Lags Wedges

Lag,

Could you talk a bit about the differences between your wedges please?

How do you select suitable wedges to set up as you like?

Do you just carry the same wedges all the time and just rotate your main sets? Lots of my old sets don’t have a GW or SW (I don’t carry a GW), so I would like to spend some time setting up some wedges and just leave them in the bag.
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The 1st thing you might realize is that his sw is not flat lie 66 because he uses it only in sand.These were also normal lofts of yrs ago not the typical strong lofts of today as you probably already know.Then the heavy weight because its feel in the hands for accuracy and prevents over acceleration.This a typical set with 6 deg difference in wedges not the wedge system today with 4 to 5 wedges every 4 deg.Hope it helps.

For one, I like the hard to find “Split Sole” PW’s. I can open the face up and hit a cut shot off hardpan without fear of belly blading it. I like the sharper leading edge… rather than the typical blunt front ends on most wedges… for play from the rough, and of course I remove all offset… if anything prefer just a bit of leading edge face progression so that I can spin the ball or work it in right to left much easier if needed.

I progressively dead weight and swing weight my wedges heavier realizing accuracy is my #1 concern, and I want as much feel in my hands as possible, and I also want to be hitting the ball with as much mass as I can handle in the head if not for the sheer impact physics of optimal compression at slower velocities. With the heavy head, I can grip the club firmer without sacrificing feel, and this also aids in stabilizing the clubhead due to any off centered hits I might subject myself to as I don’t usually play more than a three rounds a month nor do I hit balls in between.

My “gap wedge” really isn’t a gap wedge, rather it is a PW with sand wedge loft for shots inside 80 yards. Little or no bounce, heavy, flat and stiff. Mine is an old Spalding Tournament model from the early 50’s. Great head, sets up properly and has a firm leather grip on it.

The Spalding has a very flat bottom grind on it which I like for fairway play, while my actual SW has more of a contour sole which aids in dealing with more extreme side hill or slanted shots typically found on various bunker faces or slopes.

My SW is also at 56… but has a medium width flange and about 8 degrees of bounce. I don’t like too wide a flange, so would lean toward narrower flange but with more bounce than normal. This of course is primarily for sand shots or thick nasty greenside rough where mass reigns king. I don’t want anything slowing the club down through impact and this is where I really pour on the acceleration. So combining
acceleration, a heavy mass, and some bounce with a flange that is not too wide leads me right to vintage Wilson wedges. R 20 or R 90 are ideal. They also made unmarked heads or heads with top tour players circa that era that were forged nearly identical.

I will remind everyone here again… a Wilson wedge that actually says “ORIGINAL” R 20 or R 90 IS NOT ORIGINAL. These are the 1970’s remakes that are actually cast heads, lightweight, have no bounce and are better to use as tomato stakes for your summer garden.

So we have been retro fitting some ABS SW’s on LagBay that I have been hand picking out… bending to spec and weighting them up to 18 ounces when needed.

I also bend them upright, so that when I open up the face (which will lower your hands considerably) my hands simply drop right down to where I play all my other shots from with the same lie angle as my other wedges.

You don’t want the club spending a lot of time in the sand. Steep in and out with good bounce will allow you to stay aggressive, hit down into the sand with some confidence and loft the ball up with a proper high trajectory. If sand is really hard or wet I will use my PW.

I see the wedge game as a balance between trajectory and distance control. I don’t need a traditional gap wedge because distance control with wedges is not much different than lag putting… it’s all feel and learning how to find and establish your proper parameters for gauging distance… which is an acquired skill.

My wedge play has improved 300% by moving into very flat heavy wedges. I don’t pull them left anymore, and the added weight gives me superior distance control because to get the ball 30 feet past the hole is going to take a lot more effort than with a light wedge. I can feel
the head now, and can anticipate what too hard and too soft actually are before I execute the shot.

Lag,

Ever since you made this post I’ve kept my eyes peeled for one of these MT Split Sole PW’s…I ended up getting one for free because the previuos owner thought it was too far gone with rust etc…I’ve cleaned it up some and rescored the grooves and must say I really like this PW…Heavy and a narrow sole is a great combo.

Anyway the length is 35 inches and a SW of D9…Do you have some lead tape on your PW for the E3 SW?

These are the grind options avalilable with Scratch wedges. I am not sure what the different types of Players exactly mean, let alone the various types of grinds. Would love to hear some expert advise.

http://www.scratchgolf.com/tech-talk/grinds/

Yes, I have a ton of tape on the back of it.

my 58* from Scratch is an SFU grind. I love it around the greens.

Lag,

Is your gap wedge a former sand wedge where you have removed the bounce? Or a wedge where you have added loft??

Any chance of some photos of your gap wedge??

Timely you should bring this up…

I recently switched wedges from the Spalding to an old MacGregor Double Duty that was basically a sand wedge but I grinded off most all the bounce. It was the only one around here I could find that was heavy enough that I could grind and still have enough mass down there. The reason I switched was because I wanted a bit more face progression than the Spalding had. I just couldn’t get the bending bar down that low to adjust it to my eye correct… so I just started with a new club. It’s a real one of a kind now… played a couple rounds with it… and it’s just great.

I’ll take a pic of it here soon

Can the Macgregor split sole be used as the 54-56 degree flat Gap wedge(not sand)??

yes, it would make a great choice.

Lag,

Be interested to hear your thoughts on my first attempt at grinding the bounce off a sand wedge. It sits a whole load better now for sure, I think the camber on the sole could be reduced a bit to take even more bounce off.?

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This is my R90
Stock behemoth at 18.5 ounces. No offset, set upright at 64 degree lie angle for sand only. Lie angle 56 degrees. About 7 degrees of bounce.

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This is truly a gap wedge in that it fills in the gap between my PW and SW and can act as either club if necessary. It took a long time to find the perfect suitable club, and I had to do a ton of grinding on it to remove all the flange. It started as a M85 Double duty SW… but it had a ton of bounce so I had to take all that off. Lost about 1/2 and ounce in the process so I added tape on the back to lock it in at 18 ounces. I ground it down dead flat with no contour on the sole so it then became a great fairway club. Again, hard to find a fairway wedge with zero offset… but this one had zero. The offset can be a bit tricky to remove on a PW… not so much in function but to really look right also. So this is now at 56 degree lie angle and 53 degrees of loft and 18 ounces. It still has a tad bit of the scallop on the sole which keeps allows a bit of grass to gather in there before it is going to skip or bounce. The front edge now has a sharper edge so I can really nip it clean off hardpan… but it’s also good now of the softer fluffy lies, and wonderful around the greens for little chips, lobs and cut shots.

Definitely not something you can find in your local golf shop. This is HIGHLY customized one of a kind stuff here! Love the original cord grip on it also.

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The MT Spit sole I now have set up at 56 degree lie angle and bumped it up to 50 degrees loft… and added an extra 1/2 inch to the shaft. 18 ounces and no offset. Just a great multi use PW. I can play shots from about 120 on in. I use the 9 iron for anything more unless I have to hit one over a tree or something, I could move this one 130 yards if I really need to. I don’t like any bounce on a PW… so with the split sole I can nip the ball off concrete if necessary and not have to fear blading the shot.

Three very unique wedges, all designed and customized for the full array of shots necessary.

lieangles.jpg

Shows the difference in lie angles between the three clubs.

Thanks Lag for your post. Do your wedges and/irons sit open when resting on the ground since they are bent flat except for the SW only club? Or do you grind them/add weights so they sit square? I think I remember Greg L. saying Moe had all his irons sit square

I’m really only concerned with where the face is in relationship to my hands and not the ground as far as how they sit. Since I grip the club very firm, the club doesn’t really “sit” on the ground. How I have them grinded has everything to do with how they will interact with the ground when dynamically moving through impact. The lie of the ball itself and how the ground is… firm or soft or muddy or fluffy grass. I’ve been moving toward laying the face more open at address for all my shots… draws, and fades… but that has more to do with pre setting a bit of forearm rotation than anything else. The ground is rarely level or even to base how the club is going to sit on it’s own. I always know where the face is… and what I am going to do with it… but I don’t think about lining it up at the target or anything like that. I do all my ball flight shaping with adjusting post impact intentions… so that way I don’t have to be so concerned about lining up with laser precision. Once I feel where I am lined up… I can then work the ball left or right back to where I want the ball to shape to. There is a lot of intuition involved in alignment. It’s not just lasers and clubs on the ground. I doubt I line up the same way two days in a row. I improved my golf a lot when I let go of trying to line up square and perfect all the time.

So the way my wedges are set up and grinded, it allows more flexibility for me from day to day due to the greater palate of shots I can play. Getting rid of all offset was a huge lightbulb moment for me also especially with the wedges.

Just read NRGs interview on PersimmonGolfToday, and it made me wonder how you skilled club fitters and you guys that do you’re own work go about working out what you need in terms of a wedge.

Do you take the type of shots you’re most often required to play into account and alter your club to suit?
What considerations do you make when choosing the club to alter and what alterations you’re going to make?

Sorry if these are questions that are pretty obvious, I love the workshop idea, and I used to watch in awe as a wee kid when the old pro would be working away at his wedges then take them out to chip around the green before heading back in to tinker away until they were just right - he would repeat this process until he was happy - as a kid it seemed like a black art…

I assume that you can’t grind away and make a split sole wedge?

Buddah,

Sure, you could grind your own groove sole and/or split sole out of an existing wedge, but you would loose a ton of weight in the process, which you could in turn replace by means of lead tape.

Hope that answers your question,

JN