deadly around the greens with a toe down chipping motion where he used all the irons in the bag to roll chips up to the cup.

      https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mp64n

      But you’re such a baller, do tell us again how the game has changed and you can’t play that way anymore.

      • Terry Koehler

        May 18, 2023 at 9:25 am

        I like Furyk’s suggestion for a solid chipping technique, but this article is referring to pitch shots, not chipping. And for those, you need a different technique and a club that is at least 49-30 degrees of loft. Every golfer’s arsenal should include good chipping and good pitching techniques and tools.

        • Reality Check

          May 23, 2023 at 1:56 pm

          “By the way, those legendary pros and elite players also mastered bump-and-run shots, most often turning to their 8-iron or 9-iron, which had loft of, you guessed it, about 42-44 degrees of loft.”

          I get what you are saying – but truly, I think it’s abit odd to make these bright line designations between chips, pitches, lobs, bump and runs, etc. The reality is that golfers are faced with a variety of short game situations and a good deal of creativity is required. I very much agree with what you said in the article, and completely disagree with Pickles. There are a lot of ways to go about things, and just because one player uses a high lofted wedges inside 80 yards, it does not mean that is the only way to do things.

  6. WoodenHead

    May 4, 2023 at 12:02 am

    So true! It became much more difficult to chip the modern urethane covered golf balls with anything less than a club with at least 52 degrees!

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Opinion & Analysis

The 2 primary challenges golf equipment companies face

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As the editor-in-chief of this website and an observer of the GolfWRX forums and other online golf equipment discourse for over a decade, I’m pretty well attuned to the grunts and grumbles of a significant portion of the golf equipment purchasing spectrum. And before you accuse me of lording above all in some digital ivory tower, I’d like to offer that I worked at golf courses (public and private) for years prior to picking up my pen, so I’m well-versed in the non-degenerate golf equipment consumers out there. I touched (green)grass (retail)!

Complaints about the ills of and related to the OEMs usually follow some version of: Product cycles are too short for real innovation, tour equipment isn’t the same as retail (which is largely not true, by the way), too much is invested in marketing and not enough in R&D, top staffer X hasn’t even put the new driver in play, so it’s obviously not superior to the previous generation, prices are too high, and on and on.

Without digging into the merits of any of these claims, which I believe are mostly red herrings, I’d like to bring into view of our rangefinder what I believe to be the two primary difficulties golf equipment companies face.

One: As Terry Koehler, back when he was the CEO of Ben Hogan, told me at the time of the Ft Worth irons launch, if you can’t regularly hit the golf ball in a coin-sized area in the middle of the face, there’s not a ton that iron technology can do for you. Now, this is less true now with respect to irons than when he said it, and is less and less true by degrees as the clubs get larger (utilities, fairways, hybrids, drivers), but there remains a great deal of golf equipment truth in that statement. Think about it — which is to say, in TL;DR fashion, get lessons from a qualified instructor who will teach you about the fundamentals of repeatable impact and how the golf swing works, not just offer band-aid fixes. If you can’t repeatably deliver the golf club to the golf ball in something resembling the manner it was designed for, how can you expect to be getting the most out of the club — put another way, the maximum value from your investment?

Similarly, game improvement equipment can only improve your game if you game it. In other words, get fit for the clubs you ought to be playing rather than filling the bag with the ones you wish you could hit or used to be able to hit. Of course, don’t do this if you don’t care about performance and just want to hit a forged blade while playing off an 18 handicap. That’s absolutely fine. There were plenty of members in clubs back in the day playing Hogan Apex or Mizuno MP-32 irons who had no business doing so from a ballstriking standpoint, but they enjoyed their look, feel, and complementary qualities to their Gatsby hats and cashmere sweaters. Do what brings you a measure of joy in this maddening game.

Now, the second issue. This is not a plea for non-conforming equipment; rather, it is a statement of fact. USGA/R&A limits on every facet of golf equipment are detrimental to golf equipment manufacturers. Sure, you know this, but do you think about it as it applies to almost every element of equipment? A 500cc driver would be inherently more forgiving than a 460cc, as one with a COR measurement in excess of 0.83. 50-inch shafts. Box grooves. And on and on.

Would fewer regulations be objectively bad for the game? Would this erode its soul? Fortunately, that’s beside the point of this exercise, which is merely to point out the facts. The fact, in this case, is that equipment restrictions and regulations are the slaughterbench of an abundance of innovation in the golf equipment space. Is this for the best? Well, now I’ve asked the question twice and might as well give a partial response, I guess my answer to that would be, “It depends on what type of golf you’re playing and who you’re playing it with.”

For my part, I don’t mind embarrassing myself with vintage blades and persimmons chasing after the quasi-spiritual elevation of a well-struck shot, but that’s just me. Plenty of folks don’t give a damn if their grooves are conforming. Plenty of folks think the folks in Liberty Corner ought to add a prison to the museum for such offences. And those are just a few of the considerations for the amateur game — which doesn’t get inside the gallery ropes of the pro game…

Different strokes in the game of golf, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I believe equipment company engineers are genuinely trying to build better equipment year over year. The marketing departments are trying to find ways to make this equipment appeal to the broadest segment of the golf market possible. All of this against (1) the backdrop of — at least for now — firm product cycles. And golfers who, with their ~15 average handicap (men), for the most part, are not striping the golf ball like Tiger in his prime and seem to have less and less time year over year to practice and improve. (2) Regulations that massively restrict what they’re able to do…

That’s the landscape as I see it and the real headwinds for golf equipment companies. No doubt, there’s more I haven’t considered, but I think the previous is a better — and better faith — point of departure when formulating any serious commentary on the golf equipment world than some of the more cynical and conspiratorial takes I hear.

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m worthy of an Adam Hadwin-esque security guard tackle? Let me know in the comments.

@golfoncbs The infamous Adam Hadwin tackle ? #golf #fyp #canada #pgatour #adamhadwin ? Ghibli-style nostalgic waltz – MaSssuguMusic

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Fore Love of Golf: Introducing a new club concept

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Episode #16 brings us Cliff McKinney. Cliff is the founder of Old Charlie Golf Club, a new club, and concept, to be built in the Florida panhandle. The model is quite interesting and aims to make great, private golf more affordable. We hope you enjoy the show!

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Opinion & Analysis

On Scottie Scheffler wondering ‘What’s the point of winning?’

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Last week, I came across a reel from BBC Sport on Instagram featuring Scottie Scheffler speaking to the media ahead of The Open at Royal Portrush. In it, he shared that he often wonders what the point is of wanting to win tournaments so badly — especially when he knows, deep down, that it doesn’t lead to a truly fulfilling life.

 

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“Is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf? Yeah, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it because I’ve literally worked my entire life to be good at this sport,” Scheffler said. “To have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think, is a pretty cool feeling. To get to live out your dreams is very special, but at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I’m not out here to inspire someone to be the best player in the world, because what’s the point?”

Ironically — or perhaps perfectly — he went on to win the claret jug.

That question — what’s the point of winning? — cuts straight to the heart of the human journey.

As someone who’s spent over two decades in the trenches of professional golf, and in deep study of the mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the game, I see Scottie’s inner conflict as a sign of soul evolution in motion.

I came to golf late. I wasn’t a junior standout or college All-American. At 27, I left a steady corporate job to see if I could be on the PGA Tour starting as a 14-handicap, average-length hitter. Over the years, my journey has been defined less by trophies and more by the relentless effort to navigate the deeply inequitable and gated system of professional golf — an effort that ultimately turned inward and helped me evolve as both a golfer and a person.

One perspective that helped me make sense of this inner dissonance around competition and our culture’s tendency to overvalue winning is the idea of soul evolution.

The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies has done extensive research on reincarnation, and Netflix’s Surviving Death (Episode 6) explores the topic, too. Whether you take it literally or metaphorically, the idea that we’re on a long arc of growth — from beginner to sage elder — offers a profound perspective.

If you accept the premise literally, then terms like “young soul” and “old soul” start to hold meaning. However, even if we set the word “soul” aside, it’s easy to see that different levels of life experience produce different worldviews.

Newer souls — or people in earlier stages of their development — may be curious and kind but still lack discernment or depth. There is a naivety, and they don’t yet question as deeply, tending to see things in black and white, partly because certainty feels safer than confronting the unknown.

As we gain more experience, we begin to experiment. We test limits. We chase extreme external goals — sometimes at the expense of health, relationships, or inner peace — still operating from hunger, ambition, and the fragility of the ego.

It’s a necessary stage, but often a turbulent and unfulfilling one.

David Duval fell off the map after reaching World No. 1. Bubba Watson had his own “Is this it?” moment with his caddie, Ted Scott, after winning the Masters.

In Aaron Rodgers: Enigma, reflecting on his 2011 Super Bowl win, Rodgers said:

“Now I’ve accomplished the only thing that I really, really wanted to do in my life. Now what? I was like, ‘Did I aim at the wrong thing? Did I spend too much time thinking about stuff that ultimately doesn’t give you true happiness?’”

Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

Eventually, though, something shifts.

We begin to see in shades of gray. Winning, dominating, accumulating—these pursuits lose their shine. The rewards feel more fleeting. Living in a constant state of fight-or-flight makes us feel alive, yes, but not happy and joyful.

Compassion begins to replace ambition. Love, presence, and gratitude become more fulfilling than status, profits, or trophies. We crave balance over burnout. Collaboration over competition. Meaning over metrics.

Interestingly, if we zoom out, we can apply this same model to nations and cultures. Countries, like people, have a collective “soul stage” made up of the individuals within them.

Take the United States, for example. I’d place it as a mid-level soul: highly competitive and deeply driven, but still learning emotional maturity. Still uncomfortable with nuance. Still believing that more is always better. Despite its global wins, the U.S. currently ranks just 23rd in happiness (as of 2025). You might liken it to a gifted teenager—bold, eager, and ambitious, but angsty and still figuring out how to live well and in balance. As much as a parent wants to protect their child, sometimes the child has to make their own mistakes to truly grow.

So when Scottie Scheffler wonders what the point of winning is, I don’t see someone losing strength.

I see someone evolving.

He’s beginning to look beyond the leaderboard. Beyond metrics of success that carry a lower vibration. And yet, in a poetic twist, Scheffler did go on to win The Open. But that only reinforces the point: even at the pinnacle, the question remains. And if more of us in the golf and sports world — and in U.S. culture at large — started asking similar questions, we might discover that the more meaningful trophy isn’t about accumulating or beating others at all costs.

It’s about awakening and evolving to something more than winning could ever promise.

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