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Forget about a wedge’s bounce number. What to look for instead
One thing to remember about club fitting is that there are no hard and fast rules and choosing the right wedge grind is the perfect example.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow talked about why focusing on the bounce number doesn’t really give you a good picture of what a wedge will do for you.
Morrow brought up a great example from his own testing on tight lies with low-bounce wedges.
“I was hitting the Opus T, and I was on the very left side of a two-weeks-without-rain ECPC range, which is the tightest lie they have,” Morrow explained. “And with the T grind, which they say on paper and in the forums and everything, that should be the one that works, right? Because it’s super tight. You’re going to be able to nip it, but whatever.
“Well, the problem is for me as a steeper player, it just turns into a knife and then it doesn’t come out of the ground. That’s the issue.
“And so I go, and I start hitting these like 20-yard pitches with the 12-degree X grind, which is probably the highest they have and I feel like an absolute god.”
More often than not, the stated bounce on a wedge bounce isn’t actually what the bounce of the sole is.
This is why Morrow suggests testing wedges blindly, like Titleist does for the Vokey wedge lineup, to determine what works best for you.
Titleist Vokey SM11 Tour Chrome Wedge
Titleist Vokey Design’s new SM11 wedges feature a new precise CG position across each grind in a loft, meaning every wedge will now perform the same way with the same strike.
“I’m almost at the point where I wish the bounce number would just be eliminated from wedges,” Morrow said. “Like I just want to put the shape of the sole, whatever the grind is from each manufacturer on the bottom of them. And the blind test that Vokey does is probably the best way to do it.”
There are so many different grind options from each manufacturer nowadays, and players hit shots in very different ways, so it’s important to find which wedges work for your specific delivery conditions, rather than catering to the course conditions.
For more from Wunder and Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.
Want to find the best wedges for your game in 2026? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.
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