| Why do you need so many wedges?
Many years ago most golf sets only had one wedge, a pitching wedge. However this pitching wedge had what would be the equivalent loft of a gap or sandwedge of today.
Then comes along a gentleman by the name a Gene Sarazen who developed a special wedge that had a lot of "bounce". You can see bounce in a sand wedge buy looking at the sole of the club from the toe. You will see that the leading edge of the club is higher than the trailing edge. This angle helps the wedge glide through the sand without digging in.
Everyone in the golf world was fat and happy getting rid of their one irons that they couldn't hit anyway and adding the trusty sand wedge. In order to make the sand wedge fit better in the set, they then took some loft off the pitching wedge to basically make it a 10 iron, but they kept calling it a pitching wedge.
Well, things were great for nearly 50 years until golf manufactures decided to pull the wool over everyones eyes and started offering de-lofted irons, claiming that you can hit the ball further with their clubs. Well, when you offer a set that has an 8 iron with the loft of a traditional 6 iron, you should be able to hit it further.
This created a bit of a problem, Now nobody can hit the two or three irons anymore and everyone was left with a pitching wedge that they would hit 150yds (your results may vary). So now everyone needed a "wedge" to fill the gap between their pitching wedges and their sand wedges.
Now companies are laughing all the way to the bank, as they now are having everyone buy these "gap" wedges, and getting rid of their 2 and 3 irons that have lofts that even tour pros can't hit. You then get to replace your 2 and 3 irons with what is called a "hybrid". Companies came out with hybrids simply because they could not get tour pros to hit a seven wood. Driver, three wood, and maybe a four or five wood, but not a seven wood. But with a hybrid you could stamp a "1" on it and a tour pro will play it, and people will clamour out and buy it because its the "new" thing.
So, do you NEED a gap wedge? No not really. If you realy feel that you are always in between your SW and PW and you can't figure out how to hit a soft PW or a hard SW then go ahead and get one. But it is really not needed.
What does someone really need in a set? Well to answer than question I will have to tell a little story from when I played golf in college. One day my coach decided that we would be playing our practice rounds with the following clubs : 3 wood, 4,6,8 irons a sand wedge and a putter. The funny thing was, just about everyone on the team improved their average by a stroke with this limited set. Our coach said it was because it made us think a little more on the course and we were in play more often because we could only drive with our three wood.
Hope this helps.
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What's In the Bag:
Driver: Titleist 975 J-VS 8.5'
3-Wood: Titleist 14.5', EI-70 Stiff
4-Wood: Titleist 18.5, EI-70 Stiff
Irons: 3-PW Titleist 990, Dynamic Gold Lite Stiff
SW,GW,LW:Ping Tour Grind
Putter: Scotty Cameron Newport
Ball: Titleist Pro-V1
Bag: Titleist Staff Bag (this thing is huge) |