Wedge (golf) - Lob Wedge

The lob wedge is a club with a loft of around 60°, typically the highest in a player's bag. It is used for specialized shots requiring either extreme launch angle, short carry distance and/or no rolling distance after impact.

Dave Pelz, a former NASA physicist and golf short-game coach, envisioned the lob wedge in the 1980s as an answer to modern greens, which are designed to be more difficult to approach to add extra challenge to the game. These greens are typically elevated above the fairway, are less level and more undulating than traditional greens, and are surrounded on some or all sides by hazards. These greens require an approach shot that drops the ball very precisely onto the green near the pin, and then "sticks" with little or no roll to prevent the ball following an uneven grade or overshooting the pin into a hazard. He proposed a new club with low to mid bounce and a loft angle of 60° to accomplish such a shot. Pro player Tom Kite was among the first players to use such a club, encouraging other professionals and amateurs to follow his lead. In 1984, Karsten Manufacturing introduced the first mass-produced "L" wedge, as part of PING's widely successful Eye and Eye-2 iron sets, cementing the wedge's name as the "lob" wedge.

The lob wedge can be used for any shot requiring a short carry distance (typically 10–50 yards), and/or a very high launch angle, which also results in high backspin and thus little rolling distance after impact. Such shots include tight approaches to the green, shots from close to a tree or other tall obstruction, shots to gain a more favorable lie on the fairway, and certain bunker shots. The high launch angle and thus long carry time can be an impediment in high winds, but skilled golfers can use the long "hang time" of a lob wedge shot to take advantage of a favorable wind. The wedge typically has low to moderate bounce (0–4°) for fairway and other firm lies, but because of its high loft even 2–3° of bounce will counterbalance the downward force of the wedge's striking face, making a club with this configuration useful in sand as well. Players will often use a lob wedge to play from a sand trap adjacent to the green, instead of "opening" a sand wedge (a more difficult shot to make accurately). It can be used with a full swing from the fairway or rough to carry about 40–60 yards, but it's more commonly used with a chip shot from very close to the green, to carry 10–40 yards and "drop" the ball into an exact spot on the green.