- 1 minute ago
Retro Review: Original Vokey wedge.
Joe Ferguson tests the original Vokey wedge from back in 2000 which cost just £39 / $52 against the brand new Vokey SM10 wedge which has an RRP of £170 / $223 to see if there is a noticeable decline in spin or if older wedges from the second hand market could be a viable option for your bag.
We teamed up with second hand golf club retailer golfclubs4cash to create this video
Joe Ferguson tests the original Vokey wedge from back in 2000 which cost just £39 / $52 against the brand new Vokey SM10 wedge which has an RRP of £170 / $223 to see if there is a noticeable decline in spin or if older wedges from the second hand market could be a viable option for your bag.
We teamed up with second hand golf club retailer golfclubs4cash to create this video
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Retro review time again and today I'm dissecting a dynasty. It's time for the
00:04Titleist Vokey wedges. As ever for these retro reviews we've teamed up with Golf
00:09Clubs for Cash, one of the leading retailers of pre-loved equipment and
00:12they've provided some absolute gems to test like this original Vokey. So if
00:17you're interested in getting some value for money in your second-hand gear go
00:21over to the website or on their new app which is super easy to navigate. So what
00:25I've got with me here is more or less the original Vokey. It's the 200 series in
00:30the raw finish. Now I've picked this up for the bargain price of $38.99 from
00:35Golf Clubs for Cash which for context is less than I paid for an Indian takeaway
00:39for me and the missus last night. The reason I say more or less the
00:42original Vokey is if you look on the history page of the Titleist website at
00:46the Vokey wedges you'll see there was actually one little model just before
00:49this in 1999 and this was released in 2000. Everything before that from
00:54Titleist was just a Titleist product without the assistance of Mr Bob Vokey.
00:58So Vokey wedges probably still for me and maybe all of you at home the gold
01:02standard of short game excellence but I want to see how things have progressed
01:07not just from the press releases I get promising more spin and altered CG I want
01:12to see that in real practical terms. So I've come down to the practice ground I've
01:16got my full swing kit launch monitor because I want to hit some full shots when
01:19I'm testing older wedges one of the things I really look out for is spin or
01:23spin decay how much spin has it lost from its original state now to make sure
01:28this is fair I've actually got two essentially identical wedges with both at
01:3256 degrees and we're also at 14 degrees of bounce which will make it extra fair if
01:37you like and in terms of the looks well there's some striking similarities in the
01:41playing position but there's also a couple of subtle differences that I want to
01:45talk about in terms of the size the overall head shape and footprint there's not
01:49much in it at all the hosel length is the same and the groove pattern stretches the
01:54same distance across and the heel to toe measurement is very very similar the
01:57one striking difference I see when you put them down is on the 200 series the
02:02leading edge is significantly rounder on the SM 10 56 I've got in front of me it's a
02:07lot more squared off and my hunch on that is because back in the sort of very
02:12early 2000s a lot of players and tour pros were still using 56 as their most lofted wedge it was a little bit later that 58 is the
02:1960s became more prevalent so Vokey it's something they've done with their modern
02:23wedges when you go into the 58 and 60 you'll see the leading edge a little bit
02:27more rounded because people tend to open and close the face on those they want a
02:30bit more versatility in the look of the leading edge so as I said because more
02:34people were using 56 as their most lofted wedge back in the day that's
02:38probably why this is a little bit more rounded off so I want to see as I said
02:43the spin and the performance now it's going to clip a few full shots away I've got a
02:46towel with me to make sure I clean off these faces after every shot because
02:49it's a bit wet and a bit muddy and I want to get a true reflection so let's just
02:52clip a few away now I'm going to start with the 200 series and just aim down this
02:58yardage line
03:00super soft feel that you would expect from Vokey it's come out a pretty similar
03:09flight window to what I would normally expect let me just scroll that down a bit
03:12so I can see okay so it's 110 yards of carry 8700 revs of spin and 38 degrees of
03:20launch okay not too surprising that's not particularly high or low spin interesting
03:27let's go again
03:32yeah maybe popping up a little bit higher than I would expect down my sand wedge
03:36the spin's still pretty good there 9.2 on that one 9200 revs of spin 109 carry so
03:43very consistent there no surprises
03:49okay much the same there again these are please my wedge game they're all set on
03:53top of one another 109 again 9300 revs of spin so these are decent numbers and 38
04:00degrees of launch that's jumped about a little bit that's been between 38 and 41
04:05so that's interesting I'll give you the averages of these at the end I'm just
04:08going to switch over to the sm10 now
04:12so with that sm10 we've already spoken out there's slightly more squared off
04:15leading edge which I quite like on these fuller shots so let's see how this goes
04:18to the naked eye that's pretty identical flight window it's sat next to everything again 108 of
04:28carry so within a yard of that lower launch angle there at 36 and a touch more spin but only
04:35we're talking about nine nine and a half thousand there let's clean this off
04:38okay maybe a touch lower in launch I'd say yeah 35 and a bit there 9100 of spin so in the same
04:51ballpark 108 of carry so really really consistent in terms of the intangibles that aren't on the
04:57launch monitor I'm not really noticing any significant difference in feel they both seem as soft and as
05:02solid as as one another so that's an interesting observation for me there's been no like I said in
05:08over a quarter of a century or around a quarter of a century if you want to frame it like that
05:12you'd expect maybe a different sensation and different materials but it's all stayed pretty
05:16similar now I actually got in some hot water when I was talking about that on social media the other
05:21day that I would have liked to have seen maybe some more innovation from Titleist in the wedge
05:25department but as a lot of Titleist loyalists quite rightly pointed out you wouldn't redraw the Mona
05:30Lisa if you've got a really good product occasionally it just needs the odd tweak let me just give this
05:35a little white before I go again so a lovely tight dispersion 109 again on the carry that's popped up
05:48a little bit in spin that's near a nine eight so there does seem to be a touch more spin on the newer
05:54one which isn't necessarily a surprise but let's take a look at those averages and really quantify that
05:59interesting results there so first off I've got to say the carry was basically identical 108
06:04108.5 yards so nothing in it there on the carry and they did get there in slightly subtly different
06:11ways which I'll talk about in a minute now on this test I was expecting to be honest pretty much
06:16identical spin numbers and that might sound strange based on the fact that this wedge is 25 years old
06:22and this one's fresh out the wrapper this year but the reason I say that is the 200 series came about
06:27before the 2010 groove rule change from the RNA and USGA so essentially if you wanted to play this in
06:34some elite amateur or professional competitions it might actually be non-conforming and with some other
06:40wedges I've tested even very old wedges that have been non-conforming the spin rate stayed relatively
06:45similar to the newer wedges so that was what I was expecting to see and to an extent I did overall
06:50the SM10 wedge was spinning around 300 revs per minute more launching a couple of degrees lower
06:58so the reason for that was some fresher sort of more bitey grooves you do just get a little bit more
07:03time on the face on those bottom two grooves so the ball tends to shoot out a little bit lower and
07:08spins more and that's been the case of what Vokey have been trying to do since about SM7 SM8 from the
07:13tour feedback that they get the pros like to see the ball coming out lower more under control and gripping
07:18up on the greens but that's not necessarily the case for everyone out there so some of the amateurs
07:23out there that might be watching this you might want to see the ball going straight up in the air
07:27and get your stop with descent angle because you might not have the speed to generate the spin that's
07:31required and that's what the case was here we saw a little bit more launch about two and a bit more
07:35degrees out of the 200 series and a little bit less spin but because of that higher launch it was coming
07:41in at a slightly steeper descent angle so depending on your delivery conditions and the conditions
07:46you're playing in that might actually do the trick for you now for 25 years of difference there is
07:52some subtle subtle changes there in the performance of these two wedges but it's not much so to all you
07:58Vokey enthusiasts out there I hope you're enjoying this video if you are please hit the like button
08:02and subscribe to the channel and get in the comments down below let me know what your favorite
08:06Vokey series has been over the years so that's the full shots and it was interesting to see the data but
08:12ultimately with these shorter clubs it's all about scoring and it could be getting up and down and
08:17saving shots here and there so we've come to the chipping green I'm just going to clip a few away and
08:21spend a bit of time hitting some different shots different trajectories to different pins I want to
08:26find out what the differences are here so let's just clip a few away and find out
08:40So that was a really enjoyable short game session there I've had loads of shots with both of
09:02those wedges and it was actually some really interesting results there wasn't too much in it
09:07probably what I saw was kind of a microcosm of what we saw on the fuller shots if anything
09:12the SM10 was coming out just a little bit lower and just felt a little bit grippier on that first
09:17bounce but that isn't necessarily a good thing what I saw with the 200 series it maybe wasn't staying
09:24on the face as long didn't feel like it was gripping up as much but because of that it was just
09:28popping up a little higher in that launch angle similar to the full shots give me a slightly steeper
09:33descent angle and the ball was pretty much pulling up within the same distance
09:37anyway just through a different means more descent angle than spin and that's probably a good message
09:43moreover above these two wedges these two individual wedges I'm testing here if you're
09:47looking at secondhand wedges in general inevitably with wedges of 15 20 plus years old you might see
09:54some level of spin decay and that's probably what I'm seeing here a little bit but as I think I've shown
10:00and what's been demonstrated to me here is that you can make up that stopping power in other ways
10:05through descent angles so I hope you've enjoyed that little look and that little trip down memory
10:09lane of the wedges and I hope it's given you some good ideas on what might be beneficial to you in your
10:13wedge game
Comments