Home / Fitting Menu / Wedge Sole & Bounce
Bench 05 · 90 minutes · $140Wedge Sole & Bounce
The number stamped on the sole is a starting point. What matters is the bounce the club presents at your delivery, on the ground you actually play.
Stamped bounce and effective bounce are not the same number
Bounce is measured with the club soled square and level. Nobody plays a wedge that way. Open the face and effective bounce rises sharply; lean the shaft forward and it collapses. A player who habitually delofts a wedge at impact can turn a 12-degree sole into something behaving like a 6, and then wonders why the club digs on firm ground.
So the session starts by measuring what you do, not what the club says. Shaft lean at impact, angle of attack into the ball, and how much the face opens on a standard pitch. Those three behaviours plus the firmness of your home turf determine the grind that will work.
Utah turf runs firm, and grinds should follow
From late June the valley courses bake. Heel and toe relief becomes valuable because it lets a player open the face without the leading edge climbing away from the ball. Wide, full soles with little relief are excellent in soft sand and poor on hardpan lies, and we see a lot of wedges here that were bought for conditions eight hundred miles away.
The bunkers are a separate question. Sand along the Wasatch Front is frequently coarse and shallow over a hard base, which rewards less bounce than the standard advice suggests. We ask which courses you play before recommending a sand wedge grind.
Bring your current wedges even if they are worn out. A worn leading edge and a polished bounce surface tell us exactly how you deliver the club — they are a free record of your last two seasons.
Gapping below the pitching wedge
Modern iron sets have strengthened lofts to the point where a pitching wedge can be a 43-degree club. Left unaddressed, that leaves a chasm before the sand wedge. We measure carry for each wedge rather than assuming four-degree spacing works, and at altitude the spacing that produces even yardage steps is often uneven in loft.
Lie and length still apply
Wedges get bent and shortened as often as irons, and they are the clubs most likely to have drifted, because they hit the hardest ground most often. Every wedge in the session goes on the board with tape, same as the iron bench. A sand wedge that sits upright sends full shots left, and that is a surprisingly common cause of the short-iron pull.
- Bench time
- 90 minutes
- Fee
- $140
- Grinds on hand
- Low, mid, wide, heel relief
- Lofts covered
- 46° through 62°
- Groove wear inspection
- Included
- Fee credited to build
- Yes, in full
Wear your normal golf shoes. Wedge delivery changes measurably between street shoes and spikes, and that difference is not academic.
What we measure about you
- Shaft lean through impact on a standard pitch
- Attack angle on full and partial swings
- How far the face opens when you set up to a flop
- Divot depth and entry point relative to the ball
Groove life
We check groove edge condition on every wedge. A sand wedge with two full seasons on firm turf has usually lost enough edge to change spin, and no fitting fixes that.
Matching grind to delivery
A rough guide, refined on the bench