The Gap Wedge

The average weekend golfer will probably only have to wedges in their bag. A pitching wedge and a sand wedge. They will probably be hitting their pitching wedge a distance between 110 to 125 yards. When it come to their sand wedge, they usually hit that wedge around 80 to 90 yards in distance.

If your distance with your pitching wedge 120 yards and your distance with your sand wedge 85 yards, you have a problem. You will have to try to finesse shots that require a distance between 85 to 120 yards.

Do you try to overswing your sand wedge? Not a good idea.

Do you try to ease up on your pitching wedge? Again, not a good idea.

Having a "gap" in your distance of 35 yards might be a big problem, so we introduce a new club - the gap wedge.

Gap wedges do just what their name implies, they fill the distance "gap" between your sand wedge distance of 88 yards and your pitching wedge distance of 120 yards. If you have a gap wedge in your bag you can now take a full swing that is easier to hit with a golf gap wedge rather than trying to overswing your sand wedge or ease up with your pitching wedge.

Over the last several years golf club manufacturers have taken big steps forward in technology. This allows for each club's distance to travel farther than before. Some of this has truely been due to technology but some of it is simply due to golf club makers to use less loft than they did in the past.

Both of these situations has caused a problem, a big gap in the distance golfers hit certain clubs. So to fill the gap a new club is named, the gap wedge. They have a pretty big range of different lofts from 46 to 54 degrees. The clubs in this lower degree level 46 to 49 will have very little to no bounce on the bottom.(also known as no flange) These are often called approach wedges and are mainly hit form the fairways and hard lies.

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The clubs in the higher loft range 50 to 54 degrees will have a little to a lot of bounce depending on the manufacturer. They can be hit from the fairway like an approach wedge or from the bunker to get the ball out of the sand similar to the sand wedge. This club is also very useful from the deep rough and soft fairways because of the extra metal on the bottom of the club. These clubs are often labeled the dual wedge.

The trajectory of these clubs varies a little from club to club but generally they fly very high with a little more distance than the sand wedges. Because of the late introduction of these types of golf wedges they don’t come with the sets of irons and have to be purchased separately from your local golf retailer. You can find them almost anywhere.

When choosing your new gap wedge it is important to know the different lofts on your other wedges so you can space them as evenly as possible. You don’t want a PW at 46 degrees, a GAP at 48 degrees and a SW at 54 degrees because it wouldn’t help you very much. The gap should be at 50 degrees for that situation 4 degrees apart. Get one of these new gap wedges so you can attack the course.