Proto Concept RR Forged Wedges: What you need to know

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Buying wedges can be confusing, especially for your average weekend warrior. Who really knows what all those letter grinds mean anyway? Proto Concept’s new RR Forged wedges, made from soft S20C steel, take the confusion out of figuring out which grind is right for you with three simple words: Aggressive, neutral and sweeper. Make no mistake, these wedges still have the features that comprise those fancy letter grinds, but as long as you understand your general angle of attack, you’ll know which one is right for you.

PRICE: $310. NT (neutral), Lofts: 46-58 degrees; AG (aggressive), Lofts: 56-60 degrees; SP (sweeper), Lofts: 56-60 degrees.

3 Cool Things

1. Simplifying selection. The world of sole designs and grinds is confusing. Manufacturers use all kinds of letters to describe their grinds, and there’s no guarantee one company’s S-grind is the same as another’s. Proto Concept’s Neutral (NT), Aggressive (AG) and Sweeper (SP) heads take the guess work out of club selection.

Neutral is built for fuller swings, featuring a chamfered leading edge and a smooth, rounded sole. This grind has the most loft options, ranging from 46 to 58 degrees. The other two, AG and SP, are both only available in 56 to 60 degrees, but differ in their construction. The AG’s sole is ground in a stretched U-shape, featuring toe and heel relief to allow for a variety of open and closed face shots around the green. The leading edge is much sharper, playing into the intended “aggressive” attack angle—more on that in a bit—and has a sharper transition to the trailing edge. The SP has a much flatter sole, comparatively less toe and heel relief, and a thicker leading edge. Combine that with 3 mm more offset, and you’ve got a wedge made to glide under the ball and pop it in the air.

2. Get the protractors out. The ... concept, if you will, behind the RR Forged wedges is that the shape of your clubhead and the sole design you play should be determined by your angle of attack, not the shape of your divot or where on the face you strike the ball. Put simply, as Proto Concept's Marcy Kamoda explains, most of what determines how the ball flies after impact is due to how the club is delivered to the ball. With that in mind, Proto Concept’s sole shapes and grinds are designed to work with a corresponding angle of attack. A steep player should play the AG model, while a shallow player should play the SP. Someone in the middle should play NT. It doesn’t matter if you’re a toe striker or what your handicap index is. Determine your typical angle of attack, which is simple enough if you’re being fit on grass, and you’re good to go.

3. Getting technical. Using 3D CAD to dial in specifc shaping and weighting, Proto Concept determines where it wants the center of gravity of each clubhead to be before it designs the rest of the clubhead. That CG position determines the area of impact where the head will feel most stable, what we generally know as the sweet spot. Uniquely, with three models for three swing types, each clubhead has a different CG. Compared to the NT's more neutral CG location, in the AG, it is moved more forward (toward the face) to match up with the steep swing path to result in the high ball flight a player using this head would typically see. Conversely, in the SP, it’s moved two millimeters toward the rear of the club to assist the shallower delivery of the head to optimize spin and loft.