Terry Koehler has been preaching one simple story for decades: “wedges are the least evolved category in golf.” He’s built his career on trying to change that.
“Every golf club in your bag, if you're a recreational player, has been to chase forgiveness, except your wedges,” Koehler said. “Nobody talks about forgiveness in wedges. … Why are wedges not forgiving? Because tour players don't want them that way.”
Koehler has spent 40 years with various clubmakers focusing on building better wedges to suit recreational golfers instead of tour professionals. Now that focus is as chairman and director of innovation for Edison Golf.
Traditional wedge makers, Koehler says, cater to tour pros capable of repeatedly hitting the sweet spot down on the lowest grooves. Those players don’t want any changes in their wedges because “his learning has been cumulative … he needs predictability on his wedges because he knows how to hit all those shots.”
Recreational golfers, however, tend to hit wedges several grooves higher off the face and less precisely with the center of mass behind it. Every little bit away from the sweet spot diminishes smash factor, which reduces consistency. Yet while very few amateurs will try to play a tour player’s forged blade irons, almost everyone has a tour-designed wedge in the bag.
“By nature, wedges are the hardest clubs in the bag to master because every impact is a glancing blow,” Koehler said. “A 7-iron is a pretty direct blow to the ball. A driver is a very direct blow to the ball. But a wedge is a glancing blow. It's got its own particular set of challenges. So you put the least forgiving golf club ever invented in your bag for the most important shots in your round of golf. Where is the logic of this?”
Koehler’s innovations through the years have chased one thing: to provide more consistency and forgiveness to the average golfer. His patented “Koehler sole” combines both high (front) and low (back) bounce to eliminate the need to have different bounces and grinds in the bag. His thicker upper-face section improves spin and shot dispersion on imperfect strikes. He first incorporated 100-percent CNC-milled faces and grooves. He introduced progressive weighting in the “scoring clubs” from 41 to 61 degrees.
His Edison forged wedges – “the best version yet” – incorporate everything Koehler has been honing in on for decades, to handle the widest range of turf conditions, sand textures or swing paths. If your swing is steep or you play in soft conditions, Edison wedges will perform like a high-bounce wedge; shallow or firmer, they will perform like a low-bounce wedge.
Its ultra-high center of mass improves distance control, increases spin and will be more forgiving on off-center hits to average closer shots to the target.
“I am designing for the everyday golfer who's serious enough and he wants to hit the different golf shots; he's not looking for some gimmick, but he wants a wedge that's going to let him get away with things that his tour-design wedge is not letting him get away with,” he said. “It makes your not-so-good shot end up more like your best.”