Wedge (golf)

These features generally aid the player in making accurate short-distance "lob" shots, to get the ball onto the green or out of a hazard or other tricky spot.

In addition, wedges are designed with modified soles that aid the player in moving the clubhead through soft lies, such as sand, mud, and thick grass, to extract a ball that is embedded or even buried.

Prior to the 1930s, the best club for short "approach" shots was the "niblick", roughly equivalent to today's 9-iron or pitching wedge in loft; however the design of this club, with a flat, angled face and virtually no "sole", made it difficult to use in sand and other soft lies as it was prone to dig into soft turf.

[2][3] The lower loft reduced the club's tendency to 'dig in' to soft lies, but the low launch angle and high resistance through the sand made recovering a buried ball from a bunker very difficult.

[4][5] He built his first prototype in 1931 by taking a niblick and soldering extra lead to its sole to add mass, then adjusting the angle of the sole to about 10 degrees from level with the ground, which he found to be the optimal angle to prevent the clubhead either digging deeply into the sand or skimming (bouncing) along the top.

The resulting clubhead profile was roughly wedge-shaped as opposed to the blade-like style of high-lofted irons, hence the name.

The highest-lofted irons got the most additional weight, resulting in the widest soles, giving these clubs the same eponymous wedge-shaped profile as the sand wedge.

Even touring professionals miss an average of 6 GIRs in a round, making chip shots and other close-in strokes typically made with wedges that much more important.

As a result, since the mid-80s the number of wedges available to players has grown from 2 (pitching and sand) to 5 (adding gap, lob and ultra lob), most of which are now available in a wide array of lofts and bounces to allow a player to "fine-tune" their short game with the wedges that best meet their needs.

Most players carry three or four wedges on the course, and sometimes more, usually sacrificing one or two of their long irons and/or higher-lofted fairway woods to meet the 14-club limit.

This newer shape allows for the golfer to "open" the clubface for short, high-backspin chip shots that "stick" on the green or even roll backwards, without the wide heel lifting the bottom edge of the club at address or the additional angle providing too much bounce.

Recently, a ruling by the USGA and R&A to ban the sale of wedges with backspin-increasing 'square' grooves (but grandfathered certain existing designs) accelerated revenues from wedge sales as golfers rushed to acquire designs incorporating these grooves before the ban took effect.

However, gap wedges are available from 48–56° loft and with 0° to 12° of bounce, allowing a player to select the club with the exact characteristics they feel they'll need.

Gene Sarazen won the 1932 British and US Open tournaments with a new club he had invented that was specialized for sand play.

The resulting club had a wedge-shaped profile, and offered better loft to escape from deep or sloped bunkers (unlike the older low-lofted "jigger" traditionally used for bunker shots), while not "digging in" to the soft sand like a lofted iron such as the niblick would normally do.

However, the features which make it useful for this purpose are advantageous in other soft lies such as thick rough, soggy ground or mud.

While the high angle of bounce can make it difficult to use on firm lies (the sole will raise the leading edge of the club which can result in the player hitting the ball edge-on; a "thin" or "skulled" shot), it can be used much as any other "short iron" would; with a "full swing", a skilled golfer can typically hit a sand wedge between 80 and 100 yards, and with a chip shot, a sand wedge can produce short "lobs" of between 20 and 60 yards.

[9][10] Dave Pelz, a former NASA physicist and golf short-game coach, envisioned the lob wedge in the 1980s as an answer to modern greens, which are designed to be more difficult to approach to add extra challenge to the game.