Last week, I took you on a deep dive into the first part of the feel equation, that is the “sensation of impact.” I hope you better understand all the various elements of that part of club performance now than you might have before.

But there is another huge aspect to “feel” that very few talk about, especially in the wedge category—and that is the principal of motion feedback. In simple terms, what that means is the golf club’s ability to give constant feedback to your nervous system – through your hands – of exactly what the club is doing throughout its range of motion in the swing, whether that is a full swing or a very short chip.

And it is this aspect of “feel” that is the key to hitting exactly the right shot at the right time.

It has long been industry standard to build wedges to a slightly higher swingweight than our other clubs, specifically for this reason. The heavier swingweight gives you an enhanced sensation of where the clubhead is at all times – how fast it is moving, how far back it has been taken, the orientation of the face, the perception of load and release—in other words, all the variables you need to rehearse and repeat to hit the scoring shot you face.

Think about how you typically approach a short chip or pitch versus a full swing 8-iron shot, for example. You may or may not take any practice swings for the full shot, but around the greens, my bet is that you take multiple practice swings to get the “feel” for the shot you want to hit, right? That has nothing at all to do with the sensation of impact, and everything to do with loading your immediate-recall memory bank with the way the club has to move in order to execute the shot you see before you.

Call it a dress rehearsal that allows you to memorize the “motion feedback” that you want to repeat when you address the ball for the actual shot.

But I don’t believe simply adding a few points of swingweight is enough to provide optimized motion feedback, and my take is that the industry has really failed us all with their steadfast adherence to fitting all wedges with a heavy stiff “generic” steel shaft.

Regardless of the brand and model wedges you play, that shaft is likely much heavier and stiffer than the shaft in your irons, so you have a feel disconnect where you least can afford it. The majority of golfers now play softer flexes and lighter weight shafts in their irons, whether that be light steel or graphite. A simple improvement to your wedges is to have them re-shafted with something similar to the shaft in your irons to approach a “seamless transition” from irons to wedges.

But we also ask our wedges to do a lot more than we ask of any of our irons. For example, you might have a full-swing approach with your gap wedge – whether that be 90 yards or 135 really doesn’t matter. Either way, that club needs to deliver close to the same full swing performance as your short irons, because you simply cannot make the same swing with two clubs that are adjacent in the bag, but up to 30-40 grams and two flexes different in shaft.

But then, let’s say you miss the green with that shot, and leave yourself a 60-foot chip, for which you are going to choose your gap wedge again – two successive shots that are entirely different, but you are going to execute them with the same club. For the first shot, the shaft has to stabilize the heavier wedge head, while also providing you with the right flex characteristics to load and release like your short irons. But for the very next shot, you need the shaft to actually flex a bit – even on that very short swing –so that your practice swings can give you optimum motion feedback for the shot you envision.

A very stiff steel shaft simply cannot do that.

I know it seems like I am presenting quite the dilemma here—and I guess I am. That’s why I have spent many hours in my 30+ years of wedge design working with various shaft companies to try to create the optimum wedge shafts.

But until I have that perfected, my advice for most of us is this: Play the same shaft in your wedges as you do in your irons, but about a half flex softer. That gets pretty darn close to ideal. And it’s why many tour players put S400 shafts in their wedges, even though they play X100s in their irons (or equivalents).