Wedge Fitting That Starts on the Ground

The Sole Print Comes First

Every wedge session opens the same way. Your existing wedges get sprayed on the sole, and you hit a set of shots off the grass strip while we photograph what the ground writes on them.

The mark tells you where the club is loading. A stripe concentrated on the front edge with a deep exit means the sole is not carrying any of the impact and the leading edge is doing all of the work. A wide smear across the whole sole with a shallow trace means the opposite: the club is riding the turf and arriving at the ball on the way up.

Neither pattern is a technique verdict. Both are just evidence about what the sole is doing under your delivery, and both point at a different spec.

Then the Sand Tray, Filled Locally

The tray in bay two is filled with the same coarse, angular material used in most bunkers around here, not the soft imported silica a demo tray usually holds. It matters. Grit that behaves like crushed rock supports a sole differently from sand that behaves like flour, and a wedge that performs beautifully in a manufacturer's tray can be a shovel on the West Mesa.

You hit ten from a buried lie and ten from a clean one. If a wedge cannot get out of local sand it does not go on the card, however good the numbers look off grass.

Bounce, Grind, and the Difference Between Them

Most players who fear a higher bounce number are actually afraid of a wide, clumsy sole that will not sit down when they open the face. Those are separable problems. A sole can carry meaningful resistance through its middle while having the heel and trailing edge relieved so the club still sits low with the face laid open.

So the conversation splits in two. How much resistance do you need through the turf, and how much of the sole do you need to be able to remove when you want to manipulate the face? We answer the first from the print and the second from watching you try to play a short-side shot.

Loft Spacing Below the Pitching Wedge

Modern iron sets have strengthened lofts to the point where a set pitching wedge is what a 9-iron used to be. The result is a hole between the set wedge and whatever comes next, and it is frequently wider than the players carrying it realise.

We measure the carry of every wedge in the bag, correct it for altitude, and lay the numbers out as a strip. Thin air stretches everything, which means gaps that were tolerable at sea level become conspicuous here. The fix is usually a loft change on an existing club rather than a purchase.

Face Crest Grading, Free, Every Time

Every wedge you bring gets a face crest reading under magnification: the sharpness of the shoulder where the flat of the face meets the wall of each groove. It is graded on four steps from fresh to finished, and it goes on your card whether or not you buy anything.

The reason this is included rather than sold is that it changes the whole conversation. There is no point fitting a spec around a face that has already stopped generating friction, and there is no point replacing a wedge that has plenty of life left in it because it looks scruffy.