Last updated: September 2, 2026
A wedge distance chart maps every wedge in your bag to three carry distances: full swing, half swing, and finesse. You build it on a launch monitor by hitting enough shots per cell to trust the average, then use the matrix to pick a club and swing length for any carry you face inside 120 yards.
A wedge distance chart is a grid where each row is a swing length and each column is a wedge, and every cell holds a carry distance you have measured. It turns "I think my 50 degree goes about 85" into a specific, tested number for every club and swing combination in the scoring zone.
Tight gapping matters inside 120 yards, where you attack pins. It barely costs you at 215, where dispersion swamps any gap. Wedges are scoring clubs. Never cut a wedge to patch a gap you rarely face. The chart is where you find out where your real gaps are, where your partial swings fill holes, and where two clubs are doing the same job.
Each swing is defined by a physical checkpoint on the backswing, not by a clock position or a feel. Clock positions feel precise and are not, because hand position at the top is hard to feel, moves with tempo and effort, and two golfers at the same clock position hit it different distances. Anchor every swing to a carry number instead.
Call the three swings anything you want, as long as each one is tied to a carry you measured.
List your wedges, define three swings by checkpoint, hit a measured block for every cell, fill the grid, then check the short end on turf. The whole grid is about an hour on a launch monitor that reads carry.
Here is my own chart, built on a launch monitor with the clubs in my bag: Mizuno JPX 925 Hot Metal irons with the set PW at 42 degrees, then wedges bought separately at 46, 50, and 54. No 58 and no 48.
| Swing | PW (42°) | 46° | 50° | 54° |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | 134 | 125 | 119 | 102 |
| Half | 92 | 91 | 86 | 73 |
| Finesse | 65 | 58 | 50 | 42 |
All numbers are carry in yards. That is three known carries per wedge across the scoring band inside 120, with the PW extending the grid to 134.
Two things in that table are worth more than the tidy cells. Only 9 yards separates the PW from the 46 on a full swing, because a strong lofted pitching wedge already flies a long way. And a 17 yard hole sits between the 50 and the 54 on the full swing (119 to 102), which I cover with partial swings rather than pretending it is not there. Even a bag somebody planned has holes.
The half swing row shows the second lesson. PW at 92 and 46 degree at 91 sit one yard apart, and the chart is where you find that out. The next question is whether they also fly the same, and physics says they do not: the 42 degree PW comes in lower and releases more than the 46 on the same swing. So they are two shots that happen to share a carry, not a duplicate. A front pin at 91 gets the 46. A back pin gets the PW.
Anywhere from a yard and a half to over four yards on my own chart, and the rate changes as you go down the bag. Between the 46 and the 50 (four degrees), the full swing drops from 125 to 119: about a yard and a half per degree. Between the 50 and the 54 (also four degrees), it drops from 119 to 102: over four yards per degree.
So never convert degrees to yards at a fixed rate. What a one or two degree bend buys you is a range experiment, not arithmetic. If you are thinking about bending a wedge to close a gap, measure the result. The number will not be what the math predicts.
In a strong lofted iron set, the stamped gap wedge often flies past its number because it is built like a distance iron, not a scoring wedge. On the JPX 925 Hot Metal the set runs PW at 42, gap wedge at 48, sand wedge at 54, which looks tidy on paper. But the set 48 is a hot cast face built for distance, while the first specialty wedge you buy is a soft forged head with none of that, so the set 48 flies past its number and a hole opens in the exact band you score from.
Gap the bottom of the bag with a wedge in your hands on a range, not off the loft chart. For a deeper look at why strong lofted irons create this problem, see strong lofted distance irons and stopping power.
Buying sequence for a first set: get the 5 iron through the PW, play it, find where your own holes are, then buy one wedge for the biggest one. For a player who regulates swing length, three wedges at 46, 50, and 54 cover the scoring band inside 120 and each one can be dialed to three numbers.
Each swing lands differently, and the difference is why the grid carries three rows instead of one. The full swing flies highest and comes in steepest, so it stops quickest. The half swing flies flatter with less spin and releases a little. The finesse swing is the lowest and spins least, so budget for it to run.
A well struck full wedge lands steep and spins hard: 9,000 to 11,500 rpm coming down at 48 to 52 degrees. The partial swings sit under that on both counts.
Source: Trackman tour averages for wedge spin and descent angle benchmarks.
That is why a shared carry is not automatically a wasted cell. If one of the two lands steep and the other lands flat and runs, you are holding two different shots to the same yardage. Only when they fly the same as well is one of them surplus. The steeper one is for a front pin, the flatter one is for a back pin or a shot into wind.
An empty stretch in the band gets filled by moving one cell on purpose, hitting it until it lands on the number you need and checking it again, not by a bigger bucket.
Under about 60 yards, yes, and the shorter the shot the bigger the difference. At those distances the shot is mostly about how the sole meets the ground, and a mat is forgiving in a way grass is not: a slightly heavy strike skids into the ball off a mat and still posts a number, where the same strike off turf is a chunk. The full swing row travels to the course reasonably well. The finesse row built indoors is a starting point, and the wedge yardage chart tool says the same thing every time you build one there. Take the short end outside and confirm it on grass before you trust it to a scorecard.
Carries drift with the season, the ball, a swing change, or a strike fix. When a strike fix works, the carry usually goes down while dispersion tightens. That feels like losing distance and is the fix working. A carry number is only as good as the conditions you can still describe: method plus condition, or it is a memory rather than a number.
Card rot is not uniform, so do not rebuild the whole grid every spring. Remeasure the club whose delivery you changed, the one you have been grinding on, and keep one wedge you have not touched as the control. If the control moved too, the drift is shared: the ball, the conditions, the unit, or your whole swing, not the one fix you made.
Practice by having something else pick the yardage. The wedge yardage chart tool on this site includes a game called Call The Number for exactly this: it calls a random carry from inside your own band, you choose the club and the swing, hit it, and log how close it finished, ten calls to a score. The chart is a lookup. The cold call, with a different number every time, is the test of whether you can produce it, and that is the shape the question takes on the course.
Disclosure: I am the founder of Fore-ward Thinking, and I built Chip to automate the remember and recap part of this. The tool page builds the chart and forgets it when the tab closes. Chip keeps your club matrix on your profile, reads it at the start of every session, coaches your wedge game from your numbers rather than from averages, and updates each cell as you remeasure it, so the drift question (is my 50 half swing shorter than it was?) is answerable. Free to start, 3 messages, no card required.
Can I bend a wedge to close a gap in my chart?
Most wedges, cast or forged, bend a degree or two safely, but the carry change per degree is not fixed. In the worked example on this page, one degree between 46 and 50 is about a yard and a half, while one degree between 50 and 54 is over four yards. Two cautions before you do it. Loft and bounce move together, so bending weak adds bounce, and a wedge that was fitted for your delivery should go back through the fitter who built it. And if the weak link in that window is your strike on partial swings, a one degree stamp change cannot show up in your scores, so get the partials repeating first and put the bend on the table only if the gap still costs you shots. Then remeasure on the monitor rather than doing arithmetic.
Are three wedges enough or do I need four?
Three wedges are enough if you regulate swing length. With three swings per club, three wedges give you up to nine distinct carries. Adding a wedge means subtracting a club from somewhere else in the bag, so add one only when the chart shows a gap no partial swing fills. Tight gapping matters inside 120 yards, where you attack pins. It barely costs you at 215, where dispersion swamps any gap.
Should the pitching wedge be in the chart?
Yes. The pitching wedge is the top of the scoring band, and on a strong lofted set it is a 42 to 44 degree club that carries a long way, so it is usually where the first surprise in the bag hides. In my chart the PW at 134 sits only 9 yards above the 46, and its half swing lands one yard from the 46 half swing. Leave it out and you never see either of those.
What do I do when two cells carry the same number?
Check whether the two shots fly differently. If one lands steeper and stops and the other releases, they are different shots that happen to carry the same distance, and you keep both. If they also fly the same height with similar spin, one is a true duplicate and you can drop it from your mental list.
Should I build the chart before or after a club fitting?
Build it before the fitting and bring it with you. A fitting measures your full swings on the day, and it almost never measures your half and finesse rows, which is where most of the scoring band lives. Walk in with your carries, your holes, and your duplicates, and the conversation starts where it should.
Keep going:
Enter what each wedge carries on a full, half, and finesse swing and get your matrix back, with a printable card for the bag. It flags any two numbers too close to tell apart, and tells you whether that flag came from scatter you measured or from a stated assumption. Then Call The Number asks for a random carry from inside your own band and scores ten of them.
Import a launch monitor session or type your carries in, and get your gaps judged against your own carry scatter instead of a fixed 10 to 15 yards. It finds the yardages nothing in your bag covers and the ones three clubs are fighting over, and it restates your irons on a classic loft basis, because the club stamped 7 runs from 28 to 35 degrees depending on whose set it is.
Check the actual lofts before you switch: why distance iron misses run long, what bending weak really buys, and the fix menu in order of cost.
A measured loop of baseline, work, retest, and log, with beginner, intermediate, and advanced versions and a printable session template.