One of the facts revealed from our recent GolfWRX/Wedge Guy survey is that your wedge shot misses tend to end up short five times more than they do long. This really wasn’t surprising to me, in that every one of my prior research projects into golfers and their wedge play for the past 20-plus years has revealed the exact same thing.

The good news is that it’s not your fault!

That’s right, the fact is that all “tour-style” wedges have a very volatile smash factor as impact is moved around the face, especially on those high face impacts we all know. You feel it as soon as you make contact…the ball is hit high on the face or toward the toe and before you even look up you know it’s going to be short of the flag. Sometimes woefully short, ending up in the bunker, water or short of the green.

I know this, because for years I have put market-leading wedges on Iron Byron with the most respected independent research facility in the game. In all these tests, the operator has complete control over all swing variables – clubhead speed, angle of approach, shaft forward lean at impact, and point of impact on the face. The robot doesn’t miss, and the launch monitors don’t lie.

What I’ve learned from all this testing over the past 20-plus years is that “tour-style” wedges are much less forgiving than even the most traditional muscle-back blade 9-iron. And that these wedges really haven’t changed much in their impact/smash factor volatility in decades.

Shots hit low on the face always fly lower and go a slight bit longer, and have much more spin. We’ve all heard the old adage, “thin to win”, right? But those hit even 1/2 inch higher than the optimum “sweet spot” will launch 3-5 degrees higher, lose up to 60% of their spin and 15-20% of the smash factor. So what does that mean to you?

A miss of only one-half inch high in the face on a 90-yard wedge shot can cost you up to fifty feet or more in carry distance and 2-3,000 rpms in spin. [NOTE: I’ve always thought that was unacceptable, so my entire wedge design career has been spent making the top half of the blade thicker and thicker, more than any other wedges from any other company.]

What is most important to understand is that elite tour players–with their extraordinary skills and talents honed by thousands of hours of practice–actually use this smash factor volatility to their advantage. One of the ways they hit all these remarkable shots with their wedges is that they intentionally hit the ball a little higher or lower on the clubface, or maybe a bit out toward the toe or heel, in order to alter the launch angle, energy transfer and/or spin. Trust me, guys, these top-tier professionals have all the shots and are borderline magical on what they do around the greens. The very best of us recreational players are not even close.

Also, understand that they play more closely-cropped fairways than we do, so it is much easier for them to routinely make contact low on the face, where launch, distance and spin are all maximized.

The rest of us, however, have not spent countless hours perfecting our wedge contact to that degree. We play fairways that are not cut nearly as close so the ball sits up a bit higher, and we might even bump the ball to give ourselves a preferred lie (yes, recreational golfers are not nearly as committed to “play it as it lies” as you might think). As a result, we ordinarily make contact with our best wedge shots 2-3 grooves higher than the typical tour professional. And we miss that perfect sweet spot much more often than they do.

That said, nearly every week, you can hear a television announcer go in on a close up of a wedge shot that came up short and comment, “You can see he made contact a bit high on the face there,” or something similar.

So, what can you do about this? Well, short of spending thousands of hours of practice, you can do a couple of things that might help.

One, on every wedge shot you face from full swing to short shots around the greens, focus on the leading edge of the ball–the side toward the flag. This will help you sharpen your contact and be more likely to make impact lower on the face to improve launch angle, distance and spin. Of course, that doesn’t apply to bunker shots or other flop shots where you are trying for a higher launch and softer landing.

Secondly, I strongly suggest you experiment hitting shorter wedges shots with a stronger loft, say your 54 or 56 instead of your 58 or 60. The simple geometry of wedges is that the higher the loft, the more likely you are to make contact higher on the face than what is “perfect”. My bet is that you will be surprised that you will not necessarily lose spin by “lofting down” on your less-than-full wedge shots, and you might even get more.

Of course, you can only do so much to counter the effect of the club design itself.