While the big focus of Open Championship week is almost always the myriad of utility irons that go in the bag, many pros are also making adjustments to their lob wedges for the firm links turf.
With a mix of grasses predominantly made up of fescue, Royal Portrush’s firm turf offers a bit of a unique challenge this week and most of the pros are looking for ways to catch their wedge shots cleanly to get as much spin as possible on the rock-hard greens.
Titleist’s Aaron Dill, the lead Tour rep for Vokey wedges, said the most common wedge grinds he was seeing this week were the K, K*, T and L grinds, four of the lower bounce options in the company’s matrix.
But there were also plenty of custom grinds out there, and Johnny Wunder explained on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped that there was a common request from a lot of players.
“There were some changes to some wedges and you’re going to see a lot of players buffing out the ribbons on a lot of the wedges,” Wunder said.
The ribbon is the name of the angle that is formed in a wedge grind where the bounce changes on the sole. Vokey already has two of these grinds with the ribbon removed in their matrix, with the A, which is an L grind with the ribbon removed, and the A+, which is the wider M grind with no ribbon.
“If you look at an A+ grind, it has all that stuff carved out,” Wunder continued. “But in this case, you’re going to see a lot of guys smoothing some of the edges and all that does is just gets it through the ground faster. You can really hit some nippers that way. But those ribbons do have, those angles do have value when you get on softer conditions.”
Titleist Vokey WedgeWorks A+ Grind Custom Wedge
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While there are few A and A+ grinds in play, there are also modified versions of Vokey’s other grinds. Xander Schauffele is one such player using a modified K* grind this week with the ribbon removed. Patrick Reed is playing a modified T grind with the ribbon removed to help the club move through the turf quicker.
