My bag used to have four wedges. A pitching wedge from the set, then a gap wedge, a sand wedge with a grind I could not explain, and a lob wedge I had bought in a moment of optimism after watching a tournament on television. Four clubs covering eleven degrees of loft. I hit the lob wedge twice a round and duffed it once a round with perfect consistency.
So I took them all out. One wedge for a month: a 56-degree, mid-bounce, used, bought for the price of a haircut. Here is what happened, and what I think it means for anyone who plays with a handicap that starts with a one or a two.
The gap was never the problem
The conventional wisdom is that you need evenly spaced lofts so that every distance from 40 to 130 yards has a full swing behind it. This assumes two things: that you know your exact carry numbers, and that a full swing is more reliable than a partial one. For most of us, the first is a fiction and the second is a lie.
What actually happens with four wedges is that you stand over a 68-yard shot with a decision to make, and the decision is made badly, and then you make a worse swing to compensate. One wedge removes the decision. There is one club, and the only variable is how far back you take it.
Golf is full of equipment sold as precision that functions as indecision. Four wedges is the clearest example in the bag.
Learning one club properly
By the second week I had a map. Full swing: 96 yards, verified on a wet evening with a rangefinder and a lot of walking. Three-quarter: 78. Half: 55. A choked-down half: 41. Open face, ball forward, big swing: 30 yards and a small prayer. That is five numbers from one club, and five is more than I ever had with four.
The bunkers got better too, which surprised me. A 56 with proper bounce out of sand is a simple motion, and doing it forty times in a month made it boring — which is what competent sand play feels like. My old sand wedge had a different grind and a different swing and I never quite trusted either.
Where it costs you
Two places, honestly. Long, soft, wet bunker shots need a high-bounce 60 and I don't have one, so I play them sideways and take my bogey like an adult. And a full-swing 56 from 100 yards flies high and stops fast, which on a windy day is a problem a lower-lofted wedge would solve. Neither cost me a stroke a round. The indecision used to cost me three.
What to buy if you're doing this
Doesn't matter much. Get something in the 54–56 range with mid bounce, a grind you can't see, and a shaft that isn't stiffer than your irons. Buy it used. Spend the money you saved on a lesson where someone watches you hit 30-yard shots for an hour, because that shot is the one you're actually paying to learn.
The lob wedge is in the garage now, next to the gap wedge and the sand wedge and the two hybrids I bought in the same spirit. I'm not saying they're wrong for everyone. I'm saying that for a month of Saturdays, a single club and no decisions was the most fun I've had from 100 yards in years, and the score didn't move at all.
