Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Can You Spin a Groove-less Wedge? | Plus Correct Technique For Maximum Backspin!"

Ever wonder how your wedges’ grooves affect the spin on the golf ball?

I’ve got a fun experiment today that will make you see your wedges in a whole new light.

What I discovered may surprise you, especially when I introduce some good old morning dew into the equation!

The interesting thing I found out is that our wedges actually have something in common with the tires on your car…

Plus, I’ll share some handy tips on technique that could help you keep your shots consistent, even when the conditions are less than ideal.

Are you ready to improve your short game?

 

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    

Video Duration: 12:50

Video Transcription:

Will a wedge that has no grooves on it be able to spin the golf ball. And then what happens when we hit it in some kind of normal playing conditions? Maybe there's a little bit of dew on the ground, maybe catch a little bit of grass. What will happen when the wedge gets some water on it will happen to the spin then.

And to get started, let's go ahead and start with my normal grooved wedge, my Ping Glide 4.0. It's a 60 degree wedge. This thing spins it like crazy. The best wedge I've ever had by far. I am a ping ambassador, so I'm a little bit biased. But, uh, Not really biased. I put on these machines. This thing is, this thing is amazing.

It's really good. So let's go ahead and start with a full swing here just to get a baseline, see what that's gonna do with my normal wedge, and then we'll kind of take it from there.

There we go. Hit that one really nice. Now I have flight show flight scope to show the data and to show the shot shape. Said it went 105 yards. Uh, the spin was 11,422. I'm confirming that with my GC Quad. So it said it went 98 yards. So six, seven yards difference there. Uh, that's pretty typical because they're measuring it differently.

You're gonna see slight differences like that in these machines. 11,449 RPMs, A back spin on my quad, and I'll just take a quick picture of that. So you'll be able to see it on the video and you can see that lots of high spend there. 11,000 is pretty daggone good. Now what happens when we take it over to our grooveless wedge?

So again, ping was nice enough to send me one of just a handful of wedges they made like this to do some testing with that has no grooves on it, and we're gonna try it out. So it's virtually the same club. This is a 58 degree instead of a 60. Uh, but I've done a lot of testing with these clubs and different loft clubs.

The numbers should be very, very similar when you're only talking about a couple degrees difference in loft. Uh, so this should get pretty similar numbers if the face is grabbing and creating that spin. Now pretty cool to hit this cuz it doesn't quite happen like you think it's going to. This one says it launched at 29.1 and the quad agrees 29.9.

Let's see what happens in launching on spin rates when I hit this grooveless one. Let's give it a whirl.

All right, so maybe just a fraction off the toe. 117 yards. 28 vertical launch. So really close on the launch. A little bit extra distance. It's got two degrees less loft. You expect a few more yards, but that's uh, about 12 more yards. That's quite a bit. This one's saying 106, carry. So it's saying farther on the quad too.

And if you look at the spin rate on the quad, it's saying it's still up there. In that 11,000 range, 11,170 RPMs of back spin. So both of them are still staying high spin. I found that there's nothing that beats the quad for short indoor numbers like this. So the quad is incredibly consistent and I've hit a lot with this wedge and I've found that it's crazy as it believes.

No grooves at all. It's still spinning really high. So the quad sand, it's spinning the same. RPMs as when we hit with the grooved wedge. And what that's showing you is, is if there's clean ball, a premium golf ball, I'm hitting my snail MTV X here, um, I'm hitting a clean club, I'm hitting off a mat. There's nothing in the way everything's bone dry.

You're gonna see really similar numbers to a grooveless wedge and a grooved wedge. Just go ahead and hit one more here.

That one felt pretty much the same. That said 120 yards. Uh, the launch was 29 and on this one we're going with 106 yards and 10,844 RPMs of spin. And the launch was 29 here too. So what it's showing you is maybe it goes a little bit farther cuz a few extra few less degrees of loft spin rate is still really high.

Now let's imagine that we're playing out of some dew, so I'm gonna kind of spray some water on the face. I might even get a golf ball and dunk it in the water a little bit, and this is really cool. You're gonna like this. So when I make a full swing here, remember the launch was around 28, 29. Spin was up around 10, 11,000.

Now it's hit the one with water. So you'll notice right away that shows it on the radar. That's going straight up in the air. I was hitting the screen about right here. When I hit the Grooveless and grooved wedge, maybe right around in here, that one hit the screen right up there. It would've hit straight into the ceiling if I didn't have that cloth on the top.

Instead of it launching at high twenties, that launched at 47 degrees of loft, and the spin went down to 424 RPMs of spin. So all the spin's gone, especially a knuckle ball. It's pretty interesting too. The quad actually gets that carrying 118 yards. The flight scope reads it a little bit different saying it only went 84 yards.

But, but either way it's saying that ball launched straight up in the air and it was a straight knuckle ball. No spin on it whatsoever. I'm getting flight scope says 4,000 RPMs, a spin. There's just no way that happened. I've hit these shots. It's, it's basically just a pure knuckle ball. So 400 RPMs spin, so it went from 10, 11,000 down to 400, and that's showing you what the grooves really do.

So when you have grooves on the club face, And there's water there. The water sinks down into the grooves and the ball still makes contact with the metal of the club. And you get that, that friction, that traction on the golf ball. Same thing happens in your car. When you have radial tires or or groove tires, the water goes up into the grooves and you can still drive even when it's raining outside.

If you took drag selects with no grooves on it, it's gonna hydroplane. And basically it's saying that the water gets trapped between the clubface and the ball. In the example of a wedge and the ball slides, or if you're in your car, the water gets trapped between the tire and the road and the, the tire and the road aren't actually touching and you hydroplane or your tire just slides over the road.

Same thing happen here with a wedge, uh, with no grooves on it. So you're basically hydroplaning your wedge. And here in a second I'll give you a few tips on how to get great spin. Hit some great wedges. Let's do the same thing now with a grooved wedge. We'll do the exact same test to where we dunked the golf ball.

In there, we put the wedge with water on the face. I mean, it's quite a bit of water. This is basically the same as if you're playing in pure dew, but this one has grooves on it. Let's see what happens to this golf ball when I make another full swing.

There you go. A little bit higher. That one said 98. Instead of launching at 27 28, it launched at 31, so just marginally higher. My flight scope is saying 8,100 RPMs, a back spin. Let's look at the quad. It's always really good at getting the spin numbers indoors, especially when the face is kind of crazy like this.

This one says 9,175 RPMs back spend 32 degrees launch. So again, a little bit higher than about 94 yards. So what it's showing you there, Even soaking wet face, wet golf ball, instead of it launching straight up in the air, losing all the spin, like a grooveless wedge, this one kept almost the same amount of spin, 9,500 RPMs versus about 11,000 when it was a normal shot, when a dry club and a dry face.

So now that we know this, you know, what's some good tips to keep the club from Hydroplaning, uh, when the conditions are less than ideal? Let's actually hit one more here. With this grooved wedge, I'm gonna get it wet again, but I'm gonna make some what I would call bad technique. So I'm gonna go ahead, put a little water on the golf ball, a little bit on the club.

And now I'm gonna use technique that I would say is not good that I see a lot of people using. And the numbers should actually come down on this one lower than the 9,000. So let's go ahead and give it one more full swing with bad technique and I'm gonna show you the good technique.

Yeah, there we go. So that one I'll get to in a second. I flipped it and by flipping it or scooping it, what I meant there, instead of having shaft lane hands in front, I went ahead and let the club pass the hands and had a lot more loft. So now my GC Quad is saying 8,500 RPMs of spin. I lost another thousand RPMs.

And the interesting thing there is the ball only carried 76 yards, swung the same speed, but the ball carried much shorter. 76 yards versus 90, 95 yards, a hundred yards, depends on which swing it was. This one also says that it's shorter at 82 yards shortest distance by far. Lowest spin rates by far when I scooped it.

So that's really the key. If you wanna get the most performance out of it. You wanna make sure that you're leaning the hands forward, and there's a great trick to this. On my upper back, what I wanna feel like I'm doing is I wanna feel like, almost imagine there's a logo in between my shoulders here. Like you'd have on the back of the shirt, some shirts.

I wanna get that facing more down at the ground. So the more I can cover it with my chest, the more my body can stay down here, then I can get a lot of shaft lean. You see, if I back up, my upper body comes more level with the ground stand up outta my posture. What happens is I have to reach to be able to hit the golf ball, and I have to get rid of all my shaft lean to be able to reach the golf ball.

If I feel like I'm down closer to the ground, then I can really compress it and get a lot more shaft lean. Hit it very, very clean. In addition to that, put a little back in your stance that'll help you to get a little more shaft lean, and then make sure that as you're coming through there, your hands feel like they're leading the way and you're just letting everything rotate open.

Now the last little key here, that makes a huge difference. Make sure I'm not coming over the top. I don't wanna steepen it up and come this way. I need to shallow this club out from the inside, make sure that I'm hitting a nice little draw, or at least a nice straight shot like this when I'm doing it. So let's go ahead and try one more here, using those tips again.

Wet face, wet golf ball, and I bet you I'll get even a little bit more spin as I deloft it more. And I'm really looking for, especially with the wet face, that last one with the wet face where I flipped. The launch angle was 39 degrees. That's way too high. I wanna get that ball instead of launching this way, be much more penetrating.

So I'm gonna feel like I stay in my posture, hands in front, make sure I come from the inside as I'm doing that so it's not just a glancing blow. And, uh, we'll give it a whirl here. There we go. So even with that wet club, wet ball, 105 yards carried us since the launch went down to 30 instead of 38 or 39 when I flipped it.

The spin on here is 8,500. The spin on this one is 10,000. So that's showing you there that if you use good technique, even if the ball is wet, even if your club is wet, you can still hit some really good quality golf shots as you're doing this. So, Make sure that you feel like you're almost on top of the golf ball.

Your hands will feel much closer to the ground, and then you have to lean them forward to not hit down in the turf, so those hands are forward and you can rotate through it. You're just brushing the turf like this. Now, one thing that I mentioned here is if you get that steep downswing and you stay in your posture, now all of a sudden I'm really chopping down in the ground.

See if I have this steep club, I almost wanna come up outta my posture. To get the club shaft angle a little bit flatter, then I can go ahead and keep from chopping down in the ground. But unfortunately, what ends up happening is we can't stay in our posture. We can't get shaft lean with the wedges. We can't hit those shots that perform well when the conditions aren't perfect.

So what I want you to do is the 20 minute shallowing fix course, as you remember, top speed off, go to the instruction tab, top speed golf system, 20 minute Shallowing fix. And then from there in a single range session, I'm gonna show you how to shallow it out. And you're gonna be shallowing out every single time hitting the best shots of your life.

And I, I guarantee that in that course. Uh, tons of people, I've gotten thousands of people saying how much I enjoyed the course, how they're hitting the best shots they've ever hit before, and I don't want you to miss out on that. So head on over to the 20 minute shallowing fix right now. I can't wait to see you there.

You pair that up with what we did with these wedges today. And now you can stay in your posture, you can rotate through it. You can have shaft lean, you can hit those high spinning wedge shots. Even when the conditions aren't perfect, it's a little dewy outside, you're still gonna get the grip. On the golf ball, plus you're gonna hit your irons better and your driver farther.

So there's really, this is the one thing you gotta do this, if you wanna play some great golf, and man, I want you to play some great golf. So let's go ahead and get started right now.