Why Do All My Wedges Go The Same Distance?

I recently published a post on how to build a wedge distance matrix. It’s a chart that shows you exactly how far each wedge flies at half, three-quarter and full swing. Some golfers have reached out to ask what happens when all of the wedge shots seem to be going the same distance.

If you notice all of your wedges tend to go the same distance and, instead of getting a nice staircase of numbers, you have a chart with overlapping distances, here’s why it could be happening.

Check your lofts

If you pull two wedges out of your bag and they’re only a degree or two apart in loft, that’s an equipment problem and not a technique one. A 54 and a 56 with similar bounce and grind will produce very similar distances on a full swing. Get your lofts checked and spread them out properly, usually four to six degrees apart through the set.

Equipment is the easy fix but most of the time it’s not the main problem.

The real culprit: Scooping the ball

When your lofts are properly gapped and the distances still can’t separate themselves, there’s a good chance you are scooping.

Wedges are built with enough loft to get the ball airborne on their own.

The loft does that work. Golfers who struggle with wedge distance control often don’t trust this. Instead, they try to help the ball in the air by releasing the wrists early and flipping the clubhead past their hands before impact. This process adds loft at a time when that is not necessary. The wedge handles the loft for you.

The early release causes your swing to bottom out before the ball instead of after it. Rather than trapping the ball between the clubface and the turf on a descending strike, you’re sweeping it or catching it thin, and the club is moving up through impact instead of down.

Once that happens, the loft difference between your wedges barely matters anymore, because you’re delivering a different, less efficient version at impact.

On full swings, scooping robs you of compression and distance so your longer wedges come up short of where they should land. On short, partial swings, the same fault makes distance control nearly impossible to repeat, because the amount of added loft changes shot to shot depending on how much you flip.

How to tell if this is you

Two quick checks on the range will confirm it.

• Divot check. Hit a few full wedge shots and look at the divot. No divot at all or a divot that starts before the ball means your low point is happening too early. A proper strike takes the divot starting at the ball and pointing at the target.
• Tee check. Push a tee into the ground about two inches in front of your ball. On practice swings, try to clip it after the low point of your swing. If you catch the tee or miss it high, your swing is bottoming out early.

Fixing it

Scooping is one of the more fixable faults in the game. None of this requires rebuilding your swing. It’s a feeling that, once you understand and trust, is quite easy to repeat.

• Check the ball position. Ball position too far forward encourages an early flip. Play it center or just behind center for wedge shots.
• Soften your grip. A grip that’s too strong makes it easier to flip the clubhead through impact. Weaken it slightly so the lead wrist stays neutral through the hitting area.
  • Test it: Make a few slow-motion swings and pause at impact. Your hands should be ahead of the clubhead and the shaft should lean slightly toward the target.
• Retrain the release. Keep the clubhead moving down the target line through impact instead of letting the trail hand take over and flip it past your hands.
  • Test it: Go back to the tee drill at full speed. Once you can clip the tee consistently on practice swings, the same feeling should show up as a divot starting at the ball on real shots.

Fix the scoop, and you’ll get more distance back on your longer wedge shots. You should also notice more seperation between clubs on the short shots. Compression is a powerful thing in golf and learning to utilize it will make you a more consistent player.