Building a Cobra Wedge Setup for Your Course

Start with the ground

Wedges are the only clubs whose performance depends as much on turf as on your swing. Describe your home course honestly before choosing anything.

Firm, dry, tight lies, sandy soil. Lower bounce. High bounce will bounce the leading edge into the middle of the ball.

Soft, lush, wet winters, heavy soil. More bounce. Low bounce will dig and produce fat shots.

Mixed. Mid bounce, accepting that no setup is ideal in both.

Then check your divot

Take a wedge to grass and hit five shots.

• Deep divots — you are steep. Take more bounce.
• Shallow bruises — you are shallow. Take less.
• No divot at all — significantly less bounce.

Five minutes of this outperforms any amount of reading, including this article.

The bunker exception

Bunker sand is often nothing like the turf around it. Soft, deep sand wants high bounce; firm, thin sand wants less.

If your course has soft turf and firm bunkers, or the reverse, fit your sand wedge to the bunkers and the rest to the turf.

Setting the lofts

Work down from your pitching wedge, not up from your lob wedge.

1. Note the actual loft of your set pitching wedge. With KING or KING MAX this may be far stronger than you assume.
2. Space each wedge 4–6° apart.
3. Stop when the highest-lofted wedge is one you will genuinely use under pressure.

A 60° wedge is not compulsory. Plenty of golfers score better with 50/54/58 and nothing above it.

Worked examples

Strong KING lofts, firm course: PW at 42°, then 47° mid bounce, 52° mid, 58° low.

Standard lofts, soft course: PW at 46°, then 52° mid, 56° high, 60° mid to high.

Two wedges only: 52° and 58°, both mid bounce. Simple, and it removes a decision from every approach.

Measure the carries

Once built, record carry at a full swing and at a controlled three-quarter swing for each wedge. That gives you six numbers instead of three, and the six are what you will actually use.

Write them down. Recollection of what a 54° carries is almost always optimistic.

Match the shafts

Wedge shafts should be at least as heavy as your iron shafts, ideally slightly heavier. A light wedge shaft encourages a fast, loose transition that ruins distance control.

This is the most commonly skipped detail in an otherwise careful wedge fitting.

One Length and wedges

If you play One Length irons, decide deliberately whether your wedges follow. Most golfers keep conventional wedges even with a One Length iron set, because short-game feel around the green benefits from a shorter club.

There is no wrong answer, but it should be a decision rather than an accident.

Buying tip: Replace your most-used wedge every second season and let the others run longer. Uniform replacement wastes money on clubs that barely get used.

Model names current as of September 2026.