Short Game Session
Ninety minutes on the practice green and in the bunker. Bounce is fitted to your turf and your sand, which are local questions with local answers.
Bounce Is Not a Skill Rating
There is a persistent idea that low bounce wedges are for good players and high bounce wedges are for everyone else. It is nonsense. Bounce is a relationship between the angle at which your club approaches the ground and the firmness of the ground it is approaching. A tour player with a steep attack on soft turf needs more bounce than a fifteen handicap who picks the ball cleanly off firm ground.
What actually determines the right number is three things: how steeply you deliver the club, how firm the turf is where you play, and how the sand is packed in your home course bunkers. None of those is your handicap.
Central Florida specifics
Two local conditions push our recommendations away from what a fitter in a wetter climate would suggest. The first is dormant Bermuda from roughly December through March: tight, thin, with sandy soil close beneath, and unforgiving of a wide, high-bounce sole that sits the leading edge up. The second is that many courses here use a fairly firm, coarse sand in the bunkers rather than the soft powder that high bounce wedges are designed to float through.
The practical result is that we fit slightly less bounce than average for players who spend the winter here, and we spend real time in the bunker checking it. Anyone who plays half the year somewhere else should tell us, because the answer changes.
Where the Session Actually Happens
Very little of this appointment takes place in a hitting bay, because almost none of the shots it concerns are full swings.
Tight Lie Strip
A mowed-down section of the tee line kept deliberately thin, standing in for the dormant winter fairway. This is where excessive bounce reveals itself.
Normal Turf
Standard maintained Bermuda for pitch shots and half swings, where most of your scoring shots actually come from.
The Bunker
Filled with the same coarse sand used at several courses nearby. Bounce and grind get their hardest test here.
Indoor Bay
Only for full-swing gapping on the pitching and gap wedge, where carry consistency needs a number attached.
Grind, Shaft and Finish
Grind
The shaping of the sole beyond its basic bounce angle. Heel relief lets you open the face without raising the leading edge, which matters enormously for anyone who likes to hit a flop. Full soles suit players who slide the club under the ball on softer turf. We will put three grinds in the same loft in your hands and let the reaction from the sand decide.
Shaft
Wedge shafts are routinely ignored and routinely wrong. A wedge shaft that matches your iron shafts exactly will often feel light and whippy at the shorter length. We usually go heavier and stiffer in the wedges than the set shaft, and the difference in control on partial shots is more noticeable than most people expect.
Finish and groove condition
Raw finishes rust, which is cosmetic, and grooves wear out, which is not. If your sand wedge is four seasons old and gets used every round, spin loss is real and measurable. We will check it and tell you honestly whether it matters for the shots you actually play.