Those who proclaimed to be able to fit bounce say they're going to fit to
the turf you play and the size divot you take. I would ask you
this, what's the next wedge lie that you're going to have going to look
like? What's the turf under that lie going to be? You don't know.
Nobody listening to this podcast knows. It could be on a hard pad.
It could be that it rained last night. The fairways are real soft.
It could be a bunker of the scott film pack wet sand. It
could be a different place in that same bunker. That's the sandus fluff here.
We don't get to play tour level golf courses. We don't get to
play the exact same turf weekend, week out, the exact same sand.
So I mean, if you watch the tour players, sometimes they nipped the
ball with no divot at own. Sometimes they take a bab cult. Well
that's intentional, but with us that could be accidental. Alli. If it's
joelgre Sean from Camario, California, and I play at Olivish Links golf Course,
if this golf Smarter number eight nine one, carrying the right wedge is
a important as understanding how to use one with the wedge guy Terry Taylor.
This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf mines
to help you lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Terry. It's
glad to be back, bread And it's always fun when we get together and
have these these exchanges. Well, you know, I just happened to be
going through my spreadsheet today to see. Now Terry's been on a lot for
a long time. When did he start? Which our first time together was
in two in June of two thousand and eight, episode one hundred twenty nine.
Wow, And so which company was that that would have been the first
one? Right? And then this is your eighteenth appearance. So we've been
through what three, Idolon and then Ben Hogan and now Edison and Edison is
here to stay. Yeah, that's so that's so intended to be my last,
my last go around, and everything I've ever wanted doing Wedges, I'm
doing it here. So we have a lot of fun. Oh man,
you are such a Texas guy. You're supposed to say this is my last
rodeo. Come on, Okay, sorry about that. I'll know that's okay,
that's okay. The reason I wanted to bring you on is because I
got an email from Edison the other day that said that the new Edison two
point zero wedges are now available, and you kind of tease us. You
teased us last time you were on that it was coming and you couldn't talk
about it. So I really want to pick your brain today. Okay.
Well, I'm an open book, as you know, I do. I
do. That's why I keep coming back. So I find it fascinating that,
uh, you know, especially after going to the PGA show, so
many of the OEMs, the manufacturers of golf clubs, they have to come
out with new product every six months. They've got to show something different,
and you know, and we all know that the restrictions are so tight that
to create something new is pretty hard to do. And so they'll come out
with a new color. You know, it's like the new iPhone yellow.
Who cares, right, But you know it's like, oh, we have
a white driver, now we have a pink driver. Yeah, but what
is it going to do for me? But Edison doesn't do that. Edison
doesn't announce new clubs every six months. Now. We introduced the first generation
Edison forged in April of twenty twenty, actually announced them earlier of that year,
and begin actively, you know, manufacturing and selling them in April of
twenty twenty. Man at that time, you know, I'm a continuous teak
or fred. I mean, I'm you know that I knew these did everything
I wanted them to do. But I've continue to say, but what if
I did this? What if I did that? And I go through different
round I'll tech golf clubs. I'll weld on them and briding on them and
see how they work and discard them or put them over in the AHA pile
if that something really is. And I excuse me as interesting. But with
the others and Fords, I mean, they're just such high performing wedges and
we're so different than anything out there, and and you know, my performance
criteria is how can I make wedges more forgiving without sacrificing the skillful shot making
that you know, everybody has some level of skillful shot making they're willing to
try. Some people stay very basic, Some people play wedges out of fear.
Some people like we see you know at AUGUSTA you know, some people
are absolute magicians with their wedges. These elite players, they do things,
you know, you watch them at a Vesta. They hit you know,
every kind of shot possible within three feet of the hole, and they do
it at you know, twenty different ways. And so every golfer has their
own comfort level of what they're willing to try to do with their wedges.
And I don't want to ever compromise that skilled shot maker with any of my
technologies. But most of us and your listeners, and you know, the
vast majority, you know, we have a wedge out and whether we need
to hit at thirty feet or one hundred and twenty yards, our goal is
for it to go that for it even if I don't hit it quite right.
And the distance control is the number one thing that plays golfers, I
mean their wedges, and it's really built into the traditional wedges we've always played.
And you know, you mentioned going back to Idol on my first wedge
company, and you know, I've always tried to move weight up higher in
the wedge to get more masks behind that high face shot, behind that toe
shot. You know, with the S four line, I've ventured off into
a progressive waiting and kind of an accented heel until waiting and wedges and worked
extremely well. I get emails and calls from golfers weekly. I'm still playing
my old score wedges. Is it time for me to change? And I
say, yeah, that's called Virald technology. I've advanced the art in that
twelve years, and we're seeing other companies start to do things with wedges.
Particularly, we're seeing a little more mass up high in the blade of everybody's
wedges now, but they're not They're not even where those old idol and wedges
were as far as having thickness up above the center of the golf club.
And the Edison Forge wedges we introduced in twenty twenty were twenty five thirty percent
more mass above the above center face impact than anybody out there. And I've
moved that even further with the Edison two point old wedges, which we have
up to forty two percent more mass above the center strike. And what mass
above the center strike does is it gives you vertical forgiveness, you know,
and wedges, because of the loft, it's much easier to hit it high
in the face than it is with say a seven hour, and so you
know, the common misses on wedges are high on the face and out toward
the toe. And I examine hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of wedges, you
know, in golfers bags, and I look at how the impact pattern is
on the face of their golf club. And when I look at a tour
player's wedges, that impact pattern is about the size of a dime or a
penny, and it's right down on the third and fourth groove. Well,
when I look at your wedges and my wedges, even as a low single
digit handicapper, I look at skilled club to festivals, I look at rank
and file six to twenty handicappers, and that wear pattern is more the size
of a silver dollar or a half dollar, and it's much higher in the
face in the center, and it skews out toward the toe and high face.
So a driving forces man, how do I make that shot turn out
better without sacrificing that perfect strike down there on that third or fourth groove.
And so with the two point zero, I've continued my work to my great
mass around the golf club head, and we refined some soul design, my
Kaylor soul. We can talk about that we have, and we changed our
shaft offering considerably and expanded this. We can do more in the custom world
with our golfers. But it's a it's an evolution, not a revolution.
It's a continuation of what I was doing in the Edison Forged. To push
it, I would say, in today's market, there's only one wedge that
outperforms our original as worced, and that's the new Edison two point up.
The Edison Fords is still the most high performing wedge out there compared to everything
else in the market. But I saw that I had created a prototype that
even improved upon that performance, and that's what became the Edison two point h.
When did the first line of Edison get released. Edison Fords was introducing
April of twenty twenty three years ago. Three years. So you were talking
about six month product cycles. We had a three year cycle. So okay,
okay, yeah, because they're still in my bag and still I'm still
even though I carry a set of pinging irons, my wedges, my ping
wedges are just nice, bright and shiny because they just don't get used.
And you taught me very early on that you always considered a nine iron to
be a wedge, and yet people considered them, you know, you know
that and we were talking about this in a conversation with my golf professional and
from golfers the other day. You know, just because you put a p
on the bottom of a club doesn't make it a wedge. And if you
go back to when the US call them the modern rates of the game,
you know, if you go back and you know, I'm a big fan
of history from you know, Hogan Nelson's need to merit all the way back
to Saracen and Jones and watch how they played the game and what they did.
Sarah zend is generally credited would be in the father of the modern sand
wedge, in the modern bunker technique of explosion shots and you know, blasting
out the bunker. But you look at the greats of the seventies and eighties
and Watson and Miller and Nicholas and you know, all of those guys.
There were some masterful wedge players, but they pitched the ball with a pitching
wedge because their pitching wedge had fifty one fifty two degrees a loft, and
then they carried a sand wedge of fifty five or fifty six. This was
before the advent of the lob wedge, and that's what they scored with.
Their nine iron was a forty six forty seven degree golf club, and you
know they would bump and run with an eight ron, which was a forty
four or forty five degree golf club. Well, then the modern sets that
we're seeing out there, that forty four or forty five degree golf club has
now got a p on the bottom of it, but it doesn't change the
dynamics. It's still a forty four or forty five degree golf club. You
can not get the loft to hit a troop pitch shot with that club.
And you know that became the advent of the gap wedges and approach wedges and
these things. But when you get into the high loft golf clubs, these
are very peculiar animals because of all that loft and how the mass is distributed
to the back of a fifty or fifty two degree golf club to optimize performance
is very different than what it is in that thirty one or thirty three degree
seven yard And yet you know you're matching wedges to your arm sets. They
look like you're seven yard and you can camp accurately and consistently pitch the ball
with that thin face, super perimeter weighted golf club. It's great in the
seven iron. Great the five yard makes three and fourns even easier to hit.
But it doesn't it doesn't advance the yard and wedge play. And I'm
just kind of zeroed in on what happens when you're in prime scoring range,
whether that starts it one hundred and fifty yards for you, or whether that
starts it, you know, one hundred and ten yards or one hundred yards
and you're in prov scoring raves and you have a wedge in your hand.
It's all about distance control, consistency of contact, soul, versatility, and
these are the things that I've just zeroed in on with the Edison wedges really
all of the last thirty years, but thickly with the Edison wedges. We're
gonna take a time out. We'll be right back. I love that you
said the art of wedge play, because I think that so many golfers when
they go out to either practice or warm up and they pull out their wedges,
they try to hit a full swing on the wedge, and they don't
necessarily try to get four or five different shots out of every club. And
yeah, what we've learned and what I'm a big performative is a full swing
with a driver, and a full swing with seven iron, and a full
swing with a gap wedge or three different full swing and a full swing with
a wedge to me is about eighty to eighty five percent of what you consider
a full swing with the seven or an eight are And by doing that that
slower, more deliberate swing, it allows you to keep your lead side,
your left side if you're right handed, It allows you to keep that lead
side ahead of the club through impact, and it produces a better quality strike
and it produces actually a more penetrating ball flight in the same distance you would
get out of a quote full swing, but the ball's not going to balloon
up in the air as readily. You're going to make more consistent contact.
And you know, with wedges, consistency of contact is how you get distance
consistency, you know, aside from the design of the golf club head.
But I can't you know, we in the golf club business. We can
only control what the golf club itself does. We can't control what the golfer
does. And it's the golf wedges are the heaviest head in the in the
set, they're you know, the shortest shaft. There's a lot of little
nuances to wedge play. And you know, when I'm talking, you're what
we would consider full swing distance again, eighty to eighty five percent of your
say, your seven yard swing speed, and you'll see more controllable trajectories.
But you know you have two or three four wedges in your bag. You
need to learn, you know, what an eighty five percent swing and the
sixty five percent swing and a half swing will produce. And now you have
yardage gapping from you know, let's say your full swing pitch of edges one
hundred and fifteen yards, and you know you need to be able to carve
that up into five to eight yard increments all the way down to twenty or
thirty yards. And you do that by varying your swing speed, your swing
link, in which club view you use. And one of the things we've
learned, and it's peculiar to all wedges, but specifically to the Edison two
point zer, is in those intermediate wedge shots, you'll get as much or
more spin and improved distance consistency by dropping down to your fifty two to fifty
four degree wedge. Then always reach it for that high lofted wedge because you're
inside gap wadge, right, you know, don't automatically reach for that fifty
seven or fifty eight or sixty degree wedge just because you're only sixty yards.
You know, we're in that sixty yard shot. With your fifty four degree
wedge, you're fifty three, and you'll find more controllable trajectories. You'll find
no loss of spin, in fact, you make gain spin, and you'll
find much more consistent impact because that fifty four degree wedge is more forgiving than
a fifty eight. If you move the impact up and down the face,
a high face shot on a fifty four is going to go better than a
high face shot on a fifty eight, regardless of the brand. But you
know, and I really encourage people, you know that gap wedge that's fifty
two to fifty forty three wedge, that should be really your go to wedge
unless you need the loss of the fifty eight or sixty. I think that
most people are surprised that just because they pull out a wedge they're not going
to get spin. Putting spin on a ball is a skill as well.
I mean, it takes work. It's not a simple thing to do,
no, And I've written several blogs about you know, the dynamics of spin
and spin is if we leave a club out of the equation for a minute.
Spin is a function of club head speed and cleanliness of contact and where
on the face you make contact. So everybody knows the old You know you
hit a shot, you know you caught it a little thin. It's a
little bit of a heater. It flies past the flag, but it just
sucks up like it was on breaks, and everybody calls it thin to win,
right, And that's because when you made contact thin, I'm not talking
about one right the eyebrows and I'm talking about that, Oh I caught that
a little thin. You had almost all the mass of the golf club head
was above that point of impact, and that creates what's called gear effect,
and it enhances the spin. The why the doorplayers spin the ball so much
because you know how to nip that ball on the second, third, fourth
groove, and that's how they get all that spin because they're hitting it right
down on that second, third, or fourth groove, and they're optimizing the
gear effect of that golf club. What we did with the Edison wedges is
put so much mass up in the top part of the golf club. We're
optimizing spin up higher in the club at the fourth, fifth, or sixth
groove. We're giving you the same kind of spin that other wedges. You
would have to hit it on that second or third groove to get that spin.
And it's a fundamental of golf club performance called gear effect, and it
works horizonti on the golf club. You hit the ball out on the toe,
it tends to take a draw spin back. If you hit it low
in the heel, it tends to take a fade spin back to the center.
That's horizontal gear effect, but that gear effect works the same way vertically.
So if you look at the guys on the tour that are always out
there to get high launched with low spin with their drivers, they're hitting the
ball above the center of the face with that driver. That the optimum performance
spot with modern drivers is above center face and it gets more of the mass
of that driver below the point of impact. So the ball wants to launch
high with minimal spin and in wedge you're looking for penetrating trajectory with lots of
spin. But that wedge has all the weight on the bottom, so you
have to hit it right down on that second, third, fourth groove with
a traditional wedge in order to optimize spin. Well, that's you know,
a fraction from a pure blade of that ball. And you know, we
don't play the tight fairways they play. We played the ball where it's fluffy
your fairways, and we kept even roll it. We hit more shots out
of the rough. So we amateur golfers we buy just by nature of the
playing conditions. We hit the ball higher in the wedge face than the tour
players did because of the we're playing fluff your fairways, the ball up higher
and so we can't. And let me just throw this in. You are
known as the wedge Guy and you've been writing blogs for a long time.
Are you still writing blogs for your golf works? I'm writing for a golf
of your x dot com. Yes. Every week I think I'm upped to.
We're talking about how many shows you've done and how many I've done.
At last count, I've got over a thousand articles published as the wedge Guy.
O will last twenty years. Oh that's phenomenal. Thank you, Thank
you for doing that too, and everyone should look him up for that.
Let's talk about the grooves for a second, because I remember at one point
the rulings on what grooves can offer what the grooves have that changed and there
was a lot of concern in the not only on the professional level of how
the impact was going to be, but also a lot of concern from the
manufacturers of how is this going to impact their inventory and the future of their
clubs. Well, it really amazes me of so many manufacturers in the wedge
category are still trying to make a big deal out of grooves and take offence
to that because the rules of what we could do to grooves haven't changed since
twenty ten. Prior to twenty ten, Week started machine cutting grooves, and
idol On wedges were the first production wedges to offer the full CNC machine grooves,
and we could cut those with super sharp square edges, and they would
shred golf balls, if you remember, and they would to spend the ball
like crazy. A lot of tour players actually back then would would wear down
their grooves because they spun the ball too much. For a tour player skill
level. The USDA changed the rules in twenty ten and they said, we
have to put a radius on the edge of that groove, and it changed
the way we had to make grooves because this rule was very different than before,
so we had to manage this radius on the edge of the groove.
But we're getting into, you know, hundreds of thousands of an edge fred,
we're talking about machining. And when we did that, the spin off
the golf club relaxed a little bit because that groove edge was not so sharp.
But well, the tour guys actually liked it because they know how to
spend the ball a varying amount. I mean, watch them at August of
this last week and they're hitting a sand wedge. They're kind of bumping run
and letting it released. They're hitting another wedge that's a one hop and stop.
You know, they hit those amazing wedge shots skipped like three times and
then it stopped. They know how to do this because they spend thousands of
hours learning how to do this with their wedges, hitting all different kinds of
shots, and the rest of us are just trying to make the ball do
something acceptable. But the USCA has not changed the rules on grooves since twenty
ten. The only thing that's changed is machining techniques and tolerances have gotten incrementally
better so that we can hold that tolerance tighter than we could. Say in
the days of score wedges, we couldn't hold those tolerances tight as we can
now. But for a manufactor to say they created a groove that gives fifteen
percent more spent, I gotta call bs on that. Or's your Texas thing
for you? But you know, because you can't do that. We tested
with an Edison Wit with a full smooth face versus you know, our production
grooves that are pushed right to the limit of the USCA and on a dry
golf ball, mind you, the club with no grooves at all only lost
fifteen percent spit. That's from no grooves at all to the production groove.
So for somebody to say they can add fifteen percent spent by you know,
cutting their groove and extra you know, nine ten thousands of an inch sharper,
it can't make it sharper. The USCA says it has to have a
radius on the edge, and that radius is measured that ten thousands of an
inch and you can't make them sharper than that. So I really take offense
to people trying to make a story where there is of one. Your wedge
has to have grooves on it, and the grooves are there to channel away
moisturing grass to get more of the face. Just like the tread on your
tire, the grooves on your golf blob are designed to channel away moisture and
grass so that you can get adhesion to the space between the grooves and get
pricks it. If you think about, you know, your tires. For
people that operate in really horrible conditions, they put big blood mud grips on
their car or their truck, their jeep. If the dragsters that are running
a complete and the Formula one, when they're running a dry track, everyone
totally slick tires because it's a dry track. They want maximum friction, maximum
bit easier. But if it starts raining on the Formula One or NASCAR,
they got to go into the pit and get different tarza. They now they've
got to have tread to channel away that moisture and grows. Really, that's
the purpose they serve is to channel a way matter and there's only so much
we can do in the USC says you can do this, and every quality
manufacturer pushes that USC limit right to the limit because we can with modern milling
techniques. And when you go out and find wedges that are super cheap,
you know, and they're all price points out there, they're probably they can't
be milling those wedges to eight degree tolerances those grooves rather because the price point
will allow it. Milling is an expensive one at the time process to get
these grooves in the face to the ultimate you know, the ultimate measurement.
That's a phenomenal explanation. I really appreciate it. We're gonna take another time
out right back. You mentioned that you're a tinkerer. I'm fascinated about that.
Is if they you are sitting there with these wedges in your hand and
your power tools and stuff, or do you have people you say, all
right, try this, try this, try this a little bit. How
where did that you fit? If I'm doing something evolutionary, I'll typically work
with our foundry that forges our heads and finishes our heads for us a tremendous
quality of using them since the old score days. Um, they have a
great tool room and they can offer me some really quick turnaround all things,
and I'll say, hey, let's I might send them a sketch. I
might send them a model that I've made up with putty and clay and whatever.
I might just you know, send them an email here's what I'm thinking.
But other times I'll take wedges and I'll go to a local machine shop
that I have relationship with, and I'll say, we're gonna cut some material
out here, We're gonna weld some material in there, and then I'm gonna
go grind on that wedge and um and get it where we want it.
So it's a combination. Golf clubs actually are not the only thing I tinker
with. I'm tinker with fishing rods and sodguns and my outboard motor on my
baby, all other kinds of things I'll talk to. So I just I
can't get over tinker right out. Was that little kid that you know,
work at my dad's elbow with, you know, taking fishing reels apart when
we were back from our saltwater trips and putting them. I was always the
kid that liked to know how things work, you know, take a things
apart. Let's see if I can put them back together and I'll have any
parts flipped over. It was that guy too, was my brother. Always
the broke stuff and walked away and it's like, would you do I'm like,
no, no, wait, what did I do? I'll fix it?
Don't I'll put it back together. Can can we talk about um bounce?
For a while. We've been hearing a lot of conversation about bounce,
And again, this conversation is for the amateur golfer, the recreational golfer who
doesn't really understand the nuances of the various clubs other than this is a forty
degree, and this is forty five, and this is Oh you mean I'm
supposed to have four degrees in between each of these clubs. Oh, I
didn't know that, you know. And I think bounce is a really important
element. And you've messed with, you've played with, You've perfected bounce and
incorporated it into your clubs over the years. And I think you have great
explanation for that. Well, you know, the bottom of a club has
to have bounce, and that's the downward angle of the soul to keep the
club from digging in the turf, to keep it from being a shovel okay,
So every club has to have some kind of bounce to it. You
know, even your middle and long arms they have some bounce built in,
but it's very mild because the angle of it is shallow. Wedges have more
bounce because you're working through a variety of shots around the greens, bunkers to
tight turf. And I've always taken offense to this claim or notion that you
can sit bounce. I mean, if I'm John Ram or you know,
a Scottie Cheffer or have that level skill, I can feel things in the
golf of that we can hardly measure, and they can feel certain things.
But I will tell you that at the Masters this week, the wedges they
played on Thursday, we're not the same wedges they were playing after the rains
came because Augusta got softer. These guys they get to go to the tour
trailer, whether it's Galloway Titles, whatever, and get a bunch of free
new wedges. I need more bounce. The course just got wet overnight.
I need more bounce. By the time they got the Sunday they may have
gone back to their other wedges. That course range pretty well and the ground
got a little siler again, and they might have gone to different bounces.
And they do that through the course of the season because they can see things
that we can't feel, and they know how to execute a jillion different golf
shots. But my challenge to the notion of bounce fitting is that those who
proclaimed to be able to fit bounce say they're going to fit to the turf
you play and the size divot you take. I would ask you this,
what's the next wedge lie that you're going to have going to look? Like?
What's the turf under that lie going to be? You don't know.
Nobody listening this podcast knows. It could be on a hard pan. It
could be that it rained last night. The fairways are real soft. It
could be a bunker the scout film pack wet sand. It could be a
bunker or a different place in that same bunker that the sand is fluffier.
We don't get to play tour level golf courses. We don't get to play
the exact same turf week in week out, the exact same sand and we
take. I mean, if you watch the tour players, sometimes they nip
the ball with no divot at all. Sometimes they take a beaver cult.
Well that's intentional, but with us that could be accidental, you know.
So if you don't thin cut, what's that you said? A beaver cut,
a beaver pelt, a big old giant divn you see them when they
play? Oh okay, all right, so like I never heard that one
before. Okay, So my point is if you don't know, if you
don't think the exact same divin every time, which we amateurs do not,
and you don't play the exact same turf every time, which nobody does,
then there's no way to fit bounce to this wide variety of things. So
you know, I'm been uh in my entry into the wedge business started in
in the early nineties when I created a soul. So well, high bounce
is good sometime and a low bounce is good sometime. Why don't I just
put both of them on every wedge I make? So the Edison wedges and
all my wedges prior have had a very high bounce in the first quarter to
a third of an inch of the soul and in a low bounce in the
back part of the soul. So these two angles are always working together,
or so it doesn't really matter what kind of lie you have just hit the
shot. I don't know what you'd have to think about whether you have the
right bounce or not. This club is going to come out of the turf,
but it's not going to skip if it's in the tight live And it's
just the smartest, most versable soul in the inhire wedge category. And I
will agree the big brands that offer these myriad of bounce angles, they have
a bounce for every possible shot and div it. Unfortunately, you only can
carry three or four wedges and they have to have a bounce that works through
a wide variety of conditions because we buy our wedges. We put by six
seven hundred dollars worth the wedges in our bag and they need to work.
How many golf courses I'm going to play? Tell I wear these wedges out?
How many different shots am I going to face? And the Kaylor soul
is designed to give you the maximum amount of versatility. And we coined a
term fear you were never going to walk into a shot that you have the
wrong bouts for and that's really what it's about. And we have people raving
about him since back in the Idoleon even before that, the Red Lockhart days
and people raving about this dual bounce v soul. It's been known by a
number of trademarks through my other companies that I've designed for. But stuff I'm
just said, Hey, it's my soul. I'm just gonna put Kaylor soul
on it. So I pad died that soul in nineteen battles awarded in nineteen
ninety four, and a lot of tour players. I don't know where they
learned if they found some of my wedges. But last year it was published
that the greatest player of the modern era that they were showing his wedges,
which has company, actually has a grind that off of his initials. We
will mention that, and I'm mad. People say, well, your grind
is kind of a copy of that? Say really, because my grind was
patented when that guy was thirteen years old. I don't think that I grind
is a copy of what he's learned to do with his wedget. So,
but I did receive a pattern on the notion of putting two positive bounce angles
in the soul. That patterns expired. Some other companies are playing around with
it, but they don't have thirty years experience with that soul that I have,
and I'm continually refining and tweaking how those two angles are always working together
to give you the ultimate versatility. So how much tweaking did you do between
very you know, your version one of Edison in version two. What are
the major changes between the two that we would notice? The major changes in
the appearance of the back of the golf club, which looks very different,
But it's because I reallocated, depending on the law, fourteen to seventeen grams
of mass from lower in the club ed to higher in the club ed.
So it continued to enhance our forgiveness, continue to shrink our rsion patterns,
continue to help you get a more penetrating trajectory. I tweaked a little bit
on some of the soul bounce angles. That's very minor. The main difference
in the golf club is in the back detail, which how I manage the
mass of the golf club. And when you look at the back of this
golf club, you'll actually realize if you kind of put your fingers, you
know, on the face of the club and your thumb in the back of
the club, you can feel this club actually gets thicker from center face out
toward the toe, from center face towards the heels. I'm actually putting a
bit more mass behind your miss hit, and not out to the far perimeter
of the golf club, but behind actually where you miss hit it. And
you know this thing called smash factor. I use this term a lot because
it's a basic, basic term that we use in golf club is how efficiently
club hit and speed converted to ball speed. So when drivers were looking for
smash factors in the one point four or five to one point five two is
about as as anybody's got, which means ball speed is, you know,
fifty percent more than clubheads feed when you get down into wedges. That smash
factor is what a perfect strike is eighteen percent gain a ball speed. But
when you missed that sweet spot by half an inch, I can go down
by it fifteen sixteen eighteen percent just because you missed the sweet spot a half
an inch. So what I'm kind of the example I give. But if
you look at every wedge, that ball that's hit high in the face,
there's no mass up there behind that golf there's the mass is now all below
the golf ball and I've used this analogy a long time, Fred, I
don't know if I've shared it with you, but perimeter weightings has its reason
for being it as its purpose. But I think you perimeter weight the impact
area, not the entire golf club. So I'll use a standard, regular
old claw hammer that carpenters have been using for three hundred years. And when
you drive a nail with a hammer, it is very efficient in driving that
nail, which why nobody's made other than the pneumatic nail gun. Nobody's ever
made a huge improvement on a claw hammer, right, I mean, they
were pretty much perfected this tech clogs. But if you take that same hammer
and you turn it on its side and you try to drive the nail where
the handle goes into that hammer, and it's very thin there, it doesn't
drive a nail worth of darn. It's the same hammer, it's the same
weight, it's the same use winging it, but you're hitting the nail now
where all the mass is away from that point of impact, and it's not
very efficient. You've lost your smash factor. And that, to me is
one of the best explanations of smash factory. If we could all hit the
ball in exactly the same spot every time. Then we would play golf with
a golf club that looked like a hammer, because all the mass would be
directly behind the point of impact. But we have to make the face bigger
because we wouldn't want to swing a golf club with a face the size of
a quarter. You know, golf would be impossible. So we make the
golf clube hit. But but and we still have some mass when we make
that miss it. When we go to a full perimeter weighted golf globe,
all the mass is at the far perimeter, so we have a weird smash
factor around the center of the face. But you know, in a muscle
back blade, it's kind of the opposite, more masses right behind that center
hit because that elite player that likes the muscle back blade, he wants that
mask behind the miss hit because I mean behind the center face, because he
hits it there most of the time. So I think the analogy of the
hammer and people can really relate to the fact everybody's turning to hammer on its
side trying to drive a nail. It doesn't drive a nail worth a dart
because you've lost your smash factor because there's no mass right behind impact. All
right, let's take another time. We'll right back. This week on Golf
Smarter Mulligans is kind of like being on the seventeenth tea box, as we
only have two episodes left in our annual Tony Manzoni series to help you launch
your new golf season. This episode addresses the difference between men and women on
the golf course. Tony says that the disparity is an ability, it's just
distance. He also talks about taking advantage not being intimidated by your nerves.
We all get nervous, and we all get anxious, and that never goes
away, and hopefully never will, because adrenaline is a good thing if you
use it properly. But if you set up to the ball properly, whether
you're hitting the ball, chipping the ball, whatever, now your body dictates
the distance the ball is going to go by its rotation and temple. You
can fine tune this thing really quick, opposed to trying to tie your hands
when they turn over, how fast they turn over, and so forth.
And those are the things that the modern swing, even though this is not
really a modern swing, but it's a modern way of teaching. You watch
the tour now you look at the guys when we set to the ball,
you don't see anybody way behind the ball in address anymore. There was a
guy by the Namasery Hogan, and said, I want you to stand above
the ball, but not behind it. And that's a great That's Golf Smarter
Mulligan's episode two hundred and seven, the penultimate episode in our series featuring our
friend and mentor Tony Manzoni. Check the show notes to learn how to get
Tony's book The Lost Fundamental One Simple Move Better Golf Forever, and to gain
access to his video of the same name. Please subscribe for free to both
of our golf podcasts, Golf Smarters, published every Tuesday since two thousand and
five, and our sister podcast that revisits the best of the Golf Smarter podcast
called Golf Smarter Mulligans, being released every Friday. From wherever you're listening right
now, Terry, there were two things when I went to the PGA show
this year that I noticed. One of them is it's these manufacturers spent a
fortune on being having space, whether it's a small space or an enormous space,
it costs them a lot of money. The other thing I noticed is
that Edison wasn't there. Why do you not see a need for you to
have your clubs on display at the retail show of the year for golf.
Well, first of all, you understand that's a whole sale show, so
you're of the golf professionals and the major change everything. And we have been
selling direct to consumer. I like custom building golf clubs for the golfer it's
going to play them, and we've done that direct to consumer. But I
don't consider us a direct to consumer brand by any means. We're getting a
lot of inquiries from the sitting community, the independefiters, the chain fitters,
club Champion trupspect those guys, and we're working on programs for them. But
to your point, when you go to that golf show, you know how
many people were there with the small boot that you never saw because they're just
so much there. I mean, it's such a massive environment. You know,
the big top five brands will spend anywhere from a million and a half
to three to four million dollars to be there four days. And you know,
when you're a billion or two billion dollar company, that's not a big
deal. And then they have this giant presence where you know, all the
big brands, you couldn't miss them, right, I mean, they were
all there, and if you went in to the apparel section, all the
big brands, you couldn't miss them. But you probably walked by a little
dumbs sounded. You walked by dozens and dozens and dozens of ten and twenty
and thirty foot exhibit booths that you didn't even notice they were there. But
yet those small companies still made a persizeable investment to be there. By the
time you rent your space and take your exhibit there and bring three or four
or five eight people, it's a very big expenditure. And I've been there
as an exhibitor and had great success. I've been there as an exhibitor who
wondered why I did that, But you know, I mean, it's really
a matter of economics. And we're a young company and we're growing very methodically
and rapidly, doubling every year of the six months, and we can manage
that. But we really have about our program where I wanted to take it
to golf professionals and sitting studios. Yet with that said, we have some
independeceitors around the world that are fitting our golf clubs and doing a very good
job of it, and and we support those guys with a good component program.
Right, Okay, you're right, wholesale show, not retail. But
all the retailers are there attending the show to see what they mean. All
the big buyers are there, and we're having their meetings and yeah. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, I got an email this morning from a
listener who said, I listened to your episodes about when you went to the
PGA show and there was this one product that you talked about that I'm really
fascinated, but I can't find them anywhere online. It's like, yeah,
I have a feeling they didn't get any funding because that was a very quiet
booth and they were just trying to get themselves out there enough to see if
they can get some money behind it. But it may not have worked out
so well. There's a lot of people that go to the show hoping for
a miracle, and you know, it's like, hey, I've got a
new golf called me. I have to go to the show, and you
know, the wholesale world in golf and I've been in this business forty years.
But you know, and I kind of say this tongue in cheap,
but the vast majority of golf stuff is purchased at the big retail stores,
you know, Golf Galaxy, Dicks, PGA, Tour Superstore. And while
most of the equipment is purchased there, very little of it is actually sold
there, meaning that it gets up to me to get people interested in Edison
Golf and to get them interested in Edison Wedges and educate them about Edison Wedges.
And I'm not going to be able to go into the retail world and
get thousands of retail flour salespeople familiar with what we do and why. And
the big companies they don't insent their salesman to sell you one thing over another.
Their floor people are there to take care of you. Hey, I'm
looking for the new callaway driver. They're right over here, sir, have
you hit one of these? Let me. He is not going to say,
oh yeah, but you'all to try the tailormader. That's not their job.
Their job is to take you what you came for. Hi, can
I help you today? Yeah? I need some golf balls? Well,
Tan, you want I got it right over here. I'm try this guy.
Okay, they're right here. He's not gonna say but if you tried
the bridgetoner, if you tried the callaway, that's not their job. Their
job is to facilitate your shopping experience. And so, you know, my
thought is, if if we have to do all the selling anyway, then
let's go ahead and consummate that transaction and have a one on one relationship.
We talked to probably forty percent of our customers actually have a conversation with us
before they buy wedges, and sixty percent of them they'll go in and buy
all their own. But uh, you know, we want to make sure
you get the right Edison wedges in your bag, the right loss, the
right shaft you talked about, you know, some other changes of the Edison
two point zero. We've got a whole new assortment of KBS shafts standard.
We've broadened our shaft offering, we've broadened our grip offering. Um now we're
continuing to broaden that. You know, we are the premium custom wedge company,
and that's what we want to be. We're building those high performance wedge
heads in the business. But we want to turn those into high performance wedges
by making sure we get the right loss, the right shaft, right grip,
the right specification. You know, we want people to have Edison wedges
in their bag that are built just for them, and we love interacting with
our customers to make sure we get those just right, right right. So,
for a golfer who plays uh weekly, okay, or maybe twice a
week, same kind of golfer, how long should a wedge last? Because
I mean, you're definitely gonna be hitting your wedge as a whole lot more
than you're hitting your driver or your three wood right or you're five iron.
Your wedges are going to get played almost every hole. Yeah, and you
know, there's one major brand that says your wedges need to be replaced after
sixty to seventy rounds, and I find that to be economically not viable for
the average golfer. Yeah, but tour guys. Tour guys changed their wedges
out very frequently because they don't have to pay for them. I mean,
they're gonna and their livelihoods depend on it, even if they did have to
buy them with them kind of money they're they're playing for it to put a
new five or six hundred dollars set of wedges in the bag every month is
not cost prohibited for them, but it is for us. You know they're
playing golf for recreation, and you know that six or seven eight hundred dollars
set of wedges is an investment. I need to get several years out of
those we have had. I've had Edison wedges in my bag. I've got
my forty nine degree. Has been in my bag since the first ones Prince
twenty. The first amples came in the fall of twenty nineteen. I hit
that golf glob of a lot. I'm not seeing any loss of spin.
The chrome we use is very durable. The Edison two point zers have a
new what we call peril chrome that has a little more slickness to it to
channel a way moisture a little faster at something new in chrome plating. All
of these are incremental in menuscule. But if you look at the face your
wedge, and you can look at it with a simple like a little loop
or a magnifying glass, and if the if the edges of the groove are
not worn through and rusting, you really haven't lost any spin off that golf
club. And with the Edisons, you know, our club head was engineered
for spin, and so you know, the grooves just don't wear that fast.
Modern golf balls are soft. You know your Sandwige if you hit a
lot of bunker shots. I actually had a guy tell me, asked me
if this weear was normal. He was one of our first Edison customers,
and he had literally worn the chrome off of the soul of the golf bull.
He's hit so many golf balls. And and I'm and I mean it
was totally worn off down to the bare metal. And I said, you
know, I want that for my collection. I'm gonna send you a new
I'll re put a new end on that witch for you, because I've never
seen one like that before. And and I thought, I've played a lot
of golf and hit a lot of balls. I've never even come close to
wear the chrome off the bottom. So my hat's off to that guy.
He has enough time to hit that many golf balls unless he hits them all
off a cardpan for something I don't want. How he did that, Well,
well, you know I did. Actually, as you mentioned, I
did notice on my uh my Edison fifty seven degree that it's got some damage
to the face. I mean, there's some pits in it, there's some
you know, it's like rocks got well you get bagwere you're gonna get bagwear?
Nope, you know it. I mean, in a perfect world,
people would keep, you know, a cover on their wedges in their arms
and you know, to keep them fristine. Golfers don't do that. I
mean, you kind of. I mean if they want to be probably they
don't want to be made fun what covers on their earns? And I see
very few people with covers on their arms. Just never been done, but
yet there's a real argument for it. You know, the cover on your
wood is to keep it looking on your drivers, to keep it looking pretty.
But it doesn't really but it doesn't really have any effect on the playability.
But if you kept covers on your wedges, that would affect playability.
I mean, it would keep your faces you know, getting bag where Then
you know, you you throw that wedge down in the bag. It's the
shortest clubs and we can bang off of every iron theoretically on its way to
the bottom of the bag, you know, and and the face has pointed
up so it's hitting the top of your other irons on the way end of
the bag, and so you know, that's banging the face. I mean,
I see that. I don't think that affects playability. Um, I
mean mine are pretty battered up too, but you know, and I've got
a whole shop full of them. I could go put new ones in my
bag anytime I want, but I don't. I don't see the need to
do that. Yeah, you know, but again, I'm not playing for
three or four dollars every week either. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's
bag where it's got to be. The just the irons banging into one another.
And you know, some people don't even know how to load their bag
with the clubs, and you know, so that they could take advantage of
the faces of the club's not getting damaged. They don't realize that there's an
actual protocol of how to load your bag. Yeah, you know in golfers,
I mean I see golfers with bags full of thousands of dollars at the
golf clubs and no head covers on the woods, and you know, banging
them around, and you know, I mean everybody their own I see some
put put covers on their irons but I think, you know, we all
take care of our golf clubs, our automobiles, are you know, polish,
our shoes do whatever. I mean, we all have a different set
of standards for how we take care of our things. And you know,
I've boys thought if there, if there was a way to come up with
a really cool color protective cover for a wedge that people would actually use,
um that wouldn't look goofy. I think there's a big stigma about if I
put covers on irons, everybody's gonna think I'm a nerd. But you know,
but it's not well and you don't see that. The tour players don't
do it, and they're making the limit with these these clubs. So but
again they get Actually, I actually played with a guy who carried his bag
when he played, He walked, he carried, and he loved the sound
of the bed clubs banging up against each other. And I'm like, I
can't. I'm miss I missed the sound of metal spikes on the cart path
coming out into the locker room that you know, and the rate we get
your game face on with those metal speaking. I missed the sound of metal
spikes on concrete. We don't have that anymore. No, no, you
only do. You only get that on TV when they're when they finish around
and the cameras are following the guys. But it sure has made the locker
room carpet last a loss. Yes, it has. Tell me about um
wedge fit and how that works for the consumer when they want to go to
when they go to Edison dot com and are interested in buying some some wedges,
a wedge or a set of wedges, you have a program called wedge
fit that is, you know, a great feature to have for anybody who
wants to buy directly from the manufacturer. You know my approach to wedge fit
and this is like the fifth or sixth iteration of wedge fitch since I created
this back twenty years ago. And we call it the wedge fit Scoring Range
Analysis. And what we're taking you through is a little bit of a questionnaire
and interaction and conversation if you will, about your scoring. You know,
how's your set makeup, what kind of irons you playing, what kind of
shafts you play, what's your average distance with a non er and what's comfortable?
You know, what loss of wedges are you used to you know,
and we're trying to get a little picture of a landscape in your golf bag
and your golf game so that we can make a set of recommendations that,
you know, based on what you've told us. You know, we're going
to offer some suggestions about here's what four degree gapping would look like for you,
Here's what five degree gapping should look like. Here's a recommended chap.
If you've been custom fitted for irons, we recommend you carry those specs to
your wedges. You know, if you're a half inch long and two degrees
flat, you know whatever, if you like your grips built up. So
what we're trying to do is create a conversation with you to help us put
the white Edison's in your bag and which if you look at everybody else in
the wedge category, if they're asking you what you want, and I'm trying
to find out, what is it that we can help you figure out what
you need? And that's really our difference. I'm not asking you to go
through and pick what you want. I'm asking you to exchange from information with
us so our team can make a recommendation and so you go through wedge fit.
Thanks for or four minutes, we're gonna spit out kind of an immediate
feedback based on your answers. This is kind of where we think your recommendations.
But one of our wedge fit team is going to look at your answers
and we're going to send you back an email in a couple of days after
we've had a chance to look at some of the of the more subjective data
about you know, what's your ball flight, like what is your you know,
your average distance and that takes a set of human eyeballs to look at
it. I don't think you can get the right wedges just by going in
and picking them. You know, what kind of shafts should I have on
my wedges? What kind of groups should I have on my wedges? And
you know, we're all I mean, we talked every customer if they want
us to. I mean, we really want to make sure we get the
right Edison's in your bag. And we you know, we go to great
pains to design a great wedge, to craft great wedges, but they're still
only going to be as good as the feedback we get, and which is
why we offer one hundred percent risk free trial. There's no premium golf club
company out here. But we'll build you to let you see what we're all
about. We'll build you and the Edison wedge of your choice. Pick your
loft, pick your shaft. We'll build it, you know, to the
length of the life spects you want. We'll build up your grip. We'll
want the right wedge in your bag and go play it for kree of four
or five rounds. And what you're going to see ninety nine times out of
a hundred, you're going to see better trajectories, maybe a little more distance,
visibly, more spin, and you're going to find, most importantly that
you found yourself getting away with some shots going oh I hit that eye on
the face, like, oh wow, it cleared that bunker. I know
when I usually hit an eye on the face, ere it plugs in that
bunker or in that water hole, or it kick, it doesn't get to
the top shelf of the green or whatever. And that's where the Edison wedge
was specifically designed to outperform every other wedge. Is to make you're not so
good shots more like your best ones. And if you hit it perfect,
you can play any wedge you want to play. I'll be the first to
admit it. If you hit every wedge shot right down on the third or
fourth groove with proper shaff lean and then pretty much all wedges, including arms
are about the same there. But those shots that venture a little away from
perfect, those are the ones we're working on making them very acceptable. And
all of your shots, I think you're going to see more visible spin,
particularly on those mid range wedge shots where you don't have the club edg beat
those thirty to seventy yarders. That's where you know, people continue to be
amazed at the kind of spin they get on those intermediate shots. Phenomenal again
Edison Wedges dot com and check Terry's his blog his writing at golfwrx dot com.
Terry, It's always so much fun to talk to you. It's always
such a fascinating lesson in a part of the game that needs more explanation for
every golfer. Really appreciated, Buddy, Well, I'll always enjoy coming on
and sharing. I've meant, you know, a lifetime in the game in
forty years in the industry, and I love sharing what I've learned with people
if it can help people get better golf shouts more often that's what we're all
out there far, and you know that's everybody that played in August of this
last week. That's what they all wanted to do is hit better golf shouts
more often. And if we're out there trying to break a hundred, that's
what we want to do, is get better golf shouts more often. And
and you know my focus is on the short end of the set, helping
you do that so well. We love doing it blow coming on your so
we'll do it again soon and I'm sure so. Recently, I received an
email from a listener commenting on how much they enjoyed the podcast, but asking
how do I avoid information overload. I wish I had an answer for that,
because so far this golf season, I am so into my head that
I cannot score to save my life. I've talked way too much about how
the cold and wet weather we've experienced here in Northern California this winter, which
has prevented me from playing as much golf as I'm accustomed to. As my
golf season pretty much ended in late November and here we are now in late
April. I ended the year with my index down to the lowest point Ever,
so now, after months of not practicing or playing, I'm struggling not
only to make quality golf shots, I'm also making poor decisions on the course,
which are leading to an uncomfortable amount of double and triple bogies in my
scorecard. This past weekend was so bad that I seriously questioned whether or not
I'm truly enjoying myself on the course right now, and maybe it's time to
take up a new hobby. But I also understand the cyclical nature of the
game and know that by the time summer rolls around, I will have presented
a number of guests on the podcast who will put me in a better frame
of mind and should be feeling more comfortable. At least I better be,
or you will have one seriously crank key podcast host on your hands. Also,
now that spring is blooming around us, I'm going to reach out to
many of my local Golf Smarter ambassadors who I've promised to play with this year,
So stay tuned to hear more about that. And speaking of ambassadors,
I want to give a shout out to Joel Gershon of Camarillo, California for
opening up today's episode as our newest Golf Smarter Ambassador Joel took advantage of this
opportunity by selecting Tony Manzoni's video of the Lost Fundamental for his reward. You
too, are invited to join our exclusive global community of golf Smarters by introduce
Yeah, I didn't say golf Smarters, I said Golf's martyrs. Yeah,
by introducing an upcoming episode. If you do, you get a choice of
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