Mesquite, Nev. -- Of all the club categories featured in the Golf Digest Hot
List (drivers, fairway woods, hybrids, super-game-improvement irons,
game-improvement irons, player’s irons, wedges, mallet putters and blade
putters), none is more feared during summit testing than wedges. That’s
because wedge testing involves three separate stages -- pitching, bunker
shots and chipping -- and takes several hours to complete.
To efficiently move through three stages of testing 16 different wedge
finalists in a fairly small practice area, we have to divide our 16 testers
into two groups of eight (this year, one group of eight tested wedges while
the other covered drivers). The eight players start out by hitting roughly
10 50-yard pitch shots with each of two wedges. Then half of them take their
two wedges and move into the greenside bunkers, while the other half take
their wedges to chipping areas around the practice green. After that, the
two halves switch, so that each tester’s two clubs are hit from all three
locations. When this little dance is finished, each tester switches clubs
with the tester next to them and does the whole thing over again. We then
repeat this process four more times so that all players hit all wedges from
all three locations. That’s 10 shots each from three locations with 16
wedges for a grand total of 480 wedge shots per person.
As editors, our jobs are to take down notes and scores from each hitting
area for each club, while making sure there are no golf balls in the way of
the next chip or bunker shot. It’s pure organized chaos. But after six years
of trying different methods for wedge testing, we’ve come to the conclusion
that this is the only way to do it if we want to get it right. Because the
wedge is arguably the most versatile club in a golfer’s bag and needs to be
as brilliant from a tight lie as it is in a bunker. It can’t just feel great
on chip shots or spin well out of the sand -- in order to make the Golf
Digest Hot List, it has to perform on all short-game shots.
So we continue to torture our testers with this tedious process. We force
them to sweat it out while their driver-hitting compadres are long since
done, sipping sodas in the shade and cracking open their boxed lunches. The
wedge slaves' only comfort is knowing that less than an hour later, the
roles will be reversed. And nobody has ever looked forward to hitting 24
drivers as much as a Golf Digest Hot List tester who just finished up his
wedge session.
-- Stina Sternberg
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