What is the Bounce on a Golf Club?

Understanding club bounce is easy. First of all, bounce is engineered into wedges to prevent them from digging into the ground. Bounce is most notably a part of greenside sand play to skim the club underneath the ball instead of digging deep into the sand. Playing the right bounce is also useful depending on fairway course conditions such as soft or hard.

In technical terms, clubhead bounce is the angle between the leading edge of clubhead and the trailing edge. Bounce is expressed in degrees. For instance, 8 degrees of bounce.

The bounce of a wedge can be pre-designed anywhere from 4 degrees to 14 degrees. Which bounce is suitable comes down to preference in most situations. However, a good rule of thumb to use when determining how much bounce a particular wedge needs depends on the playing conditions.

1. Fairways and sand bunkers that are harder in texture will need less bounce. More bounce in these situations will cause more thinly hit shots as the club 'bounce' skims or bounces through the terrain into the ball with the leading edge.
2. Fairways and sand bunkers that are softer in texture will require more bounce. Softer ground situations will cause wedges to dig or take deeper divots. You don't want to dig, you want to skim and clip the the ball off of the turf.

Comprise your wedges to suit your typical playing conditions. If money is not an object, purchase many wedges with various degrees of bounce to always have the equipment for any round of golf. If you are not inclined to purchase to 3 or 4 of the same wedge with different bounce degrees try the middle ground. Go with a wedge with about 8 degrees of bounce. That middle ground is a safe mix between a lot of bounce and not much. 8 degrees of bounce should allow you to play safely from just about any lie.