Best new wedges for 2024 – Syndication Server

Wilson Staff Model ZM wedges

Wilson Staff Model ZM wedges are designed to create more spin and enhanced feel around the greens.

Gear: Wilson Staff Model ZM wedges
Price: $149.99 each with True Temper Dynamic Gold Spinner stock shaft and a Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips
Specs: Forged 8620 carbon steel with face-roughening treatment. Even lofts from 50 degrees to 60 degrees, with 46, 48 and 64-degree versions available through custom order.
Available: April 2 (pre-order March 19)

Who it’s For: Golfers who love the look and feel of a traditional wedge with enhanced spin generation.

The Skinny: Wilson has made the grooves in the Staff Model ZM wedges sharper to complement the soft, forged feel while also adding a high-toe option.

The Deep Dive: For several seasons, Wilson offered a wide variety of clubs made to appeal to a broad audience, like the D Series and the Dynapower woods and irons. However, in recent years, the Chicago-based brand has turned out some of the most admired clubs for accomplished golfers and low-handicap players, like the recently released Staff Model Blade and Staff Model CB irons and Staff Model putters. These clubs are not for everyone, but they demonstrate that Wilson knows what elite golfers want to see, hear and feel on the course, and with the release of the new Staff Model ZM wedges, Wilson is continuing that trend of offering aspiring club champions and good ballstrikers short game tools that look and feel like they belong on tour.

Forged from 8620 carbon steel for a soft feel at impact, the Staff Model ZM wedges have a straighter leading edge and gentle heel relief so golfers can open the face and get the leading edge under the ball when chipping and pitching from a tight lie.

Wilson designers kept the center of gravity (CG) location relatively low in the gap wedges (50 and 52 degrees) by leaving the area behind the topline thin, but extra mass was added in that area in the sand wedges (54 and 56 degrees) to lift the CG, and even more, mass has been added in the lob wedges (58 and 60 degrees). This progressive CG location helps golfers flight their approach shots lower for more control.

Wilson Staff Model ZM wedge — With sharper grooves, updated milling and a surface-roughening treatment, the Staff Model ZM wedges help golfers generate more spin. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

The addition of a new face milling and surface-roughening treatment helps the grooves grab the cover of your golf ball more effectively and keep it on the face longer, which should result in increased spin, especially in wet conditions.

The standard Staff Model ZM wedges have a very traditional look and are available in lofts from 50 to 60 degrees, with 46 and 48-degree clubs available through custom order. Wilson is also offering a high-toe version in 56 and 60-degree options, with a 64-degree club available through custom order. The high-toe model gives players extra hitting area when they open the face on shots around the green.

Best golf wedges you can buy in 2024

Check out Golfweek’s list of the best golf wedges available to purchase in 2024.

Wedges are the most confusing and intimidating golf club category because there are so many options to choose from and many players don’t really understand how to properly use wedges to hit chip shots, bunker shots, flop shops and pitch shots. They hear terms like bounce, sole grind, heel and toe relief and camber and nod, but in the back of their minds they are thinking, “What the hell does that mean?”

To make matters worse, iron lofts have become stronger over the last decade, with many game-improvement sets coming with a 9-iron that has a loft of around 38 degrees and a pitching wedge at 42 degrees. If a recreational golfer has a 56-degree sand wedge, which is typical, that’s a 14-degree gap between wedges, which can put you in between clubs on lots of short game shots.

To reduce the intimidation factor and help golfers find the right wedges more easily, many manufacturers have developed online fitting tools. With just a few clicks to tell these systems about your game and the conditions you encounter on the course, they can provide you with club, loft and sole grind recommendations.

Of course, the best way to discover your ideal wedges is to work in-person with a custom fitter who can evaluate your performance with several different wedges.

The list below is intended to act as an educational starting point and help you get familiar with the most popular wedges and the clubs you will likely see in pro shops and golf specialty stores right now.

Best golf wedges you can buy in 2024:

Ping s159 wedges

Ping s159 wedges offer more spin, sole grind options and versatility.

Gear: Ping s159 wedges
Price: $197 each with Z-Z115 steel shafts and Dylawedge grips. $212 each with Alta CB Black graphite shaft.
Specs: Cast 8620 carbon stainless steel with water-repellant coating and vibration-absorbing polymer. Available in even lofts from 46 to 62 degrees in Chrome and Midnight finishes.
Available: February 22

Who It’s For: Golfers who want variety around the green and spin retention in wet conditions.

The Skinny: Taking feedback from PGA Tour players, Ping adjusted the look of its wedges while updating their spin-producing qualities, especially in wet conditions, to help golfers maintain control and feel around the greens.

The Deep Dive: From 100 yards and in, the name of the game is control and consistency. Practicing the proper technique is critical, but so is having wedges in your bag that can help you from various locations, whether that means a tight lie in the fairway or an awkward shot in a bunker.

With the release of the new s159 wedge family, Ping is attacking shortgame challenges on two fronts: spin retention and sole grinds.

Looking down at the s159 wedges in the address position, golfers will see they have a more square leading edge and an updated hosel transition area, so they look straighter than Ping’s recent Glide 4.0 wedges.

The s159 wedges have a soft feel at impact thanks to the use of 8620 carbon steel and an elastomer piece on the back of each head that rests against the face. It soaks up excess vibrations.

The Ping s159 wedges has a vibration-absorbing elastomer piece behind the hitting area. (David Dusek/Golfweek)

The 46 to 52-degree wedges have iron-style grooves because golfers use those clubs approximately 70 percent of the time from the fairway as an extension of their iron set. However, to enhance spin in the sand and lob wedges (54 to 62 degrees), Ping designed the clubs with its Micromax grooves. They are wider and shallower to help remove water, sand and debris from the hitting surface more efficiently. Ping designers also bunched the grooves more tightly together, allowing for the addition of three more grooves to each face to help increase grabbing power and spin.

In addition to machining the faces to make them absolutely flat before the main grooves are cut into the hitting area, Ping adds a face-blast treatment that increases the roughness of the face.

Finally, a Hydropearl 2.0 finish has been applied to the Chrome version of the s159 wedges. It is hydrophobic, which means that water tends to bead up on the metal and fall away easily, leading to increased spin retention on wet turf and in the rain.

So, while most wedges tend to lose a few hundred rpm of spin and launch the ball on a higher angle in wet conditions, the s159 wedges do something interesting. The combination of the grooves, surface-roughening treatment and the Hydropearl 2.0 finish in the Chrome wedges works so well that Ping’s internal studies showed that on 50-yard pitch shots, the Chrome s159 wedge created about 200 rpm more spin and launched on a slightly-lower lower angle in wet conditions than dry conditions.

The glare-reducing Midnight finish does not have the water-repelling Hydropeal 2.0 finish, so golfers will see it does not maintain spin in wet conditions as the Chrome-finished s159 wedges. However, Ping is confident that among the dark-finished wedges on the market, the Midnight version of the s159 retains spin in wet conditions as well or better than other offerings.

With spin retention address, Ping set its sights on offering more sole grinds to allow golfers and fitters more options based on a golfer’s game and the conditions they face.

S Grind – With a straight sole and available in lofts from 46-60 degrees, the S grind is designed to work in a wide variety of situations in the fairway and around the green.

B Grind – A new offering at retail, the B grind is designed for golfers to tend to sweep the ball off the turf and keep the face square at impact. It has a wide sole, low bounce and is offered in 58 and 60-degree versions.

H Grind – The “Half Moon” grind is another new offering and comes in lofts from 54-60 degrees. It is ideally suited to players with a steep angle of attack or who play in soft conditions.

T Grind – Touted as Ping’s most versatile option, the T grind is available as a 58, 60 and 62-degree lob wedge and has significant heel and toe relief.

W Grind – Available in lofts from 54-60 degrees, the W grind has a wide sole, 14 degrees of bounce and is meant for golfers who play in soft conditions and have a steep attack angle. Most players will find it more forgiving than the low-bounce B grind.

E Grind – An homage to the classic Eye2 wedge, the E grind has a signature hight-toe design and a scallop in the wide sole that makes it appealing to golfers who struggle in greenside bunkers. It comes in lofts from 54-60 degrees.

Below are several close-up images of the new Ping s159 wedges.

Cleveland RTX Full-Face 2 wedges

Cleveland RTX Full-Face 2 wedges combine versatility and spin to help golfers performance better around the greens.

Gear: Cleveland RTX Full-Face 2 wedges
Price: $179.99 each (Tour Satin) with True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue Spinner shafts and Lamkin Crossline 360 grips; $199.99 (Tour Rack)
Specs: Cast stainless steel heads in even lofts from 50-60 degrees (and 64 degrees) in two sole grinds
Available: NOW

Who It’s For: Golfers who want versatility on open-face shots around the green.

The Skinny: The RTX Full-Face 2 wedges have a high-toe design and unique weighting system that combine with sharp grooves and surface-roughening treatments to give players the ability to generate more spin and hit a wider variety of shots around the green.

The Deep Dive: No company has more pedigree in the wedge category or offers more short-game options than Cleveland Golf. From wedges designed specifically for high-handicap golfers who struggle with chipping and bunker play to instruments designed for elite players like Brooks Koepka, Keegan Bradley and Hideki Matsuyama, Cleveland’s stable of wedges has it all.

For 2024, Cleveland is expanding its wedge lineup further with the release of the RTX Full-Face 2, which will be available in even lofts from 50 to 60 degrees, along with a 64-degree option, and these wedges are designed specifically for the most delicate shots players hit around the green.

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When faced with a flop shot over a bunker, an escape from thick rough or a tricky pitch shot from an awkward lie, golfers often open the face of their wedge and swing from out to in, clipping the ball up instead of hitting it solidly from a square stance. With that in mind, Cleveland developed the RTX Full-Face 2 wedges with a higher toe to create extra usable hitting area. Weight was also removed from the hosel area by engineering it with a lighter, low-density material. Cleveland calls it ZipCore, and by reducing the weight of the hosel and making the toe area higher, the ideal hitting area and center of gravity are pulled more into the center of the face for better performance. ZipCore is not new, but the RTX Full-Face 2 has 96 percent more ZipCore material than previously released ZipCore wedges, so the effect is magnified.

To help golfers generate more spin, Cleveland gave the RTX Full-Face 2 grooves over the entire hitting area, along with HydraZip. This new surface roughening treatment combines laser-milled lines between the main grooves and a blasting treatment to increase friction.

The gap wedges (50 and 52 degrees) are designed with an S-shaped sole that has 8 degrees of bounce, making them play more like an extension of a player’s irons and ideally suited for full-swing shots from the fairway and greenside chips. The sand wedges (54 and 56 degrees) have soles with the same shape, but they come standard with 10 degrees of bounce. Lob wedges (56, 60 and 64 degrees) have extra material removed from the heel and toe areas and feature a C-shaped sole that has 8 degrees of bounce.

In addition to the Tour Satin finish, Cleveland is making the RTX Full-Face 2 wedges available in a raw-steel version the company calls Tour Rack.

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