January 2008

The January issue of GOLF Magazine has a short article on page 99 titled, “Do Worn-Out Grooves Decrease Spin ?”

They clearly state in the subhead that “Your favorite old wedge may be killing your chances of making your wedge shots grab”.

The article notes that golfers change drivers and putters like they “change socks”, but tend to keep the same old wedges in their bags. I think that’s because wedge technology hasn’t changed significantly in over 25 years, so there is no apparently compelling reason to buy a new one or two.

But GOLF Magazine had some scientific testing done by Hot Stix Golf in Arizona, comparing an old 1987 Wilson Staff Sand wedge to a new Titleist Vokey Spin Milled wedge. Their findings were that the new wedge produced over twice the spin on a 25 yard pitch shot !!!

Now you know it to be far from me to recommend anything but an EIDOLON V-SOLE wedge for your bag, and we know ours deliver even more spin than the Vokey, Cleveland or any others on the market, but this test proves that you are throwing away scoring opportunities if you have an older wedge in your bag – even if it is a “favorite”.

Take advantage of what the Rules of Golf allow, golfers, and your scoring will improve immediately.

If you have any wedge, spin or short-game related questions, you can always feel free to use the ASK TERRY button in the right-hand sidebar and I’ll answer your question right here on The Wedge Guy.

My trip to Florida the past two weeks began with me teaching a 3-day PCS School on WedgeFitting.

This was a comprehensive course for professional clubfitters and clubmakers that covered all aspects of wedges, from general definitions and discussions of bounce, spin, etc., to fitting, building and selling quality wedges to their golfers.

I’ll be sharing more from this course, but today’s topic is the most overlooked component of wedges by the major manufacturers – THE SHAFT !!!

A common saying in golf is that “the shaft is the engine of the golf club”, and I don’t have to tell you how noisy the market is for high-tech graphite and even steel shafts. You can spend up to $1,000 and more for the hottest new driver shaft today.

Shafts have been specifically developed for fairway woods, hybrids, irons and putters.

So why is it that the major brands all still make ONE shaft available in their wedges ? And that one offering is a 25-year-old steel shaft that weighs a ton ? And that shaft is available in a one-size/one-flex-fits-all offering from the two brands that dominate the market, and all their followers ?

This makes no sense at all to me. And it gets worse.

One of the exercises in the class was to go out and test 12 wedges from different manufacturers to gauge performance in real conditions. When we got back from testing, we measured the technical specifications of each wedge tested.

Here was the overwhelmingly telling result of that testing:

Every wedge from ever major brand was fitted with a True Temper® Dynamic Gold® shaft marked “Wedge” flex. On the frequency scale, all those shafts fell between 7.0 and 7.5, which is a “Super X” – off the charts !!!!

In other words, they are so stiff, there’s no way they could offer any quality feel at all.

And you’re stuck with them.

In contrast, the EIDOLON wedges, with our Rifle® Spinner® shafts in much softer flexes, rated much higher than all the others in the feel category, as well as trajectory control, and spin.

But in fairness, two others rated better in feel than the top offering from the major brands. Both were “store-grade” wedges with much softer shafts !

The moral of this story is that off-the-shelf wedges – even from the major brands – have shafts that are way too stiff and heavy to provide optimum feel. Your only option is to demand something different or have your favorite wedges reshafted with something softer.

You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes in your scoring.