Which wedges belong below your pitching wedge?
Two answers are enough to set a sensible starting ladder: the loft stamped on your pitching wedge, and what you want most from the clubs below it. The rules are fixed — the same answers always return the same setup.
The starting setup is your existing pitching wedge plus a gap and a sand role. A higher-lofted wedge is added only if you ask for greenside versatility or tell us you already own one. How this selector decides and a worked example are set out below the form.
Read first:Wedge names and stamped lofts are not standardised between manufacturers, so treat every loft here as an approximate starting point rather than a fitting. You still have to measure your own carry gaps, and no purchase is guaranteed to improve your scoring.
How this selector decides
Two answers feed one fixed set of rules, plus an optional note about a lob wedge you already own. Nothing is measured or modelled, and no brand or model is preferred.
What each answer changes
- Pitching-wedge loft. A 41–43° or 44–46° pitching wedge is treated as stronger than traditional, so the step down to the first specialist wedge matters more than adding a third one. A 47–49° wedge sits in the traditional range, where a conventional gap and sand pairing is usually enough. The displayed gap, sand and lob loft ranges stay fixed across these bands; the explanation changes, so measure your actual carry gaps.
- Short-game priority. More full-swing yardages justifies the approach wedge on spacing; a simpler setup keeps the same two roles without extra clubs to learn; greenside versatility adds a higher-lofted wedge; “not sure” falls back to the conventional two specialist roles.
- A lob wedge you already own. Ticking the optional box retains a lob-wedge role. If you have not selected greenside versatility, the result explains that the role is present because you asked to keep it.
How the roles are counted
The counts include the pitching wedge you already own. Three wedge roles means pitching wedge, gap wedge and sand wedge. Four means those three plus a higher-lofted lob role, which is only added for explicit greenside versatility or because you asked to keep the one you own. The loft ranges printed beside each role are approximate starting points, not fitted specifications.
Illustrative example — not your result
A fictional golfer, shown only to explain the output. It is not a personal recommendation and it will not appear as your result: your own setup depends entirely on the answers you submit above.
Example answers
- Pitching-wedge loft
- 44–46°
- Short-game priority
- More full-swing yardages
- Existing lob wedge
- Not kept
Example output — three wedge roles
- 01Pitching wedge (44–46°) — already in the example golfer’s bag; every role below is spaced from it
- 02Gap wedge (50–52°) — one more repeatable full swing below a stronger-than-traditional pitching wedge
- 03Sand wedge (54–56°) — bunkers and standard greenside shots, so it earns a slot in every setup
No lob wedge appears, because the example golfer asked for full-swing yardages rather than greenside versatility and did not ask to keep one. Had either been true, the setup would have had four roles instead of three.
Limitations:This is a starting point, not a fitting. Wedge names and stamped lofts are not standardised, carry distance cannot be inferred from loft alone, and you still have to measure the carry gaps between the clubs you own. If your pitching-wedge loft is not stamped or you cannot read it, choose “I don’t know”: the setup then falls back to a conservative, conventional spacing and asks you to check the specifications or have the loft measured. Wedge roles use three or four of the maximum fourteen clubs, with the putter in slot 14. In a full fourteen-club bag, an extra wedge uses a slot that could otherwise hold another club. No purchase is guaranteed to improve your scoring.
More on the method and its limitations: how this site works. For the slot-count trade-off, read how many wedges should I carry? and what clubs should be in a 14-club bag?