PGA European Tour
Technical Report Oct 07
Player: Marcel Siem
Subject: Wedge system
By: Mark Duncombe - Technical Specialist: Tour Promotions
Problem
At the last ranking tournament of the year (the Mallorca Classic) we conducted some testing with Marcel Siem a young German golfer who won the SA open a couple of seasons ago before partnering German legend Bernhard Langer to victory in last years World cup.
Marcel has recently changed to Mizuno's new MP-57 irons with Dynamic Gold X100 shafts and as a consequence is hitting it a little further than he did with his previous set. This resulted in a big gap between his new 9 iron and his first specialist pitching wedge.
Marcel had been using the new Mizuno T-Series Black Nickel wedges to get the same forged feel running through his entire set. The wedges matched the spec of his MP-57 irons exactly. So we had to make some adjustments to close the gap from 9-PW and make Marcel's set make up as consistent as possible.
Marcel was using a 4 wedge system 47, 51, 56 and 60 degrees of loft.
Solution
We agreed that we wanted to leave Marcel's distances with his 60 LW where it was and adjust the other 3 wedges so the yardage gaps were more evenly spaced.
We strengthened the loft of his 47 by 2 degrees, his 51 by 1 degree and his 56 by 1 degree. The results below were recorded by our TrackMan radar system
ORIGINAL DISTANCE (M)
MP57 9I - 136
47 PW - 115
51 GW - 103
56 SW - 95
60 LW - 85
ADJUSTED DISTANCE (M)
MP57 9I - 136
45 PW - 122
50 GW - 110
55 SW - 98
60 LW - 85
We narrowed the gap between his 9 iron and PW, kept his favourite 60 degree as it always had been and gave Marcel a more even distance spacing throughout his wedge system. This really is the business end of any Tour players set and it will be interesting to see if Marcel's scoring average improves next season.