Mizuno’s Ultimate Wedge Guide

Mizuno Golf’s Chris Voshall walks us through the new lineup of Mizuno T24 Wedges and what makes each one special. Learn more about which grind and bounce level is right for your game.

you know we’ve we’ve seen a lot of good wedge players this week Luke Donald’s been in one of the best in the world Ben Griffin phenomenal wedge player Keith Mitchell great wedge player Jim Herman really good wedge player we’ve been watching a lot of what they do the common things I keep hearing from them are utilizing the bounce understanding the design of the wedge and letting it do what it’s supposed to do so understanding why you have certain grinds how you like to play certain shots and ultimately it’s where you position your hand and the wedge to make sure that so is going to do what it’s supposed to do fundamentally we’re all just trying to get the ball closer to the hole so it comes down to a little bit of a preference in terms of how you like to play Shots Stephen Fisk is an example of a player that we have out here we’ve been doing a lot of testing with who he plays a little bit more of a lower game a little bit more low ball flight his hand position is a little bit different than Luke Donald’s hand position Luke is one that can play one more up in the air so it’s it’s interesting to see how they selected their wedges selected their grinds and bounces is based off of their playing playing Styles the fun way to test these wedges honestly I’ve got five different grinds here I’m going to go through each one of these and hit them and kind of do some things to show what the grind will actually do performance-wise so I always like to start with kind of the the fullest sole wedge that’s the S grind this is for that one that’s going to expose the most amount of sole expose the most bounce there’s I’d say a little bit less maneuverability with this one so it doesn’t quite open up as nicely as some of the others but for someone who likes to play a more Square Club face this is a great wedge i’ honestly say this is like the most forgiving Soul if you want to say that meaning because it’s got all that bounce exposed you can get away with a lot more the wedge won’t dig the wedge will Glide really nicely you’ll see the S grind live a lot more on the stronger lofted and honestly the higher bounce wedges because of what the S grind leans itself to you know it’s more for a square face design so when you’re impacting it with the Leading Edge kind of Square to the Target so because of that yeah you see it a lot on the pitching wedges the Gap wedges and the higher bounced wedges all that to say I mean it still Glides really nicely through the turf but if you were to come up just a little bit heavy on this one kind of drag it a little bit behind yeah zero grab whatsoever cuz that that s grind allows it to Glide nicely across the turf if there’s a downside to the S grind honestly it’s when you’re trying to manipulate it you know if you’re a player who really opens the face a lot when you expose all that sole with the S grind you don’t shave as much off that Leading Edge is going to lift a little bit higher so this s grind if I were to open it wide that Leading Edge sits a little bit higher than I’m comfortable with so to me I like to play this one with a little bit more of a square face a little bit more of a descending Angle an interesting difference between an iron in a wedge is how the grooves are applied on an iron they’re actually forged in you know the the point of the groove on the iron is to help really just move debris out of the way on a wedge you’re talking more about how do you get that Groove to engage how do you get it to grab the ball so with a wedge we actually Mill those grooves in so we go in and use what we call our Quad Cut grooves our Quad Cut Plus on these and that’s how we specifically control the shoulder radius the volume the depth and the pitch of each one and raw is always a discussion point about the groove you know does the raw grab more does the raw grab less or something honestly what what a plating does you know a plating is a dipping of the material into you know the plating and it’s going to adhere so in general a raw has the ability to potentially spin a little bit more however that shoulder isn’t protected by that plating so honestly a raw will wear quicker as well so right out of the wrapper a Raw May Spin and touch more but over the life of it the Raw May actually spin a touch less so again it’s it’s all about the how cons how often are you going to change your wedges out how how often are you you know trying to get maximum spin or how often are you looking for consistency of Spin and you know honestly if you’re a tour player and you’re someone switching your wedges out every couple of tournaments I understand the use of the raw so I’ve been pitching a lot of them with this s grind for this one for this short pin actually I’d like to be able to open the wedge up a little bit more so to me I’m not actually now going to switch over to a c grind so the C grind is probably the the next more aggressive grind after the S the C is literally for almost like the crescent shape that you see so there’s a little bit more uh trailing Edge relief and there’s more toe and heel relief what that’s going to do is going to allow you to manipulate that face angle a little bit more so when I sit this down compared to the previous it sits lower when I open that face I can see that Leading Edge is lower to the ground which is going to allow me to kind of sweep under that ball a little bit easier so here I can actually do a little bit more and let’s see how this works so there I could take a little bit more aggressive swipe at it because I know that grind is removing some of that material with that more aggressive swing I can be a little bit faster through impact and give that little bit low grabby shot that I was looking for the playability of a soul almost depends on three different things there’s bounce there’s grind and there’s Soul width you know the the bounce itself is literally it’s it’s it’s a measurement it’s how much does that Soul kick up like this that’s going to ultimately determine how much the club wants to dig or not dig that dig portion of it it kind of depends on your I wouldn’t say your ability but your Technique if you’re a player who likes to come steep or your Technique is a little bit steeper where the club’s going to grab into the ground More Bounce is your friend if you’re a player who’s very sweepy who has a low angle of attack less bounce you can get away with but ultimately bounce is your friend because if you play here and expose that bounce it’ll allow you to get away with a lot more so bounce honestly it’s a good thing from there there’s uh Soul grind so Soul grind is what do you do with that afterwards what do you do with the bounce and where does that bounce live on the wedge so while that angle kicks up here the soul grind is going to talk about how much you then remove on the peripheral like how much a loss the trailing Edge how much across the toe how much across the back so our grinds we have an s a c a d an X and a V and each one of those removes a little bit different amount in a different place each of those will determine you know how aggressive you like to open the face and manipulate it and then the last is soul width you know Soul width will play a role in it as well because Soul width just exposes more of that bounce as well so if you have a wider sole with a less aggressive grind that bounce is going to be more kind of in your face it’s going to play a little bit more however you get a little bit narrower it’s going to make it play effectively like a little bit less grind I was hitting the S grind I’ve been hitting the C grind and actually I kind of forgot about the one in between this is the DG grind right here the D grind is nice because similar to that s with a square Club face it still leaves a lot of Bounce in the middle so this is one that works really well for a square face but also re remove some material on the on the heel side as well so this is a nice option for a player who doesn’t manipulate it too much but likes to get just a little bit of open face so you can kind of see on that one I didn’t open it quite as much so the ball still kind it kind of got a little bit higher off of it so I didn’t wouldn’t able to go quite as aggressively through it as I would if I were to go to say a SE grind if I pull this one little bit more relief off that heel open this one up a little bit more that was nice cuz that really really got fast under the under the ball so with that c grind you can really do that you can get quick keep your hands low and just let the club do the work slides really nicely under the ball if you’re talking kind of levels of aggression on the grind I had the S then the D then the C now I’m actually going to go to the X grind X grind being the most aggressive when I say most aggressive that means I taken the most out of the toe taking the most out of the heel the most out of the trailing Edge so this is one that sits extremely low to the ground so honestly it plays like very little bounce so with this x grind I mean I can really open that up and it sits very very low I can get fast through it with the X grind you can really get through it a lot so the X grind it’s a it’s a fast wedge it’s for a player who likes to manipulate a lot so you know with the toe relief you see a lot of better players and not necessarily off this lie but a little bit thicker lie get that shaft lean up and be able to utilize that toe relief to keep that Leading Edge low it’s got a lot on the trailing Edge if you want to just open it up it’s got a lot of heel relief too so you don’t get much grab so the X grind is the one that honestly it’s got the most versatility but it does that with the least amount of Bounce exposed so you kind of need to know what you’re doing a little bit more with the X grind really allows you to slide under it quickly though for me personally the wedge that I use on my higher Loft on my 58 this actually my gamer VG grind the VG grind is a newer one for us and this is something that I’ve been really excited to have in the bag because honestly I’ve always played a wedge for the last couple Generations that has a little not quite enough bounce for me I’ve played a 5808 and this is a 5810 I’ve needed a little bit more bounce but the reason I’ve gone away from it and played that 08 is because I do like to manipulate it I do like to open it up so the beauty of the VG grind is it exposes more bounce on the front and then just really aggressively cuts off the back so this is one that you can get away with more with a square face but you can still open it up and it sits flat so Square Face wise sits nice allows me to hit the normal shot and utilize the bounce which I love you know to be able to hit just a normal shot using the bounce is really valuable but when you get into situations like we are here with a tighter lie to be able to open it up if you have too much Bounce It Gets difficult so that V grind really allows you to sit this flat that Leading Edge sits low and you can get fast through the ball again so to me that’s the most versatile of them with the this 54s grind I’ve talked a little bit about the groove configuration itself the Quad Cut plus grooves you actually have a few more grooves on it this one has 17 grooves on it where previous generations only had 15 or 16 grooves on it the reason for that is because we wanted to put them a little bit tighter together however when I get to my 58 degree there’s fewer grooves and I know that sounds kind of that sounds kind of backwards the stronger lofted has more the weaker lofted has fewer the reason is because when you get a 58° when you get something with that grind that you’re opening up you’re hitting a lot of different shots with if that Groove is narrow then you’re opening the face then the ball is going to slide more so you need that added width of the groove to make sure that shoulder can grab so that’s the beauty of this is this one actually only has 15 grooves it’s fewer grooves but each Groove is doing that much more the development of the groove has been really fun because there’s so many different shots that a wedge hits so we do robotic testing we do player testing we do wet dry conditions we do two conditions we do the rough we do Square Face open face and a variety of different Lofts so there’s a ton of different variables that go into it just because that’s what wedges are for a lot of different shots a lot of different lengths so with that what the testing is shown over and over again is that when that face is more Square you need more grooves you need more opportunity for that debris to get out of the way but when you start doing things with it when that as soon as that face starts to open some then all of a sudden you need that shoulder to engage to engage that shoulder you need width and with width comes volume and with volume comes fewer grooves but bigger grooves honestly there’s there’s no right or wrong with wedges it’s what style do you bring to the table and that’s why it’s so necessary to have five different grinds a ton of different bounce options because you need to find the one that fits your style