00:00Hello everyone, Neil Tappan here from Golf Monthly and welcome to the London Club. In this video
00:04looking at how many wedges different types of golfer should carry. It's all part of the big
00:10kind of puzzle that every golfer needs to work out. So how many fairway woods, hybrids, utility
00:16irons do you carry at the top end of the bag and then how many wedges should you have at the bottom
00:20end of the bag? And in this video we're going to take a look at some of the factors you should
00:24consider. Right, let's get started. Okay so the first thing to say is if you really want to find
00:29out exactly the best wedge lineup for your game then I would recommend going through a wedge fitting
00:34with somebody who really knows what they're doing. It's something that I did probably three years ago
00:39now and I found that it benefited me really a lot in two different ways. One, working out my pitching
00:45distances and then two, providing me with a chipping club. So my most lofted wedge had a
00:51loft bounce sole configuration that helped me hit those bunker shots and lofted chip shots around the
00:56green that little bit better. So there we go, I've said it. I know that a lot of people watching
01:01this won't want to go through a wedge fitting and if you don't then we're going to talk through some
01:05of the kind of basic principles to think about. The first is, and it's probably a bit of a generalisation,
01:10but there's some truth behind it, is that longer hitters will probably require more wedges than
01:15shorter hitters. It stands to reason that if you're hitting your driver consistently 300 yards
01:21then you're probably able to hit your wedge let's say 140 yards. If you've got 140 yards into the green
01:27with your pitching wedge then you've got a lot of ground to cover with your other wedges so you're
01:32likely to need more wedges than a shorter hitter who let's say only hits their pitching wedge 90 yards
01:37they've got less ground to cover. Now the other thing to consider is to make sure that you have even
01:42loft gaps between your wedges. This will mean that you have even distance gaps. Now the thing that you
01:48absolutely have to avoid anywhere in your golf club set is to have two clubs that go the same distance
01:54that's such a waste and it does happen so just be mindful of that. If your lofts are too close to
01:59each other you might end up hitting two wedges, I don't know, only five yards apart from each other
02:04as I say which is a waste. So I think the first thing that I would do would be probably to figure
02:09out how far I hit my set pitching wedge. I think a lot of golf club sets they're getting stronger in
02:14lofts. I looked at one yesterday, I think it was the Callaway ST Rogue Max which has a pitching wedge
02:20of 41 degrees which is quite strong really. Mine's 46 degrees so that's something to bear in mind but
02:25I would figure out how far you carry your set pitching wedge as a kind of good starting point
02:31which is something I'm going to do here. So I've got the Garmin Approach R10 launch monitor on the
02:36ground, I've got the app running opposite me, I've got a green that's about 40 yards in length from front to
02:42back so it's a good green to give me a gauge on how far I'm hitting it. So I'm going to hit one with
02:46my 46 degree pitching wedge to start with. Okay I've hit that up in the air a bit so it's maybe not
02:55gone as... okay that's right at the back of the green but good so that gives us an idea. The launch
03:00monitor is telling me that's carried 132. So from there I think my next thing would be to think about
03:07the most lofted wedge I'd want in my bag. So let's say there's a few different things here you're going to
03:11need a lofted wedge to help you hit bunker shots and lofted chip shots around the green so how much
03:16is the most amount of loft that you want in your hands at the bottom end of the bag. So for a lot
03:20of golfers I think a lob wedge is quite intimidating looking down on that much loft leads to kind of
03:26thin shots and chunked chip shots a lot. If you fall into that category then maybe a Sam wedge,
03:31a sort of 56 degree wedge is your most lofted wedge in your bag. So once you've worked out kind of how
03:36much loft you want to carry and hit a pitch shot with that club for me it's 58 degree and I don't tend to
03:41hit this flat out. So I think on the golf course I'd only ever probably hit this at sort of 80 percent
03:48max because otherwise it just sort of spirals up into the air a bit.
03:55Okay so I've hit that fairly well and that has carried 84 yards and therefore I would have a decision
04:03to make as to whether I'd want to hit my pitching wedge and hit half shots with my pitching wedge to
04:08fill that gap or whether I'd want to fill that with other wedges, one or two other wedges. Now
04:13it's an important point to make here would be part of this depends on where your strengths and
04:18weaknesses lie. If you're really good at those half pitch shots then maybe you don't need to carry
04:22an awful lot of wedges. Maybe you can carry more fairway woods or hybrids at the top end of the bag.
04:26For me I'm not great at half pitch shots sort of naturally and b I don't really get the time to
04:32practice them as much as I'd like so I would rather fill that gap with wedges. I've got two and they're all in
04:38an even loft gap so they go four degrees so I go 46, 50, 54, 58. So I'm going to hit one with my 50 and see
04:49how far that carries and if we've got this right there should be a fairly even kind of spread of
04:54distance gaps between the different wedges in my bag so I'm going to hit my 50.
04:59I've hit that really well and that has gone 117. That's gone 117 and then my 54 degree wedge which is
05:15here I've hit with this. It's gone up quite high in the air that's gone up 99 yards. Hopefully that gives
05:26you an idea of the sort of thing that you're looking for. For me being a longer hitter I get a
05:31lot of shots in this kind of area a lot of shots from the kind of 100 yards 140 yard mark so having
05:37clubs that I don't have to manipulate too much I can make a nice normal swing and hit those yardages
05:42is really important. So there you have it that's our look at how many wedges you should think about
05:47carrying. I think for most people it's a choice between two three and four wedges and I think the
05:52most popular I think the most popular setup is three wedges but there's so many individual factors
05:58here that you'll need to consider for yourself things like how far you hit the ball and your
06:01strengths and weaknesses as well. I hope you found that helpful but that's it for now from the London
06:06club. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
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