Opinion & Analysis
The Wedge Guy: You and your wedges (survey results part 2)
As I promised last week when I presented the first layer overview of the GolfWRX/Wedge Guy survey, today I’m going to dive into the section of the survey where you shared your thoughts and feelings about wedges and your wedge play. I’ve made a study of golfers and their wedges for nearly 30 years now, and have always found it fascinating. It also has helped me immensely in breaking from traditional wedge design to address what golfers have told me about where they need help most.
I’m proud that this insight gained from golfers over those years led me to develop “the Koehler sole,” which I patented back in 1990, and have brought to market as both the “Dual Bounce Sole®” and the “V-SOLE®”. That insight also guided me to begin to introduce higher and higher CG in wedges since the mid-90s (which almost all wedge companies have finally begun to do to one degree or another), and to create the first progressively weighted wedges with the SCOR™ line in 2011.
But this is about you and your wedges, so let’s dive right into what you all shared in the surveys.
First of all, you GolfWRX readers are way ahead of rank-and-file recreational golfers in the respect you show for your wedges, with 70 percent or more of you carrying at least four wedges, counting the set match “pitching wedge” that came with your set of irons. I’ve long been an advocate of having more wedges in your bag to give you more options in prime scoring range. As manufacturers have continually strengthened the lofts of the set-match pitching wedge, down to as low as 43-44 degrees in some models, it just makes sense.
Partly as a result of this attention, you GolfWRXers rated your wedge play much higher than golfers at large, based on my prior research. What I found interesting is that fewer of you rated your wedges play outside 75-90 yards as a strength of your game (26 percent) than you did on your wedge play inside 75-90 yards (30 percent). Almost 30 percent of you said your wedge play outside of 75-90 yards was “not as good as it should be,” but just 21 percent said the same about your wedge play outside 75-90 yards. It is generally accepted that full swings are harder to master than the partial swings those short-range shots require.
I have an intern student at University of Houston-Victoria diving into these surveys to cross-tabulate all the answers to reveal more interesting insight for all of us to share, but that is going to take a few weeks, I’m sure, as there is a lot of data here. But what my takeaway from this question is that the vast majority of revealed you have lots of opportunity to improve this segment of your game, as 70-75 percent of you rated your wedge play in both categories as average or below-average. One way to do that is to re-allocate your practice time to hit more wedge shots of different distances, really focusing on distance control. Which brings me to the next couple of questions.
Two questions are very closely linked, as proven by the answers you shared. Nearly an identical number of you responded that your full-swing trajectories were “about right,” and your distance control was “pretty good.” But the majority of you said your trajectories trended too high and your misses come up short almost all the time. You are not alone—my experience with wedge design and golfer feedback is that this majority of you GolfWRX readers is actually much better than the majority of all golfers.
The harsh reality is that this is not all your fault. While mastering wedge play is probably the hardest part of the game, the design of wedges aggravates these two problems. Robotic testing of wedges indicates that essentially all models on the market are very unforgiving of impact moving around the face. We all know that low-face impact, nearly bladed wedge shot is going to fly low and have lots of spin (i.e. “thin to win”). And that likewise, that shot you catch high in the face is going to fly high, come up short and have much less spin.
Tour professionals spend countless hours working to perfect their wedge impact point to be low on the face, a goal helped by the very tight-cut fairways they play. But for the rest of us playing higher-cut fairways, the ball is sitting up more and we are much more likely to catch the ball higher in the face, which—by design—causes the ball to fly higher and have less spin. Conventional wedges have as much as a 20 percent lower smash factor when impacted just half an inch above the “sweet spot.”
The fact is that consistent wedge distance control requires a consistent impact point, lower on the face. One way to try to improve in that regard is to focus your eyes on the forward edge of the ball when you are hitting any wedge shot, but particularly on full swing wedges. From a technique standpoint, your left (or lead) side must be more influential on these shots. In other words, try to make impact with your hands ahead of the clubhead. I’ll dive into that whole subject in a dedicated article soon.
I believe that this challenge of wedge play is aggravated by when and where the majority of you purchase your wedges—let me explain that reasoning.
The vast majority of you are playing relatively new wedges, with 36 percent having purchased them in the last year, and another 43 percent playing wedges that are 1-3 years old. That’s the good news—your wedges are relatively fresh. But now for the bad news.
Almost 45 percent of you said you purchased your wedges at a large off-course retailer, which means you most likely purchased wedges with a heavy, stiff steel shaft—but how does that compare to the shafts in your irons? Is it a match or even close? If not, I’ve learned that the wrong shaft is a huge factor in wedge play, as it creates a feel disconnect in prime scoring range. My experience is that, for most golfers, a thoughtful re-shafting of your wedges to produce the same weight and flex as in your irons will make a huge difference in your wedge-range performance.
This is getting a bit long so let me share another interesting takeaway from this survey, then leave you with another question to sound off about.
Less than 18 percent of you said your last purchase was of a different brand with the goal of improving your performance. I find that puzzling, as I’ll bet nearly 100 percent of you chose your last driver, putter or irons specifically with that goal in mind.
I can only take that to mean that you have relatively low expectations of improvement when you buy wedges—can you all share some thought with me to help me understand why that is?
Thanks, and I look forward to some lively dialog this week. I don’t chime in often to your comments, but I will this week if you want to have a discussion. Should be fun!
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
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!
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.
View this post on Instagram
“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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ChipNRun
Sep 24, 2019 at 10:10 am
Terry K. wrote…
“Less than 18 percent of you said your last purchase was of a different brand with the goal of improving your performance. I find that puzzling, as I’ll bet nearly 100 percent of you chose your last driver, putter or irons specifically with that goal in mind.”
In your Part 2 report, you said the WRXers seem to have better focus on wedges than the average golfer. Then you made the above “switching brands” statement.
As someone who tests out a lot of brands at expos and demo days, I can say that for IRONS most of the OEMs make at least one iron model I could play – as long as it had the right shaft. Not so for WEDGES.
For the most part, I rely on Cleveland and Callaway wedges. These two brands produce wedges that have worked in the past, so I mainly stay with them. It’s in part a time-saver. And, it’s easier to tweak the wedge game if you stick with a familiar hardware set.
My current wedge mix is Callaway MD3 48* and 54*, and MD-PM 60*. (I use 9i choke-down to bridge shortfalls with 48*). The shafts are all KBS Tour R-flex, 110 grams, slightly heavier than the KBS Tour 90 R-flex in my irons.
I had reshafted my Cle CG14 wedges with KBS Tour for their last two seasons, but was losing partial spin related to both used grooves and the ball I was playing.
In midspin balls, I went from Calla SuperSoft to SuperHot and picked up a bit more spin on partials from my MD3 family wedges. I wonder if part of my yardage gap in wedges may be due to ball cover.
I have a test pack of Ed Snell’s fairly hot MTB-X and MTB Black balls with the urethane covers. Ed suggests that golfers can get lower trajectory, better distance and more spin on their wedges with urethane covers, which grab the clubface better than midspin or certainly distance balls surlyn variants. He suggests part of the “high face” problem may be non-urethane balls climbing up the faces of wedges. BUT… due to real-life adventures I have not been able to test out the MTBs.
As for your other findings… on wedges I have the most distance control problems on my 3/4 wedge shots. It seems my 3/4 takeaway is the most difficult to manage for “top” position.
greg
Sep 22, 2019 at 1:09 pm
Terry
The Koehler design/comcept, compact head, higher CG, Vsole, thicker face, promote better ball striking. We have all owned/gamed low CG, thin faced blades, they just are not as efficient.
Promoting consistent, quality ball striking should be our highest priority.
Howard Theisman
Sep 20, 2019 at 4:50 pm
I went back to my PING EYE2 sand and lob wedges a couple years ago. Tried newer technology three times and found I’m more consistent with the EYE2s. And the grooves on cast iron clubs seem to wear considerably less. And some of the newer technology wedges have come out with the high toe design which is what the EYE2 wedges are. Interesting.
Jimmy Yoon
Sep 17, 2019 at 10:37 pm
How about kuch the douche? Kduooooooooooooche, kduooooooooooooooche, kduoooooooooooooche, kduooooooooooooooche, kduoooooooooooooche, kduooooooooooooooche, kduoooooooooooooche, kduooooooooooooooche. Kduooooooooooooche…..
BadAtWedging
Sep 17, 2019 at 7:59 pm
The idea that you don’t change brands is pretty simple… you have some major factors at play.
#1 people like having the same brand, generally. Switching brands is typically the 2nd factor when you feel like you can make a change. The PRIORITY is can you get a club that is obviously different. When it comes to something like irons, typically, you have to switch CATEGORIES to get different irons within the same brand.
When it comes to wedges, you can switch from a thin to a wide, a different grind, a different loft… all while maintaining the same brand. There’s not a lot of “super game improvement” wedges out there, and most people think nearly anyone can play a “normal” wedge. Thus, staying within brand is helpful for feel, and switching brands gains you little change. You can make those significant performance changes within brand, but if you want new GI irons because you don’t match well with a brand, you have to go to a different brand, generally.
George
Sep 17, 2019 at 7:48 pm
I play only partial shots once I get under 95 yards (GW)for the reasons Drew describes, distance control is too erratic. I disagree with the poster above about full vs. partial shots. Statistics prove that golfers are better off closer to the hole, so my strategy is get as close to the green as possible while avoiding any hazards.
Mike
Oct 12, 2019 at 8:04 am
Wow, interesting, I thought I was the only one not to ‘full swing’ under 100 yards.
Bob
Sep 17, 2019 at 5:43 pm
Thanks for all this work Terry… I find it fascinating. At the US Amateur, there was a story about one to the players whose highest lofted wedge was 56.. said his dad had told him if you have talent, you don’t need more than 56. I’ve never owned a 60 myself, playing PW, 52 & 56, and feel my short game is one of the strengths of my game. What are your thoughts on this set up strategy?
the dude
Sep 17, 2019 at 6:28 pm
ya…his dad is probably right…..(every tour player has a 58* or more in their bag)….fail.
ChipNRun
Sep 24, 2019 at 10:15 am
Golf Digest survey report: for half the tour players, 58* is their highest lofted wedge.
Rick McDowell
Sep 17, 2019 at 5:18 pm
Great insight as always on the topic of wedges.
With respect to the question of not buying wedges of a different brand to improve performance, I think many golfers don’t see or believe a company that claims there grooves present a significant advantage, etc.(ex. a reason to switch).In other words compared to say buying XYZ companies river because it goes further, there is no driving dynamic in most of our minds about switching brands to improve. What are you improving? This part of the game seems much more driven by what feels right than some marketing claim. I think some of us see this part of the game affected more by technique improvement than equipment enhancement. My 2 cents.
CarteDog350
Sep 17, 2019 at 4:13 pm
Well done Terry.
I carry four wedges and wedge play is probably strongest part of my game including putting. A friend of mine is a PGA instructor and he suggested I play the same shafts in my wedges as I do my irons. Can’t say enough ….Love the feeling of weight consistancy.
My instructor always said”You need a 50 yard shot” including the other clock positions to cover multiple yardages….Wedge play in my honest opinion is the best part of golf. It free’s the mind to hit shots that require imagination and finesse.
Keep up the good work.
Charlie Waffles
Sep 17, 2019 at 12:49 pm
I think our improvement in the wedge game goes hand in hand with how much we practice our mid and long range wedge shots. I for one put little time in my 60-95 3/4 wedge shot. Conversely I practice my shorter wedge and chip shots a lot. Being more accurate with the latter will get me into better scoring.
Scooter
Sep 17, 2019 at 12:03 pm
Terry, thanks for the article. With regards to your final question, I believe many GolfWRX-ers are brand centric, like and are comfortable with the brand they’re playing, and feel that their brand has a wide enough range of wedge options (lofts, grinds, shafts, profiles, cavity/blade etc.) to allow them to make any change they desire. Some is likely $$ driven, where breaking away from their comfort brand to another brand feels “risky”. Being able to demo new brands of interest on the course would help alot in this regard, but is often not viable. And I’m sure we’ve all had fittings that led us a bit astray. Personally, practice seems like the much bigger level to my improvement than wedge differences between various manufacturers.
Dan
Sep 17, 2019 at 10:41 am
I guess my question is related to shaft differences. I play SF i95 shafts in my irons, but play S400 shafts in my RTX4 wedges. Wedge play is a strong point in my game, and I think I like the heavier feel, especially on partial swings. Are you suggesting that reshafting wedges in a SF i95 may provide me a benefit? How? Commonality? I know a lot of players play with wedges shafts…. maybe I should try that.
Terry Koehler
Sep 19, 2019 at 9:12 am
Dan, my experience is that when golfers re-shaft their wedges to something that more closely resembles the weight and flex of their irons, they really like the improved feel and performance. It’s certainly worth a try. The reason most golfers play “wedge flex” shafts in their wedges is because that is what they come with at retail, and no one talks about the shaft — all the dialog from the OEMs is about bounce and grooves.
If you decide to try re-shafting your wedges, let us all know how the experiment works out.
brian
Sep 17, 2019 at 10:28 am
“It is generally accepted that full swings are harder to master than the partial swings those short-range shots require.”
I don’t know where this is “generally accepted”. Not a single golfer I play with would rather be 50-70 yards out over 100. Half-swings with wedges are the most uncomfortable shots in golf, if you ask me.
Drew
Sep 17, 2019 at 12:08 pm
I for one am in the boat described. I carry 4 wedges and I don’t trust anything below the pitching wedge to go the distance it should on full swings (pop them up). I’d rather have a partial wedge shot anyday.
I also didn’t carry a wedge until I was 17, so I learned to do a lot with a 9-iron. That may play a part with my comfort in partial swings and creativity in manipulating the club to get the results I want.
Terry Koehler
Sep 18, 2019 at 5:19 pm
Oops, that was meant to read “easier”. My bad, didn’t catch that in proofing. Thanks for pointing that out, Brian.