Something curious has been happening in golf equipment over the past decade. What once was a pitching wedge has quietly transformed into something else entirely—something stronger, longer and increasingly disconnected from the rest of your wedge setup.
While you weren’t looking, the humble 48-degree pitching wedge of yesteryear (or perhaps yore) morphed into a muscular 44-, 43- and, in some cases, 42-degree club that behaves more like a 9-iron with an identity crisis.
And that’s created a problem that wedge makers have failed to address until now.
Let me tell you a story
As much as I’ll defend well-engineered strong-lofted irons until my death, I’ve experienced some of the headaches they can cause.
Not long after I wrote this piece comparing set wedges to specialty wedges, I swapped out my set-matched pitching wedge for a 46-degree Vokey SM9. Not only did I prefer the look of the Vokey at address but it also gave me a flatter and spin-ier trajectory than I was getting from my set wedge.

