Sand Wedge Loft, How Can I Choose The Perfect SW (Video) - by Pete Styles
Sand Wedge Loft, How Can I Choose The Perfect SW (Video) - by Pete Styles

How can you choose the perfect sand wedge for your golf set? Now this is a question that five or ten years ago simply wouldn’t have needed asking because everybody got a sand wedge within their set of golf clubs. A set of golf clubs was just three iron through to sand wedge and nobody ever changed that sand wedge, they just played with the same club they always had. It’s only recently that manufacturers have started only providing up to a pitching wedge in a set of clubs and then you buy the sand wedge yourself, and that generally happens on better club, better end of the market if you like aimed at the better golfers. And that’s because a lot of good players want to see a slightly different head profile, a slightly different look or feel from their specialist sand wedges. It’s also because manufactures are very clever and they don’t give you the extra club but they still charge you the same for the extra club and then you’ve got to go and buy another one yourself.

But if you are looking at choosing the right sand wedge for your set there’s a couple of considerations; first you would consider we want to try and match up the rest of your clubs in terms of the length of the golf club, and the grip, and the shaft flex. So if your other clubs have been adjusted maybe half an inch longer than standard, thicker grip, stiffer shaft try and copy that into your sand wedge. But there within your sand wedge you could also consider the amount of loft you have on the club face and also the amount of bounce you have on a golf club. Generally a sand wedge loft is going to be between 54 and 56 degrees so 54, 55, 56 degrees of loft, that’s enough loft to get the ball after the bunker. But it doesn’t encroach on gap wedge pitching wedge territory and it doesn’t encroach too much on lob wedge territory as well. Now one other thing we can consider in a sand wedge is looking at the right degrees of bounce. So bounce angle is the amount of degrees that the trailing edge is lower than the leading edge so that angle there. In a lot of wedges it will actually tell you how many degrees it’s got and a sand wedge will often vary between 14 degrees is a lot of bounce down to around about eight degrees is not much bounce. Lob wedge might even go lower to four degrees but a sand wedge is generally between eight and 14 degrees of bounce. Now unless you have a particular personal preference, what I would suggest you do is look at the bunkers that you generally play on. So if you’re playing on the same golf course on a regular basis or the same type of bunkers on a regular basis consider how that sand is and therefore work out a wedge that’s suitable. So if when you go in a bunker the sand is very soft and very fluffy and quite deep and you kind of loose your shoes going into a bunker. That’s a sort of bunker that really requires a lot of bounce. We do want to take a lot of bounce on that club because we don’t want the club to sub marine and dig down too much. So we’d be taking something of 12, 14 degrees of bounce for those very soft bunkers. But then if you’re playing on bunkers that maybe weren’t quite so deep, maybe had more of a soily texture, quite soily underneath the layer of sand; sort of thing where when you screw your feet in you soon find the bottom of the bunker. In a bunker like that you really don’t need that much bounce because the club can’t go down too low. So on a bunker like that you’d probably take off a bit of bounce, maybe go to eight or 10 degrees of bounce. Then when you’re setting up to the bunker you should feel that in the big soft bunkers the sand wedge doesn’t want to dig too deep because the bounce is helping it. But likewise on the hard bottom bunkers if that’s your golf course the hard bottom bunkers that lower degree of bounce in your sand wedge isn’t going to – is going to allow the club to get underneath, it is not going to bounce off of the surface and shoot you up too quickly. So have a little practice with some different wedges, maybe borrow your mate’s, try a few different ones out, work out the right degrees of loft, the right shaft, the right length, the right grip thickness, then consider the bounce for the type of sand that you’re playing on. 2014-11-12

How can you choose the perfect sand wedge for your golf set? Now this is a question that five or ten years ago simply wouldn’t have needed asking because everybody got a sand wedge within their set of golf clubs. A set of golf clubs was just three iron through to sand wedge and nobody ever changed that sand wedge, they just played with the same club they always had. It’s only recently that manufacturers have started only providing up to a pitching wedge in a set of clubs and then you buy the sand wedge yourself, and that generally happens on better club, better end of the market if you like aimed at the better golfers. And that’s because a lot of good players want to see a slightly different head profile, a slightly different look or feel from their specialist sand wedges. It’s also because manufactures are very clever and they don’t give you the extra club but they still charge you the same for the extra club and then you’ve got to go and buy another one yourself.

But if you are looking at choosing the right sand wedge for your set there’s a couple of considerations; first you would consider we want to try and match up the rest of your clubs in terms of the length of the golf club, and the grip, and the shaft flex. So if your other clubs have been adjusted maybe half an inch longer than standard, thicker grip, stiffer shaft try and copy that into your sand wedge. But there within your sand wedge you could also consider the amount of loft you have on the club face and also the amount of bounce you have on a golf club.

Generally a sand wedge loft is going to be between 54 and 56 degrees so 54, 55, 56 degrees of loft, that’s enough loft to get the ball after the bunker. But it doesn’t encroach on gap wedge pitching wedge territory and it doesn’t encroach too much on lob wedge territory as well. Now one other thing we can consider in a sand wedge is looking at the right degrees of bounce. So bounce angle is the amount of degrees that the trailing edge is lower than the leading edge so that angle there. In a lot of wedges it will actually tell you how many degrees it’s got and a sand wedge will often vary between 14 degrees is a lot of bounce down to around about eight degrees is not much bounce. Lob wedge might even go lower to four degrees but a sand wedge is generally between eight and 14 degrees of bounce.

Now unless you have a particular personal preference, what I would suggest you do is look at the bunkers that you generally play on. So if you’re playing on the same golf course on a regular basis or the same type of bunkers on a regular basis consider how that sand is and therefore work out a wedge that’s suitable.

So if when you go in a bunker the sand is very soft and very fluffy and quite deep and you kind of loose your shoes going into a bunker. That’s a sort of bunker that really requires a lot of bounce. We do want to take a lot of bounce on that club because we don’t want the club to sub marine and dig down too much. So we’d be taking something of 12, 14 degrees of bounce for those very soft bunkers.

But then if you’re playing on bunkers that maybe weren’t quite so deep, maybe had more of a soily texture, quite soily underneath the layer of sand; sort of thing where when you screw your feet in you soon find the bottom of the bunker. In a bunker like that you really don’t need that much bounce because the club can’t go down too low. So on a bunker like that you’d probably take off a bit of bounce, maybe go to eight or 10 degrees of bounce. Then when you’re setting up to the bunker you should feel that in the big soft bunkers the sand wedge doesn’t want to dig too deep because the bounce is helping it. But likewise on the hard bottom bunkers if that’s your golf course the hard bottom bunkers that lower degree of bounce in your sand wedge isn’t going to – is going to allow the club to get underneath, it is not going to bounce off of the surface and shoot you up too quickly.

So have a little practice with some different wedges, maybe borrow your mate’s, try a few different ones out, work out the right degrees of loft, the right shaft, the right length, the right grip thickness, then consider the bounce for the type of sand that you’re playing on.