00:00 Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the London Club. In this video
00:04 looking at how many wedges different types of golfer should carry. It's all part of the big
00:10 puzzle that every golfer needs to work out. How many fairway woods, hybrids, utility irons do you
00:16 carry at the top end of the bag and then how many wedges should you have at the bottom end of the
00:20 bag? In this video we're going to take a look at some of the factors you should consider. Right,
00:25 let's get started. Okay, so the first thing to say is if you really want to find out exactly
00:29 the best wedge lineup for your game then I would recommend going through a wedge fitting with
00:34 somebody who really knows what they're doing. It's something that I did probably three years ago now
00:39 and I found that it benefited me really a lot in two different ways. One, working out my pitching
00:44 distances and then two, providing me with a chipping club so my most lofted wedge had a
00:51 loft-bound sole configuration that helped me hit those bunker shots and lofted chip shots around
00:56 the green that little bit better. So there we go, I've said it. I know that a lot of people watching
01:01 this won't want to go through a wedge fitting and if you don't then we're going to talk through some
01:05 of the kind of basic principles to think about. The first is, and it's probably a bit of a
01:09 generalization but there's some truth behind it, is that longer hitters will probably require more
01:14 wedges than short hitters. It stands to reason that if you're hitting your driver consistently
01:19 300 yards then you're probably able to hit your wedge let's say 140 yards and if you've got 140
01:26 yards into the green with your pitching wedge then you've got a lot of ground to cover with
01:30 your other wedges so you're likely to need more wedges than a shorter hitter who let's say only
01:35 hits their pitching wedge 90 yards they've got less ground to cover. Now the other thing to consider
01:40 is to make sure that you have even loft gaps between your wedges. This will mean that you have
01:45 even distance gaps. Now the thing that you absolutely have to avoid anywhere in your golf
01:51 club set is to have two clubs that go the same distance that's such a waste and it does happen
01:56 so just be mindful of that. If your lofts are too close to each other you might end up hitting two
02:00 wedges, I don't know, only five yards apart from each other as I say which is a waste. So I think
02:06 the first thing that I would do would be probably to figure out how far I hit my set pitching wedge.
02:11 I think a lot of golf club sets they're getting stronger in lofts. I looked at one yesterday,
02:16 I think it was the Callaway ST Rogue Max which has a pitching wedge of 41 degrees which is quite
02:21 strong really, mine's 46 degrees so that's something to bear in mind but I would figure
02:25 out how far you carry your set pitching wedge as a kind of good starting point which is something
02:31 I'm going to do here. So I've got the Garmin Approach R10 launch monitor on the ground,
02:36 I've got the app running opposite me, I've got a green that's about 40 yards in length from front
02:41 to back so it's a good green to give me a gauge on how far I'm hitting it. I'm going to hit one
02:45 with my 46 degree pitching wedge to start with. Okay I've hit that up in the air a bit so it's
02:54 maybe not gone as... okay that's right at the back of the green, good so that gives us an idea. The
03:00 launch monitor is telling me that's carried 132. So from there I think my next thing would be to
03:05 think about the most lofted wedge I'd want in my bag. So let's say there's a few different things
03:10 here, you're going to need a lofted wedge to help you hit bunker shots and lofted chip shots around
03:15 the green so how much is the most amount of loft that you want in your hands at the bottom end of
03:19 the bag? So for a lot of golfers I think a lob wedge is quite intimidating, looking down on that
03:23 much loft leads to kind of thin shots and chunked chip shots a lot. If you fall into that category
03:30 then maybe a Sam wedge, a sort of 56 degree wedge is your most lofted wedge in your bag.
03:34 So once you've worked out kind of how much loft you want to carry,
03:38 hitting a pitch shot with that club for me it's 58 degree and I don't tend to hit this flat out
03:42 so I think on the golf course I'd only ever probably hit this at sort of
03:46 80% max because otherwise it just sort of spirals up into the air a bit.
03:51 Okay so I've hit that fairly well and that has carried 84 yards and therefore I would have a
04:02 decision to make as to whether I'd want to hit my pitching wedge and hit half shots with my
04:07 pitching wedge to fill that gap or whether I'd want to fill that with other wedges, one or two
04:12 other wedges. Now it's important point to make here would be part of this depends on where your
04:18 strengths and weaknesses lie. If you're really good at those half pitch shots then maybe you
04:21 don't need to carry an awful lot of wedges, maybe you can carry more fairway woods or hybrids at the
04:25 top end of the bag. For me I'm not great at half pitch shots sort of naturally and B) I don't
04:31 really get the time to practice them as much as I'd like so I would rather fill that gap with
04:36 wedges. I've got two and they're all in an even loft gap so they go four degrees so I go 46, 50,
04:44 54, 58. So I'm going to hit one with my 50 and see how far that carries and if we've got this right
04:51 there should be a fairly even kind of spread of distance gaps between the different wedges in my
04:57 bag. So I'm going to hit my 50. I've hit that really well and that has gone 117. That's gone
05:08 117 and then my 54, 54 degree wedge which is here I'll hit with this. It's gone up quite high in the
05:23 air. That's gone up 99 yards. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the sort of thing that you're
05:28 looking for. For me being a longer hitter I get a lot of shots in this kind of area, a lot of shots
05:33 from the kind of 100 yards 140 yard mark so having clubs that I don't have to manipulate too much so
05:39 I can make a nice normal swing and hit those yardages is really important. So there you have
05:44 it that's our look at how many wedges you should think about carrying. I think for most people it's
05:48 a choice between two, three and four wedges and I think the most popular setup is three wedges but
05:56 there's so many individual factors here that you'll need to consider for yourself. Things like
06:00 how far you hit the ball and your strengths and weaknesses as well. I hope you found that helpful
06:04 but that's it for now from the London Club. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.
