This is the bench where we are most openly limited by being indoors, and we would rather say that on the front page of the session than discover it together at the end. A mat cannot show you how a sole interacts with a soggy December lie. What the bay can do is settle gapping, spin windows and full-swing consistency — and that is genuinely most of the value.
Bounce is a relationship between a sole and a surface. Change the surface and you have changed the answer. Since our primary surface is a mat, we do three specific things rather than guess.
A player who walks Oakway in January meets a different sole problem from someone who rides Emerald Valley in August. Course, season and whether you take a divot are recorded before any wedge comes off the rack, and they narrow the candidate list before testing starts.
Carry, spin, launch and dispersion on the full shot are all readable in a bay and they answer the gapping question, which is the one that costs the most strokes. Bounce barely enters a full-swing wedge decision anyway.
For the short-game half we hand over a demo head to play for a fortnight. Nothing on a screen is worth more than two rounds of your own turf, and we would rather delay a sale than build a sole you end up fighting.
Iron sets have been getting stronger for years, and a modern pitching wedge is often lofted where a nine iron used to sit. That single number pushes the whole bottom of the bag out of shape, and it is the reason a golfer with three wedges can still have a forty-yard hole in their range.
So the session starts at the pitching wedge rather than at the sand wedge. Once we know the real loft of the club at the top of the wedge ladder, the rest of the spacing follows arithmetic instead of habit.
| Pitching wedge carry | Bay −0.4 yd |
|---|---|
| Gap wedge carry | Bay −1.1 yd |
| Fifty-six carry | Bay −1.7 yd |
| Sixty carry | Bay −2.2 yd |
| Spin, dry face | Bay reads low |
| Spin, damp face | Not modelled |
Before any wedge session we inspect the grooves on what you own. A fifty-six with four seasons of use has lost enough edge to change spin materially, and replacing it is a cheaper conversation than fitting around it. We say so even when it shortens the appointment.
Tell us which club is bothering you and roughly when you can get to Chad Drive. We reply with two or three slots and a note about what to bring.