Wedges & Short Game
Short Game Ledger
Two hours, three wedges, and most of it standing on grass rather than in a bay. This is the session that moves a scorecard faster than anything else we sell, and it is also the one golfers book last, because nobody has ever bragged about a new gap wedge.
Where the Strokes Actually Are
Run the leak audit on a hundred rounds from golfers in the eleven to twenty-four range and the same picture appears. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the strokes over par originate inside a hundred yards, and a large share of those are not putts. They are pitches that came off heavy and finished twenty feet short, or came off thin and ran through the green into whatever was behind it.
Both of those misses have the same root, and it is not a swing fault. It is a leading edge arriving at the ground with the wrong amount of relief underneath it for the surface it is meeting. That is a bounce and grind problem, and it is fixable in an afternoon.
| Specification | What it governs |
|---|---|
| Bounce angle | Whether the leading edge digs or the sole skids on the turf you actually play |
| Sole grind | How much of that bounce survives when you open the face or move the ball back |
| Sole width | How forgiving the entry is on a slightly steep delivery |
| Shaft weight | Consistency of distance on partial shots, which is where most damage occurs |
| Lie angle | Start line on short shots, where a degree matters more than it does on a five iron |
| Loft gapping | Whether you own three wedges or two wedges and a duplicate |
A Bounce Number That Works in April Can Fail in August
Much of the ground on the Bay side and down toward the south end sits over sand with a thin layer above it. In spring that surface is soft and grabby and it swallows a leading edge. By the second week of August, after six weeks without meaningful rain, the same fairway can be firm enough to bounce a wedge straight into the middle of the ball.
A single stamped number cannot be right for both, so we do not pretend it is. We fit bounce as a range and then choose where in that range each of your three wedges should sit, so the bag as a whole covers the season. Usually that means the wedge you use most often gets the safest middle figure, and the specialist at the top end gets something more extreme.
A wedge fitted only for the best day of the year is a wedge that fails on forty of the fifty rounds you play.
Teri runs most of these sessions. She came out of greenkeeping rather than retail, spent nine seasons on maintenance crews at two courses in the region, and reads a surface better than anyone here. She will also reschedule your appointment rather than run it indoors, which annoys about one client a month and has never once produced a complaint afterwards.
How the Two Hours Are Spent
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Ledger and measurement
Twenty minutes on the scorecards and on your current wedges. Lofts get checked, because a set that has been bent twice over five years is rarely still where the sole says it is. We also look at groove condition under a lamp while you watch.
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Baseline on grass
Out to the grass slot. Full shots first for gapping, then the shots that actually cost you: forty yards, sixty yards, a bump from a tight lie, and one out of the practice bunker.
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Bounce and grind pairs
Two candidates at a time, same loft, hit off two deliberately different lies. The difference shows up quickly and it shows up in your hands rather than on a screen.
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Shaft and gapping
Weight and profile settled last, then the loft ladder is set so your three wedges cover the distance band evenly instead of overlapping in the middle and leaving a hole at the bottom.
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The sheet
Lofts, bounces, grinds, lengths, lies, shaft model and weight, grip and wraps. Plus a plain sentence about which of the three changes matters most, in case you want to do this in stages.
When We Tell You Not to Book This
- If your wedges are two years old, played twice a week, and never cleaned properly, the answer may be a groove check and a brush rather than a fitting. We do that check free.
- If contact wanders wildly between fat and thin on the same lie, that is a delivery problem and no sole grind will hide it. Lessons first.
- If you own one wedge and a pitching wedge, book the gapping conversation before the bounce conversation. Filling the hole beats refining what is already there.
- If the forecast is genuinely bad, we will move you. Wedge fitting indoors is not a smaller version of this session, it is a different and much less useful one.