THE CLUB REPORT! – 2013 Wilson FG Tour TC Wedge

Wedge “BrandWashing”

When you think about wedges what brand names comes to mind first?  If we were to take a poll I’d predict about 75% of golfers would either say Vokey or Cleveland as their first choice.  But dive a little deeper into a wedge survey to find out why they chose one of these two brands and you most likely hear the reasoning would simply be because of marketing.  Or what I like to call “BrandWashing”.

Now, ask these same golfers which wedges actually perform the best and I doubt there would be as much clarity in their answers.  But it’s not your fault. Marketing has become less and less about performance and more about creating a mystique or a cleverly spun story around the launch.  Yeah, you’ll still hear claims about USGA maxed out grooves or something like this is our best wedge ever made type stuff (which golfers still buy in to), but start talking about all the details that went into the testing or R&D of a new product and most golfers zone out.  The stuff that really goes in to making a product better is just plain boring for most people.

Actual performance, which should be the key component of the success of any club is not as well defined in most marketing campaigns.  It’s almost a mystery.  But Wilson is hoping they can start to change some of that with the release of their newest product, the 2013 Wilson FG Tour TC Wedge.

Wilson Goes Back To The Drawing Board

Wilson went back to the drawing board with their newest wedge with one thing in mind: Performance is a must…it had to be better then any other wedge they have made.

Now you might be saying, “well doesn’t every company do that?”  And the answer would be, “well you sure hope they do.”  But in all honesty up until recently I don’t think Wilson was actually doing a very good job of this.  Though with their newest designer on board and a new team of guys, they seem charged up to finally get the Wilson name back to it’s prominence of the past .

Wilson already had a very nice looking wedge in the original FG Tour, but in this 2nd Generation version they wanted to take it to the next level.  And minus the “Traction Control” engraving that not a single person here has been a fan of (which has no relevance to it’s performance and at the end of the day shouldn’t matter, but it does) they’ve made a nice looking classic wedge that performs.

But back to taking this wedge to the next level, the key factors for Wilson in this newest design look to be about: Performance, Versatility, Improved spin on full and partial shots and improved fitting for the consumer. And here is how they went about tackling these factors.

Performance

They needed to make a wedge that would perform better then previous models for all levels of golfers, average golfer to their tour pros.  And from all places and with all types of shots on the golf course.  They did this by giving more options regarding loft/bounce/sole, more spin, and tighter dispersion. And so far their tour pros seem to be happy with what they came up with and it seems to be gaining some popularity on tour.  The new 2013 Wilson Tour TC wedge has already been put in play on tour by Padraig Harrington, Paul Lawrie, Ricky Barnes, Kevin Streelman and many others.  This is something they could not say the past few years.

Versatility

Wilson felt they needed to give the consumer more options when choosing a Wilson wedge.  So with the new 2013 Wilson FG Tour TC Wedge golfers will have:

:: 2 Sole Options – Traditional & Tour Grind

:: Traditional – for players with medium to steep angle of attack

:: Tour Grind – for players with shallow to medium angle of attack and wanting more versatility around greens

:: Configurations – 13 different sole/loft/bounce options which gives consumers 86 unique configurations choices

:: Tour Frost Finish – a more versatile finish for reduction of glare

:: Wedge Specific Grip – which is 1″ longer and reduced taper for more consistent feel when choking down

Improved Spin (Full & Partial Shots)

Full shots in golf are a very small part of the game when you really think about it…and Wilson knew they had to improve for all the other types shots golfers use with a wedge.  So they did a lot of testing and I mean a lot of testing (more on this in a minute) on their newest grooves they are calling the Tour-Y Groove.  With this new groove configuration they found that they could give golfers the following:

:: Larger Grooves – 5% larger grooves by volume

:: Full Shots – 200-300 more rpm spin on full shots

:: Partial Shots 3/4 – on 3/4 shots testing shows about 350 rpm more spin with laser etched grooves

:: Partial Shots 1/2 – on 1/2 shots testing shows about 390 rpm more spin with laser etched grooves

:: Competition – outperformed all other competitors in independent robot testing on spin with 56 degree full shots and partial shots

Improved Fitting

Most golfers don’t get professionally fit, and Wilson and just about every one else knows this…so they worked on coming up with an improved online fitting system to help remedy this as much as they could for this reality.  Is it a ground-breaking fitting system?  Well no, but it’s better then what most have, which is nothing.  And like I said the reality is that the majority of golfers don’t get fit, but the best way to have a golfer not only try your wedge but keep your wedge and rave about their newest stick is to fit them the best you can for what the consumer will allow.

Wilson Groove Testing

This time around Wilson wasn’t satisfied coming out with a wedge that just looked good and had golfers saying things like, “That’s clean looking.” … “Sharp looking wedge.” … “That just looks like a wedge that spins.”  Because what does any of that (seriously how golfers buy wedges by the way) really mean?  Not much…almost all traditional wedges look pretty damn similar.  This time they wanted it to perform against the big boys and not only perform but more importantly…outperform.

So…Wilson tested over 15 different groove configurations on this new wedge…playing with everything from the width, depth, spacing and side wall angles to come up with what they are calling the Tour-Y Groove.

Once they had good results on the robot wet/dry testing, they then moved to more standard robot and player testing.  Literally dozens of both robot (Tennessee, Florida, Chicago and China) and player tests (in Tennessee, Florida and Chicago) were conducted over the last 12 months until they fine tuned to the point they were satisfied.

The result: the new FG Tour TC Wedges.

Some Of The Grooves They Tested

WIlson FG Tour TC – (Photo Gallery)