Much like a fine wine, golf technology gets better with time. As time progresses, individuals find flaws in products and find ways to better them through the use of applied technologies. While this ambiguous statement can be descriptive of most things, it applies, especially to the sand wedge.
Innovation: The Rise of Sarazen’s Bounce Sole
The 1930’s Gene Sarazen bounce sole was one of the most critical innovations for sand wedge production in modern golf. Sarazen is credited with being the inventor of the sand wedge, although what he did was closer to modifying an existing style of a club known as the “spoon” club. The spoon club was named for its concave face, used for scooping the player’s ball out of the sand or tall grass that they unfortunately found themselves in. Eventually, these concave and deep-grooved faces were banned, because they did not comply with the United States Golf Association and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. In response to the outlawing of the concave-faced clubs like the spoon club, Sarazen created a new golf iron with a flat-faced club with extra lead on the front edge. These modifications were made to both comply with the USGA and R&A rules, as well as to aid the club in cutting through the grass and sand.
Gene Sarazen was inspired to modify the sand wedge when he was flying in Howard Hughes’ private plane, and notice the prominence of the rear rutter. The rutter that Sarazen was inspired by led him to change wedges forever by introducing a higher bounce angle. The bounce angle corresponds to the angle of the sole on the front of the club, raising the clubface, allowing the leading edge to have less interference with the ground on the approach to striking the ball. Having less interference with the ground gives the user more control, greatly changing the outcome of the shot. Historically this is how change operates. People take existing technologies and modify them for the better. However, this would not be the last time that the sand wedge would be modified, as history often repeats itself.
Renegar Golf: The Modern Club
As technology advances, it becomes harder and harder to make improvements on products unless you are willing to put the work in. Luckily, we are hard workers here at Renegar Golf. With over 20 years and six generations of research and development, we have created the most technologically advanced precision made golf clubs. While Sarazen made a great stride in golf club technologies, we felt that it just wasn't quite enough. Sarazen’s design was extremely effective in bunker play, we wanted to design a club that could effectively perform in all forms of short gameplay. Our clubs are made with precision golf shafts, and the top available irons in order to provide you with the most forgiving golf irons on the market.
Our club technology is so special because we have worked countless years to perfect it. One of the qualities of our clubs is that they have a lower leading edge, giving you the extra edge in thin situations like buried bunker shots. We have also changed the clubs center of gravity both higher and farther back from the club face, giving you increased ball spin rate and increased moment of inertia directional stability. Lastly, our club has multiple bounce surfaces, increasing surface area as well as enhancing your bunker explosion shots.
Contact us today or shop online at Renegar Golf for information about our precision made golf clubs!