Golf is hard TV
The golf show for the rest of us

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Golf Is Hard tv Episode 37 - Sand Wedges

Dave: Welcome to Golf is Hard TV.com, the golf show for the rest of us and
we’re going to talk about some concepts in the equipment mainly the sand
wedge. There’s only one piece of equipment you really use out of the
bunker. You could use the other clubs but we’ll get into that, but the sand
wedge. Then why is the sand wedge designed differently than some other
clubs and we actually got a question on this. We got an email and the term
that is used is called bounce.

The sand wedge is actually built with bounce. Now what is bounce and
this is simplest way to explain bounce. If I were to address the ball with
my sand wedge, it’s the best way to illustrate it. You can see the leading
edge right there. The leading edge is actually off the ground a bit and the
back edge of the sand wedge which is here, it’s tapered down so this angle
that has created you can see that the leading edge is about a quarter inch
off the ground that’s bounce.

Now the more you open your face, the more bounce there is. You can see
now how high that leading edge is off ground. That’s about a good half
inch 3 quarters of an inch off the ground. Now you can afford to do that
only when you’re in a bunker or if you’re in a rough and real talented
players can pick it off a tight lie out of the grass when they open the face
but you can see how it makes that much more difficult.

Now sand wedges were built with bounce so they would bounce through
the sand and not dig into the sand. Now another important concept to
understand is that when you shut the face down the opposite happens and
you could see how now eventually the leading edge is actually even with
the ground with this way every other club just about as built so that most
clubs don’t have bounce.

If your ball is buried or you got a really long bunker shot, I would
recommend shutting the face down because now it’s going to dig right
down into the sand. So let’s take a look at a situation where you would
want to close the face and dig and that would be this shot when you’re ball
plugs into really soft sand.

Now if I were to try to open that face, I’m going to bounce right into that
ball and probably blade is going to stick right under here, under the lip of
the bunker then you’re in really big trouble. Now this is a situation where
you just want to get it out and one thing about the shot is not going to spin
like a bunker shot, you got to plan for this to roll. Let’s just get this out of
the bunkers so I’m kind of gearing up for a pretty full, definitely a full
swing with maybe a little extra force typically, I would open the face.

This is a square face. In this case, I’m going to even hood it a little bit or
turn it to the left. I’m going to enter the sand somewhere in here and I
really just want to get that club digging down and I want to move all the
sand and the ball will come up, hopefully.

Now you can see the ball came out of the bunker which from this lie or
regarding that. Let’s take a close up on this here. You can see how much
sand actually came out of that shot and if you were to take a 16 ounce cup
you probably fill it twice believe it or not but that’s sand. Because a
normal shot fills up a 16 ounce cup once that’s how much sand you’re
moving in any given bunker shot when it’s average fluffy sand.

So there you go, I hope that explains bounce, why sand wedges were
designed that way and how it will affect your shot.