Bench Notes › Monsoon window
Bounce for the Six Weeks the Desert Goes Soft
Somewhere in the first fortnight of July the ground around here changes character. It happens fast enough that players notice it as a sudden loss of form rather than as a change in conditions, and the phone calls we get in the last week of July are almost all variations on the same sentence: I have started hitting my wedges fat and I do not know why.
You have not started hitting them fat. The turf stopped supporting the sole you were carrying.
What the monsoon actually does to the surface
Between late June and the middle of September, moisture arrives in short violent bursts in the afternoon and then the sun comes straight back out. That cycle does two things to a fairway. It puts water into the top inch of soil, and it pushes the grass into a growth spurt that thickens the canopy above it.
Both of those reduce the resistance the ground offers a leading edge. Softer soil lets a sharp edge in more easily. A thicker canopy sits the ball up fractionally and puts more material between the club and firm ground. A sole that was skimming across baked May kikuyu will, in the same lie in the same fairway six weeks later, dig.
Then by the end of September it reverses. The rain stops, the ground firms up over about ten days, and the player who bought a wide-soled wedge in August starts skidding it into the ball in October.
The measurement we have been keeping
Since 2019 we have taken a penetrometer reading on the grass strip at the start of every outdoor session and written it on the sheet. It is a crude instrument that measures how much force it takes to push a standard cone a fixed depth into the ground, and its absolute number is not comparable to anybody else's. Its month-to-month movement on the same patch of ground is entirely comparable to itself.
| Month | Relative firmness | What a sole meets |
|---|---|---|
| April | High | Dry, thin canopy, unforgiving of a wide sole |
| May to mid-June | Highest of the year | Baked. Leading edge cuts in cleanly, sole skids |
| July | Falling fast | Top inch wet by afternoon, canopy thickening |
| August | Lowest of the year | Soft under a thick canopy. A narrow sole digs |
| September | Rising through the month | Recovering unevenly, low areas still soft |
| October to March | High, then variable | Firm, with frost-affected mornings that read softer |
The spread between the May reading and the August reading on the same twenty yards of grass is larger than the spread between our strip and a links course in the same week. That is the point of publishing it. This is not a subtle seasonal drift, it is two different playing surfaces.
Which club suffers first
The sand wedge, every time, and specifically the sand wedge used off grass rather than out of a bunker. It is the club most often bought with the least resistance under it, because the player wanted something they could open up around the green, and it is the club that spends the most time contacting the ground directly under the ball.
The lob wedge suffers second and complains loudest, but by then the player has usually stopped using it. The gap wedge tends to survive the window because most of them are set-matched and carry a moderate sole by default.
What we do not recommend. Owning two sand wedges and swapping seasonally. We have suggested it perhaps four times in seventeen years, always to somebody playing three or four times a week. For everybody else the extra club is a slot in the bag they cannot spare and a spec they will forget to change back.
Fit to August, live with October
Our default recommendation is to fit the scoring clubs to the softest ground the player will meet rather than the firmest, which for anybody playing central New Mexico means fitting to the monsoon window. The reasoning is asymmetric consequences.
A sole with slightly too much resistance on firm ground produces a slightly thin strike. It runs a few yards long and lands flat. It is an annoyance.
A sole with too little resistance on soft ground produces a fat one, and a fat wedge is not a few yards short. It is thirty yards short, in front of a bunker, and it costs a stroke every time. When you are choosing which error to design in, design in the cheap one.
Two adjustments that are not a new wedge
Ball position and shaft lean. A player who insists on keeping a low-resistance sole through August can partially compensate by moving the ball back less than they think and taking the hands out of the equation. We can show you this in the bay in twenty minutes and it works, up to a point. That point is a wet lie on a downslope.
Trailing edge relief. If the wedge in question has a wide sole that digs at the back rather than the front, a modest amount of material off the trailing edge and the heel changes how it exits without touching how it enters. That is bench work, it is permanent, and it is worth doing on a club you otherwise like.
When to come in
June, before the window opens. A scoring session in the second week of June gets you on the strip while it is still firm, which is the harder test, and gives us a baseline print to compare against if you come back in August with a complaint.
The worst time to be fitted for a wedge you will play all year is the last week of August, when the ground is at its softest and everything with a wide sole feels magnificent. We will still fit you, and we will write the caveat on the card.
Related: how the print is taken in the first place, the other two weeks a year the surface changes species, and the scoring session where all of this gets measured.