Links fescue and a wet January: how many wedges and which bounce

Most golfers buy wedges the way they buy fuses: when something stops working. A sand wedge comes with the iron set, a lob wedge gets added after a miserable afternoon in a revetted bunker, and a gap wedge appears two years later because there is a hole in the bag nobody measured. Three clubs, never chosen together, covering the part of the course where half your shots are played.

Wedges are the only clubs you can buy correctly with arithmetic. The two numbers stamped on the sole, loft and bounce, tell you nearly everything you need. Here is what they mean, how many wedges you really need, and how to choose the degrees without guessing.

Start with the loft you already own

Before buying anything, find out what your pitching wedge actually is. Not the P on the head, but the loft in the manufacturer’s specification for your model and year.

Pitching wedge loft has been creeping stronger for twenty years. The traditional pitching wedge was 48 degrees. Most sets now sit between 43 and 48, and game improvement irons go as strong as 42 or 43, because a stronger loft makes the 7 iron fly further on the demo mat. That is not a scandal, but it pushes the bottom of your iron set eight yards further away and opens a gap underneath that the rest of the bag has to cover.

Write the number down. Your pitching wedge is not the last iron in the set. It is the first of your wedges, and every other loft decision follows from it.

How many wedges: count backwards from fourteen

You are allowed fourteen clubs. Start at the other end of the bag and see what is left over.

A putter, a driver, and the woods or hybrids you genuinely hit. Then the irons down to the pitching wedge. Count what remains. Eleven clubs before the wedges leaves room for three. Ten leaves room for four.

Three suits most golfers. Four suits one specific player: the one who hits plenty of greens from inside 120 yards and wants finer control there than at the long end. If you are still carrying a 3 iron you cannot get airborne, that slot is worth more as a fourth wedge. If you cannot carry a bunker face from 40 yards, a fourth wedge is not the answer to your problem.

The urge to carry four is strongest in the golfers who need it least. A 20 handicapper plays far more shots from 150 yards than from 55, and the fourth wedge usually displaces a hybrid that would have earned its place more often.

The degrees: four to six, and no exceptions

Consecutive wedges should sit four to six degrees apart. Under four and two clubs go the same distance, which wastes a slot. Over six and you are left with a yardage you can only reach by easing one club or leaning on another, which is the shot club golfers miss most often.

Four degrees is roughly ten to fifteen yards for most players. That is the hole you are trying to fill, and it is why the loft numbers matter far more than the model name.

Work it through with a 45 degree pitching wedge. Add 50, 54 and 58 and you have five degree steps all the way down, three wedges, no hole. Now work it through with a 43 degree pitching wedge, which plenty of modern sets have. The same 50 is seven degrees away. Either you add a 47 or 48 and carry four wedges, or you accept a gap precisely where your approach shots live.

Two common sets deserve naming. Pitching wedge, 50, 54, 58 is the four club answer for a strong set: the pitching wedge does iron duty and three genuine wedges sit underneath. Pitching wedge, 52, 56, 60 is the three wedge classic, and it works cleanly when the pitching wedge is 46 or 47, not when it is 43.

One caution about the bottom of the bag. A 60 degree wedge is harder to strike well than a 56, it costs distance control, and it punishes a poor contact more than any club you own. If you are not already comfortable with a 56 off a tight winter lie, a 60 will not save you. Most club golfers would score better stopping at 58.

Bounce: the number you have been ignoring

Bounce is the angle between the leading edge and the lowest point of the sole when the club sits square. It decides whether the club digs into the ground or skids across it. It is the most useful number on a wedge and the one almost nobody checks.

Low bounce is roughly 4 to 6 degrees. It suits firm turf, tight lies, coarse or compacted sand and a shallow swing that takes little or no divot. Clean leading edge, no help at all if you arrive steep.

Mid bounce is roughly 7 to 10 degrees. It is the safe answer for firm to normal turf and for most swings, which is why it is the stock option on nearly every model. Buying without a fitting, buy this.

High bounce is above 10 degrees. It suits soft ground, fluffy lies, soft sand and a steep swing that takes a deep divot. The sole strikes the ground first and keeps the club moving rather than letting the edge bury itself.

You can work out your own swing without a launch monitor. Look at your divots after nine holes. Deep and long means you are a digger and want more bounce. A scuff, or nothing at all, means you are a sweeper and want less. Nearly everyone takes a divot with a wedge and none with a fairway wood, which is normal, and the wedge divot is the one to read.

Then look at the ground you play on. This is the part of the decision nobody makes locally enough, and it is why two golfers with identical swings should own different wedges.

Grind, in one paragraph

Grind is the shaping of the sole: material taken off the heel, the toe or the trailing edge so the club behaves differently when you move the face. You do not need to learn the letter codes. You need one rule. If you open the face to play anything, you need heel relief, because an open face without it lifts the leading edge off the ground and you thin the shot. If you play everything square, a standard full sole is fine and gives you more forgiveness in soft ground. Tell the fitter which of those two golfers you are and let them choose the letter.

What it costs, and where not to spend

A new premium wedge is not cheap. A Titleist Vokey SM11 has a recommended price of £179 in steel and £219 in the raw finish, and Titleist has been running a buy two and save £20 offer that brings each one down to £159. Three of those is over five hundred pounds, more than many club golfers paid for their irons.

Two ways to spend less without buying worse. First, last season’s model. Wedge technology moves slowly, grooves are regulated by rule, and the previous generation of the same head is usually a third cheaper and identical in the ways that matter. Second, buy in the right order. Replacing all three at once is rarely necessary: start with the one you hit most, which for nearly everyone is the sand wedge.

What genuinely repays the money is fresh grooves. Wedge faces wear out, and a worn 56 spins dramatically less from rough or from a wet lie than a new one. If your wedges are five years old and you play every week through a British winter, the grooves are the reason the ball skids past the flag, not your technique.

Where British turf and sand change the answer

Britain is the one country where a golfer can genuinely need two different bounce settings, because the ground changes character twice a year and changes completely between a links and an inland course.

Links and heathland turf is the argument for low bounce. Fine fescue on free draining sand gives a tight lie, a firm base and very little cushion under the ball, and a high bounce sole will bounce the leading edge straight into the middle of the ball. If you play at Sandwich, Formby, Gullane, Hoylake or any of the Surrey heathland courses in a dry spell, 4 to 8 degrees on your lowest lofted wedge is the sensible choice.

Inland parkland on clay is the opposite argument, and it is where most of us actually play. From November to March a Midlands or Home Counties course on heavy soil is soft, the ball sits down, and the divot comes out like a slice of cake. High bounce keeps the club moving through that. The same course in a dry August is firm enough to want the links answer, which is the genuine dilemma. The workable compromise for a golfer who plays one course all year is mid bounce on the sand wedge, where most of your short shots happen, and lower bounce on the lob wedge you use from tight lies around the green.

Bunker sand pulls the same way. A revetted links bunker is often filled with firm, coarse, well packed sand where a 14 degree sole skips off the base and you thin it into the face. Inland courses that have had new sand delivered are frequently soft and deep, and there high bounce is the only club that gets under the ball. Put your hand in your own practice bunker before you buy a bunker club, because the sand at your course is a fact and the advice in a catalogue is not.

For fitting, American Golf has hitting bays and launch monitors in most of its stores and will do a wedge gapping session, and the same is true of the larger independent retailers and of the growing number of indoor studios. Manufacturer fitting days run at clubs across the country from April to September and cost nothing. Cheapest and most neglected of all: your own club professional can put the wedges you already own on a loft and lie machine in ten minutes for the price of a couple of sleeves. Wedges bend out of spec with use, and a 54 that has quietly become a 52 is a gap you have been playing around for a season without knowing it.

Five things to do before you buy

• Look up the loft of your pitching wedge. Every other number depends on it.
• Count backwards from fourteen to see whether you have room for three wedges or four.
• Keep the steps at four to six degrees, and be honest about whether you need a 60.
• Read your divots, then read your turf and your bunker sand, and buy the bounce those two agree on.
• Have the lofts of the wedges you own checked before you replace any of them.

Wedges decide your score on the holes you play badly. Chosen as a set, four to six degrees apart, with the bounce that suits the ground you actually stand on in February, they cover every yardage inside 120 yards without a shot you have to invent. Chosen one at a time, in a hurry, after a bad round, they cover about two thirds of it.