The wedges piqued my interest when I found that they had a wedge fitting system because I was extremely impressed with Edel Golf’s putter fitting system which not only fitted the putter for your aim, but also fitted your stroke by finding the best weight and putter shaft for you.
Unfortunately, I assumed that the wedges would be on their Web site after the show and when they were not, I had a lot of my readers asking me about the Edel Wedges and I didn’t have any answer for them.
One of the issues I’ve had with equipment fitting is in particular wedge fitting. Most wedge fitting sorta assumes that the golfer knows whether or not they are a digger (big divots) or sweeper (little divots) or somewhere in between. Then they give the golfer a wedge and the golfer has to try and figure out whether or not they like the feel. If they don’t, then they hand them another wedge. It’s almost like going to the optometrist to get fitted for glasses where they say ‘is this better than the last one’ and after awhile you’re so confused that you really don’t think it matters. Particularly for higher handicap golfers who are not as in tune with their feel for clubs as lower handicappers and professionals are.
So I talked about this with the Director of Sales and Product Development, Bobby Dean and here’s what he had to say.
The Edel Wedges and fitting system is based off of the research and ideas of Golf Digest Top 50 and Golf Magazine Top 100 Instructor, Mike Adams (www.mikeadamsgolf.com)
Part of the main concept is each fitter goes thru detailed training and they’ll spend about the first few minutes working with the player’s wedge swing because they find that many golfers typically will ‘back up out of it’ with the wedge which will distort the wedge that would truly work best for their swing and produce the best results. It’s not looking to change anybody’s full swing, but if you’re a digger with your irons then they don’t want you to take a different swing with the wedge that may turn you into a sweeper with just the wedges.
This is something that I like the idea behind because the problem I find with most clubfitters is that they know so little about the golf swing that they cannot assist the golfer and then the golfer winds up with a club that is fit for a lousy golf swing.
After that, the fitters are trained to figure out what wedge works best for you from the fairway, deep rough and sand. From what I understand, if you’re working with a fitter in Oregon where the turf is softer, they can fit the wedges according to what you would need if you play in the state of Oregon. But if you’re working with a fitter in Texas, where hardpan is prevalent, the same fitting would apply but the fitter would be able to fit you based on what those Texas conditions require.
Another feature is that Edel Golf will have a wedge fitting cart, much like the ones you see at golf stores (like the above picture).
The cart will have:
17 different heads
8 different grinds
13 different shafts
They are attachable shafts and heads, much like the Titliest and Mizuno fitting carts. So when the golfer is trying out a wedge, they can interchange different shafts, heads and grinds to figure what they like better and the fitter can see what works best for them.
The wedges will range from 50* in loft to 62*. There’s almost pretty much complete customization such as the finish on the clubhead, paintfills, stamping, etc. Furthermore, they will have forged heads or cast heads available. I would assume that the cast heads are cheaper. Also, the percussion center is more in the middle of the club instead of leaning towards the heel.
The expected launch date of this is May or June of this year.
Overall, I like what I hear as not only are there a lot of options, but the fitting cart is a very big benefit. One top 100 instructor who was trained on fitting openly stated that after being trained of fitting by Edel, they realized that they had been fitting wedges incorrectly for a long time.
I’d still like to see a company say something along the lines of ‘if your attack angle with a SW is -6* or more, then all things being equal you are a digger. Or if your SW attack angle is -2* or less, all things being equal you are a sweeper. We will then take into consideration the surface you usually play on and then determine what wedge fits you.’ But either way, the wedge fitting ‘bar’ is about to be raised and when that happens, other companies will start to follow suit and come up with their own ideas as to how to best fit the golfer.
3JACK
No comments:
Post a Comment