Wedge Loft Spacing and Overlap

Wedges tend to accumulate over time rather than get chosen deliberately. A pitching wedge comes with the iron set. A sand wedge gets added for bunker play. A gap wedge shows up later once someone notices a hole between the two. The problem is that "notices a hole" rarely means "measures the actual carry distance on either side of it" — so the new wedge often gets picked by loft number alone, without checking what the pitching wedge in the bag is actually doing.

Why Loft Numbers Alone Don't Guarantee Spacing

A 46-degree pitching wedge and a 50-degree gap wedge look like a clean four-degree spread on paper. But if the pitching wedge in question is a stronger-lofted design that already carries like a traditional 44-degree club, the real-world gap between it and the new 50-degree wedge can shrink well below what the loft numbers suggest — sometimes down to five or six yards of actual separation.

Full Swings Aren't the Whole Story

Loft spacing that looks fine on full swings can still overlap badly on the partial and three-quarter swings most golfers use for anything inside 100 yards. Two wedges with a clean 10-yard full-swing gap can compress to almost nothing once both are being hit at 70% effort, since shorter swings compress distance non-linearly between clubs of different bounce and grind.

The wedges most likely to overlap are the two you use most often for partial shots — which is exactly why full-swing loft spacing alone isn't enough to catch the problem.

What We Check in a Wedge Fitting

We measure full-swing carry for every wedge first, then repeat the same test at three-quarter and half-swing effort. Any pair landing within roughly five yards on either test gets flagged, along with a recommendation: usually a loft adjustment on one wedge, occasionally a bounce or grind change if the overlap is really a turf-interaction issue in disguise.

The Fifth-Wedge Trap

Adding a fifth wedge rarely solves an overlap problem and often makes it worse, since it eats a bag slot that could otherwise cover a distinct yardage elsewhere — a fairway wood, a specialty club, or simply an extra iron. Re-lofting one of the wedges already in the bag almost always closes the gap more efficiently than adding another club to the rotation.

The Takeaway

Wedge overlap hides well because it never produces an obviously bad shot — just a slightly redundant club. Checking full and partial swing carry distance for every wedge together is the only reliable way to catch it before it costs you a bag slot that could be doing real work.