I want to thank so many of you who have sent me emails with suggestions for topics I might dive into in future columns – please keep ‘em coming. Those emails and your ratings and comments each week keep me energized and focused with this effort.

Today, I want to dive into that elusive topic of “feel” that we talk about when we are discussing golf clubs, or more specifically as we compare one club to another. Unlike almost all the other aspects of measuring a golf club, there just is not a way to quantify this most necessary quality of a club. What one player considers “solid” another might say is “dull”. The number of adjectives is almost unlimited – it’s too bad feel cannot just be measured like length or swingweight.

For the purpose of today’s discussion of “feel”, I’m going to contain it to talking about wedges, as that is my specific area of focus for the past 30 years.

To start with, we in the industry have learned that golfers’ perception of “feel” is highly influenced by the sound of impact. In tests, it has been proven that what you say you feel is closely connected by what you hear. But even that is completely subjective to and by each individual golfer. In my own experience, for example, I began wearing hearing aids about a year ago. It’s amazing what all I had been missing as my hearing deteriorated over the years, probably due to all that shooting I did in my youth without hearing protection, along with many hours spent in concerts and live music dance halls.
When I first hit a golf ball with the hearing aids on, the sound was simply awful, being very “click-y” for lack of a better word. It was so unsatisfying and disconcerting to me, that I just take the hearing aids off when I play golf.

Then there is the contribution to “feel” by the golf ball you play. A harder distance ball definitely feels and sounds different from a softer cover ball that emphasizes spin. But for today, let’s contain this discussion of feel to the golf club only, and more specifically, to the “feel” of impact with your wedges that you sense through your hands.

The quality of feel that a wedge can deliver is affected by all the factors involved in the making of that wedge, along with the quality of impact. But I also believe there are two aspects to “feel” as it applies to a wedge – the sensation of impact AND the “motion feedback” of how the club is moving through the takeaway to transition to impact. Let’s tackle the first one first.

Whether it is better to cast or forge the clubhead has always been a topic of discussion, but most agree that forged wedges have a softer, more solid feel than those that are cast; that is as much because of the materials used as the process in making the head. I have long been a proponent of forging for wedges, as I believe the quality is worth the few extra dollars a good forged wedge costs.

I can also tell you that way the head is shaped is much more influential on “feel” than the way it is made. Essentially all mainstream ‘tour design’ wedges, for example, have the majority of the mass at the extreme bottom of the clubhead. So, if impact is made on the 3rd to 4th groove, there is much more mass behind the ball than if impact is just 3-4 grooves higher, where there is very little mass behind the ball. That’s why we can immediately detect a shot hit a bit thin or a bit high in the face. [That’s also why those shots behave entirely different . . . because of the variance in smash factor.]
A golfer who consistently makes contact low in the face is going to experience a totally different feel than the golfer who might play fluffier fairways and routinely makes contact even a bit higher on the face.

Another big influence on the feel that gets to your hands is the shaft and grip. Starting with the latter, the old, wrapped leather grips presented a much more direct and some say “harsh” feel than slip-on rubber grips. The more recent trend to mid-size and oversize grips puts more rubber compound between the shaft and your hands, which has to mitigate vibrations from impact, i.e. a different “feel”.
I’ve long been a proponent of giving more attention to the shafts in your wedges, because I do think it is THAT important. Most mainstream wedges are sold with a heavy and stiff steel shaft, which presents a totally different sensation of impact than either lighter weight steel or graphite. I tend to prefer the latter, because of the outstanding qualities of carbon fiber in moderating vibration, but just as important, in the “motion feedback” carbon fiber in the right flex can provide.

As this is getting long, why don’t I dive into that part of the feel equation next week, because “motion feedback” is just too important to your wedge play to leave to a closing paragraph.

I hope this helped you understand more about “feel”, and I look forward to delivering “Part 2” of the Dissection of Feel next week.