4 things you're probably missing when buying wedges off the rack

While most golfers are broadly across the concepts that make a driver or a putter work for them, buying wedges is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Wedges come in a wider variety of models, grinds, lofts and bounce options than ever before, making it all but impossible to really have an idea of the wedges that will work for you simply by strolling into your local big box golf store.

Put simply, getting fit for your wedges is as crucial as any other club at the longer end of your bag – a fact that many amateur players are only just waking up to. And in the wake of Titleist's new Vokey SM11 wedges making their debut we were given the chance to visit Titleist's Woburn Performance Centre for a fitting ourselves to find out exactly why – along with the performance and forgiveness you're probably leaving on the table by not getting fit yourself.

With the help of master fitter John Paul, we took a look at  bounce, grind, loft, turf interaction, wedge gapping and shot selection, why simply choosing a wedge based on one factor alone may not be enough.

Choose wedges for the shots you play, not the shots you think you should play

Golf throws up innumerable scenarios around the green, but the idea of the shots you might want to play in your head often turns out to be very different to the shot you elect to play on the day.

Take a 20-yard chip over a bunker, for instance. While it may be tempting to choose a wedge that'll help you hit that perfect flop shot with ease, if this isn't a shot you're necessarily used to playing, you might end up having to play a more conservative shot with a wedge that's not suited to that task.

To counteract this, Titleist uses Trackman and Virtual Golf Club,  to present players with common scenarios throughout their fitting to help find the grind that works for the shot they're most likely to play. Titleist's bespoke app then takes the player's delivery data, such as swing angle and impact position, and chooses from the Vokey line's range of grind options. "If you can build that picture into their head," says Paul, "they can then set up the way they think they'd play that shot and get the contact point that they're looking for." 

One set of wedges might not be enough

It may sound like a convenient fact to make a manufacturer more money, but it's a perhaps unfair truth that if PGA Tour players need to stash multiple types of wedge for varying conditions, it stands to reason that you probably should as well.

"By all means, we're not saying you should always buy two sets of wedges," says Paul. "But if you're finding your wedges work great on links courses but don't perform properly when you take them to a parkland course, there's often a big change in performance that we might discover that could necessitate it - especially if you're playing 50/50 between the two."

Bounce is important, but grind is crucial

The vast majority of wedge brands, particularly on the more affordable end of the spectrum, offer different bounce options as the sole method of tailoring's one's wedges to their game. But that doesn't paint the full picture.

While hitting the right bounce number is vital to helping you navigate certain lies more consistently, the real magic when it comes to finding perfect turf interaction, as well as negating thin and fat shots, comes in getting the grind that works best for your swing.

"Often, we see players who pick wedges solely on bounce alone because they think they need mid-bounce throughout the entire set. One, this gives you no versatility, and it also doesn't take into account that some players can be steeper or shallower with their fuller shots compared to their chips."

The key difference with Vokey's approach, which emphasises different grinds over the listed bounce, is that the grind itself is working to create the effective bounce a player needs to hit their best shots. "The number on the club isn't actually the measured bounce, which is key for a lot of people. 

"We always see people who have picked wedges based on the bounce they think they need, not the grinds we've designed for the shots they like to play, and they end up thinking they've got the chipping yips. Actually, you're just using the wrong grind!"

You can probably hit more shots than you think

Plenty of players come into a fitting with a certain idea of shots that they definitely can't hit. The job of any good fitter, however, is to get more of these shots types back into the locker of the player.

"One thing I always ask people who come for a wedge fitting" says Paul, "is what the absolute worst-case scenario for a miss is in their short game."

"But if I can get you to hit that shot through a tweak in equipment, your confidence goes up, and you'll realise that you're actually probably a better player around the greens than you thought. We want players to approach tricky situations in new ways, but also give them the knowledge that the wedge will do its job when called upon.

That will unlock so much more versatility in your game, and give you the confidence to attack more.