How often should you change your wedges?

Aaron Dill is Titleist’s Director of Wedge Relations. In this blog for NCG, Aaron discusses how often should you change your wedges and well as explaining the key signs of spin decay you should look out for…

If you were to go through any club locker room and look at all the bags, you’d see tonnes and tonnes of old wedges, old clubs, and old grips.

The reality is on tour we learn every single week that spin plays an important role in performance and performance comes from control.

These guys on tour are really fortunate to have the support staff from Titleist, or whoever they are sponsored by, in the vans who travel to site every week. We are there to support the guys with whatever their equipment needs are. But spin plays a key role in performance and control, so we make sure those guys have sharp grooves.

How often should you change your wedges

On tour we have an annual calendar with a 1, 2, 3, 4 rule. Let’s use Justin Thomas as an example. He has 46-, 52-, 56- and 60-degree wedges in his set, so he’s going to replace his pitching wedge maybe once a year, his 52 twice, his sand wedge three times, and his lob wedge four or more times in a calendar year.

Of course that depends on the player. Some may use a 60-degree wedge for an entire calendar year, some will change it every two weeks. We have to create a general rule that we follow that way we are reminded to keep the players sharp and make sure they have everything to be successful every week.

As far as club level and amateur players go we would try and tell them if they are playing 75 rounds plus practice a year the wedge is going to start showing spin decay. Those are studies we ran, not just because we are in the business of selling golf clubs, but because the performance does change as your spin decays and the ball flies a little higher.

There are three things you can look for in spin decay. The ball is going to fly higher, it’s going to carry shorter, and it’s obviously going to spin less. You’re going to see the ball land and release, but the main thing is the ball’s going to fly higher.

Whenever you throw the ball higher in the air, you do have some stopping power, but you are also going to expose it to wind and other elements and it becomes very difficult to control. So we encourage players, especially on tour, to make sure their grooves are sharp. That’s a big part of my job every single week.

They usually practice with their gamers because they know those well. We try to tell players after you’ve replaced your current lob wedge keep it in the bag as your practice wedge and keep your other 60 in your bag as your gamer wedge. That way you can beat up the practice wedge and then when it comes to game time you’ve got something fresh that you can use when you need it.

So I think that’s a good rule of thumb for amateurs to replace what you’ve currently got and save one or two wedges that you use around the green for your short game practice and then you’ve got fresh ones ready to go.

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Hannah Holden

Hannah Holden is the Equipment and Instruction Editor here at National Club Golfer. If you’re looking to improve your game, by changing your golf swing or upgrading your golf equipment she’ll have the answers.

As well as writing lots of features and reviews you can find her on our YouTube channel giving you insights on the latest rules, clubs and tips to improve your golf game.

Hannah is a member at Alwoodley golf club. You will either find her here or driving up and down the country playing in a variety of elite amateur events.