What We Do / Wedges
75 Minutes · Turf Board SessionWedge Fitting
This is the session where the turf matters more than the golfer. Bermuda grown over a sand base behaves nothing like the cool-season turf most wedge grinds were designed around, and fitting one on the other produces clubs that dig in summer and skid in winter.
Gapping Comes First and It Is Usually Wrong
Before a single grind gets discussed, we plot the carry distances of your pitching wedge and every wedge below it. Modern iron sets have strengthened lofts, which means the pitching wedge in a 2024 set may sit at forty-three degrees while the gap wedge someone sold you sits at fifty-two. That nine-degree step is a thirty-yard hole in the most important scoring range in golf, and no amount of technique closes it.
Roughly two thirds of the wedge fittings booked here turn out to be gapping problems rather than grind problems. Fixing the gapping is often a bend job on a wedge you already own.
Then Bounce, Measured Against Real Ground
Bounce is not a preference and it is not a skill level. It is a relationship between how steeply you deliver the head and how firm the surface is. We record entry angle on the turf board, then match effective bounce to it, then check the exit — because a sole that enters well and exits badly still costs you shots.
Southwest Florida greens surrounds are usually firm with a thin, tight lie sitting on sand. That combination punishes high bounce far more than the marketing brochures suggest, but it also punishes a razor-thin leading edge in the wet season when the grass grows thick. The right answer here tends to be a mid bounce with relief ground off the heel and trailing edge, and it is genuinely different from the answer we would give for a course in Ohio.
Grind Selection Without the Mythology
Grind names are marketing labels and they do not transfer between manufacturers. We ignore the names and look at three physical properties: how much material sits behind the leading edge, how much relief has been ground off the heel, and how much camber runs from front to back. Those three describe every grind on the market, and they can be compared directly across brands.
Shafts and Weight
Wedge shafts are frequently an afterthought and it shows in the results. A wedge that is fifteen grams lighter than the eight iron above it will feel disconnected from the set and produce inconsistent low point control. We match wedge shafts to the set profile unless there is a specific reason not to, and we build the swing weight up deliberately rather than accepting whatever the stock club happened to be.
| Measured entry angle | Effective bounce range | Sole relief | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shallow, under 3° | 4–7° | Minimal, keep material | Needs the leading edge to stay low on tight lies. |
| Moderate, 3–6° | 8–11° | Heel and trailing edge relieved | The most common answer in this shop by a wide margin. |
| Steep, over 6° | 11–14° | Wide sole, full camber | Digging in the wet season is the failure mode to design against. |
| Steep with open-face bunker play | 10–12° with heel relief | Aggressive heel grind | Sand base means the club sits lower than the player expects. |
The Wet Season Problem
From June through September the grass here grows fast, holds water and sits up. From January through March it is dormant, tight and firm. That is a genuinely wide range for one club to cover, and a wedge fitted in February on dormant Bermuda can be actively unpleasant to use in August.
We deal with it by fitting the sand wedge toward the wet-season condition and the lob wedge toward the dry, so the bag always contains one club suited to the ground you are standing on. It is a compromise, we say so out loud, and it works better than pretending one grind covers the year.
Bring All Your Wedges
Including the pitching wedge from your iron set — the gapping exercise does not work without it.