How does the wear on grooves affect your wedge shots?
Titleist sought to find out in this new video. The Vokey Wedges R&D team tested three levels of groove wear using a proprietary wedge robot at the Manchester Lane Test Facility.
The wedge robot is the ultimate ball striker. “It hits wedges over and over again with exacting precision,” said Jeremy Stone, Director of Marketing Vokey Wedges.
The target was a 100-yard-long green that’s perfectly flat.
“It allows us to land the ball and measure rollout to precise distances so we can figure out exactly at what point golfers need to think about getting new wedges because their grooves are worn out,” Stone said.
Take Jordan Spieth, for example.
“I play with four Vokey wedges and I change my 60 degree every few tournaments,” Spieth said. “The rest of the wedges I switch every couple months.”
“Every golfer doesn’t need to be switching their wedges out that often,” Stone added, “but we do need to provide them a benchmark of when they need to start investigating their wedges, and when they should consider switching them out.”
Groove Wear Test Results
As shown in the video, the following quantifies the performance of wedges with three levels of groove wear.
- 125 rounds of play: 24 feet of rollout
- 75 rounds of play: 18 feet of rollout
- Fresh grooves: 10 feet of rollout
“Once you get to 75 rounds of play, you’re going to lose spin and it’s really time to start considering a new set of wedges with fresh grooves,” Stone said.
Neil Sagebiel
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