Edel SMS Wedges – Official MGS Forum Review by xOldBenKenobiX
Introduction – May 31, 2022
First and foremost a huge thank you to Edel and MyGolfSpy for another awesome testing opportunity.
My name is Elson, and I am golf addict, I have been playing golf for about 12 years now, born and raised in Brazil, I honestly don’t play and practice as much as I would like to. I have been calling Southeast Michigan home for the past 15 years, and really enjoy the many courses that our area and the Northwest Ohio area have to offer. My wife has accepted that she loses me for a few months during the summer. I am a high handicapper, and my numbers will vary from the high teens to the mid-20s depending on how often I can play.
I will be testing the Edel SMS wedges, my specs are as it follows:
Ø48, 54 and 60 degrees
ØStandard Loft/Lie + ¼ inch length
ØT Grind
ØStandard 2g weights on the edges and 8g on the center
ØShafted with a KBS Hi-Rev 2.0 - R 115g with a standard size Golf Pride Tour Velvet grip
Currently I do not have a suitable testing area at home for wedge practice and testing, nor I own a Sim/Shot tracer equipment, however I do have a few golf courses nearby with good range/short game are to practice at. Also, there is a new X Golf location down the street from me to where I can go and test with a full Sim and test spin rates.
Overall, I want to test these wedges with my regular game, and see how they perform, or how can I make them perform.
The main measure of testing here is if they can help me save strokes, more greens in regulation and such. As any new clubs I expect these to be different than what I am used to play with and to see some good differences with the spin rates and shot shapes. Edel is one of the companies to which I have never held one of their clubs before, just saw pictures and videos and I think it will be awesome to play with it.
I am very excited for this testing as my wedges are the oldest clubs in my bag right now and were never fit for my game. My short game is also a weak part of my game and one that I would love to see improve. With that being said, I cannot express how excited I am about testing these wedges.
Final Review - July 25, 2022
First Impressions
My first impression of those was that they are very well made, from the clubs I tested during my fitting to the clubs I receive, the craftsmanship on those is simply great, I love the looks of the clubs.
I love the looks at address and really enjoyed the overall looks of the clubs.
The head looks very compact at address, and with a very nice look at address. The full-face grooves are great, allowing for mishits to still be struck within the groves, hence the mishits were not so punishing to me.
Edel claims that this wedge can be up to 44% more accurate, I can say that personally I did see an improvement with my shots, not up to 44%, but I was able to keep more balls in the green, and get it closer to the flag overall, despite not experimenting with moving the weight around I do still think that the moveable weights are a great advantage for better players who can shape the ball flight one way or another, and who want to have that set as a default shot shape with the weights.
Unfortunately, at my current skill level, I do not shape the call at demand and honestly prefer to have my ball flight as straight as possible.
Aesthetics
I was fit for the T grind across the board, the tripe sole design allows for some versatility when using the wedge. These feature the traditional pear shape from address.
The logo is not too distracting when looking at the bottom of the club as well the T grind information, I think if wanted the bottom of the club would be a prefect canvas to add some lovely personal touches, I did not get these wedges customized, but I can see a lot of potential with the available customization.
As I mentioned before, I do like the overall looks of this wedge, I think the overall package was well put together, these are not flashy, but very noticeable when sitting in the bag.
Comparing these with other wedges of similar price, I think that these wedges are spot on with their looks, maybe not as a such refined looks as a Vokey, but they do look good on their own way.
These wedges sound good, they are not too loud and give a feeling of softness when they are hit, when swinging through the rough and grass in general, these sounded soft and not distracting, very pleasing, even swinging from the sand did not yield any loud or displeasing sound.
My mishits still ended up with some good overall results, knowing my game, other clubs where I know the mishits would generate a very bad result, severe miss, and such, with these, the misses where not as bad, and in general I got the ball closer to my intended target.
My worse hit with this clubs was a bad chunked toe hit, that pretty much caused the ball to go sideways, however this one was on my swing not the club, as for the best, I did get a lovely high shot over the trees into the green after putting my tee shot on the rough in front of the next tee box, this shot went exactly how I had pictured in my mind, and it felt really good to be able to hit that shot with the confidence that I would pull it off, especially because I know that I hit a lot more bad shots than good ones.
As for the normal mishits, hitting it thin would get me a longer shot than I wished for, but nonetheless close to my intended line.
With my chunky shots, I did experience the normal last of distance, but still following my intended line.
With the mishits and non-square to the face shots, I did see some side traction, but not as bad as my old wedges.
The Numbers
I did not had a chance to take these wedges to a sim and test out the numbers, however as for real life play, I did notice that my shot dispersion was a little better, I did notice that on the shorter shots 100 yards and less, where I usually struggle a lot, I did indeed have better results and have hit more greens or with the misses, I got it closer to the green.
As for my distances if hitting the wedges with a full shot these are the numbers I have averaged.
For my 48 degrees, I was hitting between 95 to 105 yards.
For the 54 degrees, I was hitting between 75 and 85 yards.
As for the 60 degrees, I was hitting between 55 and 65 yards.
The trajectory of my shots was a mid to high flight.
As I previously mentioned the mishits were not as punishing as my older wedges, especially as these ones had been fitted to my game.
Dead center hits were very pleasant and yield good shots, with the toe and heel shots, indeed the shots would go right and left of the target, not as far offline as I would hit with my old wedges, I noticed that when I try to recreate the same shots with both the old and new wedges, the Edel wedges gave me a much closer proximity to the the hole as well as to the green.
Shooting similar wedges on the range I took 10 shots with each wedge and its comparable old wedge that I had in the bag, the shots were post warm up, and I was feeling loose enough for all of them.
Wedge
Shot distance
Hole average Distance
Edel 48
30 Yards Chip shots
32 feet
Vokey 48
30 Yards Chip shots
41 feet
Edel 54
20 Yards Chip shots
25 feet
Vokey 52
20 Yards Chip shots
29 feet
Edel 60
15 Yards Chip shots
12 feet
Vokey 58
15 Yards Chip shots
21 feet
That is quite a noticeable difference with the distance, especially with the shorter shots, I had a couple of the 15 Yard chips where I nearly holed them out.
As for the full shots on the range, unfortunately I had to do more of a visual evaluation as I could not walk down the range and measure each individual shot from its landing spot compared to the target line.
Due to having a steep angle of attack, I naturally hit shots to the right.
Mind you, most of my misses are to the right, and once again after warming up and with a good rest break between sets, I hit 10 balls with each wedge.
Again, this was the hardest part to estimate during the test.
Wedge
Shot Distance
Estimated deviation to the target line
Edel 48
100 Yards full shot
15 Yards
Vokey 48
100 Yards full shot
30 Yards
Edel 54
75 Yards full shot
10 Yards
Vokey 52
75 Yards full shot
25 Yards
Edel 60
60 Yards full shot
10 Yards
Vokey 58
60 Yards full shot
15 Yards
I wish I have had the chance to take these to a Sim and gotten numbers that way, but between the bad knees, sprained wrists and ankles, the past few weeks have made my outings much harder.
I did prefer to spend the limited time I had in real golf conditions, and oh boy did they deliver during that play.
On the Course
I have noticed that on my course play, I have used the 60 degrees wedge a lot more than the 48 and 54, as for my last round, I found myself trying to fit usage of the wedges, maybe a little too much, looking at the opportunities had and the distances I knew I could hit the wedges comfortably, I hit some shots that I knew I did not have the distance with a wedge, so on the next shot I would have a chance to hit a different wedge.
If I was approaching a green and the distance left was between 110 and 125 yards, I would still hit the 48 degrees wedge, so I would have a chance to hit the 60 degrees for my next shot, that is because I wanted to hit as many shots as I could with these, and I honestly contemplated, yet I did not, play the shorter par 4s with wedges only, I might do that in a future round as my home course of Taylor Meadows, have a lovely stretch from the 8th to the 10th hole that are shorter yet challenging with water in play on all 3 holes.
8 playing downhill 309 yards
9 playing downhill with water to the right the entire way 281 yards
And the 10 with a new Pond guarding the front left of the green is the shortest at only 256 yards.
The only area that I truly had an issue was with Sand traps, both during my range sessions and the actual course play, I had a real hard time getting out of them, but I cannot fault the wedge, that is my game and the flaws I have with it.
I hoped that the new wedges would be a magic bullet, but that was not realistic.
Where I play most of the bunkers are of heavy compact sand with a very low sand dept, these are the type of bunkers that only really have 3 inches of sand than it is the hard soil below.
I noticed that despite missing the green from the sand, either long or very short, the wedge glided through the sand with no issues, despite most of the times me taking a steep swing that really dug into the sand.
I felt confident every time I had the wedges on my hands and that is one of the best characteristic of these.
I quite honestly really loved playing these wedges and cannot really say any bad things about it, maybe because these were such an improvement from my old mix and match set of vokeys.
These have impacted my game in a positive way, these had bee
n optimized to give me the best spin rate and flight.
I had never had an Edel product on my hands, and I got to say, I am impressed with the over engineering of these clubs, the fact that you can move the weight around and adjust the ball flight is the type of thing that I would expect from a driver, not really from an wedge, but to have the option is one of those tools that is a great one to have on your bag.
I would love to see more of the moveable weight technology, I love to see where Edel will take those and what it becomes of it, that technology being integrated to their new SMS irons shows Edel’s commitment to the technology.
The Good, the Bad, the Inbetween
The good, these wedges are awesome, and the technology behind them is very impressive.
The bad, and my bad on these, I feel that even though I am not a very tall person, the wedges feel short, the 35 inches for the 60 degree, the 35..25 for the 54 and 35.5 for the 48th, have me squatting down a little more than what I feel comfortable with, but that is something I can get addressed later and have an inch added to each one of them.
Play it or Trade it?
These are a play it for me, these wedges have improved my game, and indeed it has been a such short time and I think a few more rounds of play will help me get even more accustomed to these wedges, but I do like what I have experienced so far.
The main measure of success for me with these wedges is confidence, I have gained confidence on hitting different shots around the green and know that I can pull of those shots.
I think that everyday golfers like myself benefit from these wedges, as they show a great deal of forgiveness and playability.
I think as I use these and get more comfortable with them, my short game will improve.
Conclusion
Edel has brought forward a great set of wedges, the technology behind these is impressive, the fact that one can customize your shot shapes with the moveable weights is a big plus.
The exceptional forgiveness and workability of these jump out at you as an advantage with these.
As my personal experience, again the word here is confidence, these felt very good on my hands and did improve me game, I have hit a lot more of good shots than I did bad shots with these wedges than my old ones.
Edel SMS Wedges
Posted
Edel SMS Wedges – Official MGS Forum Review by xOldBenKenobiX
Introduction – May 31, 2022
First and foremost a huge thank you to Edel and MyGolfSpy for another awesome testing opportunity.
My name is Elson, and I am golf addict, I have been playing golf for about 12 years now, born and raised in Brazil, I honestly don’t play and practice as much as I would like to. I have been calling Southeast Michigan home for the past 15 years, and really enjoy the many courses that our area and the Northwest Ohio area have to offer. My wife has accepted that she loses me for a few months during the summer. I am a high handicapper, and my numbers will vary from the high teens to the mid-20s depending on how often I can play.
I will be testing the Edel SMS wedges, my specs are as it follows:
Ø 48, 54 and 60 degrees
Ø Standard Loft/Lie + ¼ inch length
Ø T Grind
Ø Standard 2g weights on the edges and 8g on the center
Ø Shafted with a KBS Hi-Rev 2.0 - R 115g with a standard size Golf Pride Tour Velvet grip
Currently I do not have a suitable testing area at home for wedge practice and testing, nor I own a Sim/Shot tracer equipment, however I do have a few golf courses nearby with good range/short game are to practice at. Also, there is a new X Golf location down the street from me to where I can go and test with a full Sim and test spin rates.
Overall, I want to test these wedges with my regular game, and see how they perform, or how can I make them perform.
The main measure of testing here is if they can help me save strokes, more greens in regulation and such. As any new clubs I expect these to be different than what I am used to play with and to see some good differences with the spin rates and shot shapes. Edel is one of the companies to which I have never held one of their clubs before, just saw pictures and videos and I think it will be awesome to play with it.
I am very excited for this testing as my wedges are the oldest clubs in my bag right now and were never fit for my game. My short game is also a weak part of my game and one that I would love to see improve. With that being said, I cannot express how excited I am about testing these wedges.
Final Review - July 25, 2022
First Impressions
My first impression of those was that they are very well made, from the clubs I tested during my fitting to the clubs I receive, the craftsmanship on those is simply great, I love the looks of the clubs.
I love the looks at address and really enjoyed the overall looks of the clubs.
The head looks very compact at address, and with a very nice look at address. The full-face grooves are great, allowing for mishits to still be struck within the groves, hence the mishits were not so punishing to me.
Edel claims that this wedge can be up to 44% more accurate, I can say that personally I did see an improvement with my shots, not up to 44%, but I was able to keep more balls in the green, and get it closer to the flag overall, despite not experimenting with moving the weight around I do still think that the moveable weights are a great advantage for better players who can shape the ball flight one way or another, and who want to have that set as a default shot shape with the weights.
Unfortunately, at my current skill level, I do not shape the call at demand and honestly prefer to have my ball flight as straight as possible.
Aesthetics
I was fit for the T grind across the board, the tripe sole design allows for some versatility when using the wedge. These feature the traditional pear shape from address.
The logo is not too distracting when looking at the bottom of the club as well the T grind information, I think if wanted the bottom of the club would be a prefect canvas to add some lovely personal touches, I did not get these wedges customized, but I can see a lot of potential with the available customization.
As I mentioned before, I do like the overall looks of this wedge, I think the overall package was well put together, these are not flashy, but very noticeable when sitting in the bag.
Comparing these with other wedges of similar price, I think that these wedges are spot on with their looks, maybe not as a such refined looks as a Vokey, but they do look good on their own way.
These wedges sound good, they are not too loud and give a feeling of softness when they are hit, when swinging through the rough and grass in general, these sounded soft and not distracting, very pleasing, even swinging from the sand did not yield any loud or displeasing sound.
My mishits still ended up with some good overall results, knowing my game, other clubs where I know the mishits would generate a very bad result, severe miss, and such, with these, the misses where not as bad, and in general I got the ball closer to my intended target.
My worse hit with this clubs was a bad chunked toe hit, that pretty much caused the ball to go sideways, however this one was on my swing not the club, as for the best, I did get a lovely high shot over the trees into the green after putting my tee shot on the rough in front of the next tee box, this shot went exactly how I had pictured in my mind, and it felt really good to be able to hit that shot with the confidence that I would pull it off, especially because I know that I hit a lot more bad shots than good ones.
As for the normal mishits, hitting it thin would get me a longer shot than I wished for, but nonetheless close to my intended line.
With my chunky shots, I did experience the normal last of distance, but still following my intended line.
With the mishits and non-square to the face shots, I did see some side traction, but not as bad as my old wedges.
The Numbers
I did not had a chance to take these wedges to a sim and test out the numbers, however as for real life play, I did notice that my shot dispersion was a little better, I did notice that on the shorter shots 100 yards and less, where I usually struggle a lot, I did indeed have better results and have hit more greens or with the misses, I got it closer to the green.
As for my distances if hitting the wedges with a full shot these are the numbers I have averaged.
For my 48 degrees, I was hitting between 95 to 105 yards.
For the 54 degrees, I was hitting between 75 and 85 yards.
As for the 60 degrees, I was hitting between 55 and 65 yards.
The trajectory of my shots was a mid to high flight.
As I previously mentioned the mishits were not as punishing as my older wedges, especially as these ones had been fitted to my game.
Dead center hits were very pleasant and yield good shots, with the toe and heel shots, indeed the shots would go right and left of the target, not as far offline as I would hit with my old wedges, I noticed that when I try to recreate the same shots with both the old and new wedges, the Edel wedges gave me a much closer proximity to the the hole as well as to the green.
Shooting similar wedges on the range I took 10 shots with each wedge and its comparable old wedge that I had in the bag, the shots were post warm up, and I was feeling loose enough for all of them.
Wedge
Shot distance
Hole average Distance
Edel 48
30 Yards Chip shots
32 feet
Vokey 48
30 Yards Chip shots
41 feet
Edel 54
20 Yards Chip shots
25 feet
Vokey 52
20 Yards Chip shots
29 feet
Edel 60
15 Yards Chip shots
12 feet
Vokey 58
15 Yards Chip shots
21 feet
That is quite a noticeable difference with the distance, especially with the shorter shots, I had a couple of the 15 Yard chips where I nearly holed them out.
As for the full shots on the range, unfortunately I had to do more of a visual evaluation as I could not walk down the range and measure each individual shot from its landing spot compared to the target line.
Due to having a steep angle of attack, I naturally hit shots to the right.
Mind you, most of my misses are to the right, and once again after warming up and with a good rest break between sets, I hit 10 balls with each wedge.
Again, this was the hardest part to estimate during the test.
Wedge
Shot Distance
Estimated deviation to the target line
Edel 48
100 Yards full shot
15 Yards
Vokey 48
100 Yards full shot
30 Yards
Edel 54
75 Yards full shot
10 Yards
Vokey 52
75 Yards full shot
25 Yards
Edel 60
60 Yards full shot
10 Yards
Vokey 58
60 Yards full shot
15 Yards
I wish I have had the chance to take these to a Sim and gotten numbers that way, but between the bad knees, sprained wrists and ankles, the past few weeks have made my outings much harder.
I did prefer to spend the limited time I had in real golf conditions, and oh boy did they deliver during that play.
On the Course
I have noticed that on my course play, I have used the 60 degrees wedge a lot more than the 48 and 54, as for my last round, I found myself trying to fit usage of the wedges, maybe a little too much, looking at the opportunities had and the distances I knew I could hit the wedges comfortably, I hit some shots that I knew I did not have the distance with a wedge, so on the next shot I would have a chance to hit a different wedge.
If I was approaching a green and the distance left was between 110 and 125 yards, I would still hit the 48 degrees wedge, so I would have a chance to hit the 60 degrees for my next shot, that is because I wanted to hit as many shots as I could with these, and I honestly contemplated, yet I did not, play the shorter par 4s with wedges only, I might do that in a future round as my home course of Taylor Meadows, have a lovely stretch from the 8th to the 10th hole that are shorter yet challenging with water in play on all 3 holes.
8 playing downhill 309 yards
9 playing downhill with water to the right the entire way 281 yards
And the 10 with a new Pond guarding the front left of the green is the shortest at only 256 yards.
The only area that I truly had an issue was with Sand traps, both during my range sessions and the actual course play, I had a real hard time getting out of them, but I cannot fault the wedge, that is my game and the flaws I have with it.
I hoped that the new wedges would be a magic bullet, but that was not realistic.
Where I play most of the bunkers are of heavy compact sand with a very low sand dept, these are the type of bunkers that only really have 3 inches of sand than it is the hard soil below.
I noticed that despite missing the green from the sand, either long or very short, the wedge glided through the sand with no issues, despite most of the times me taking a steep swing that really dug into the sand.
I felt confident every time I had the wedges on my hands and that is one of the best characteristic of these.
I quite honestly really loved playing these wedges and cannot really say any bad things about it, maybe because these were such an improvement from my old mix and match set of vokeys.
These have impacted my game in a positive way, these had bee
n optimized to give me the best spin rate and flight.
I had never had an Edel product on my hands, and I got to say, I am impressed with the over engineering of these clubs, the fact that you can move the weight around and adjust the ball flight is the type of thing that I would expect from a driver, not really from an wedge, but to have the option is one of those tools that is a great one to have on your bag.
I would love to see more of the moveable weight technology, I love to see where Edel will take those and what it becomes of it, that technology being integrated to their new SMS irons shows Edel’s commitment to the technology.
The Good, the Bad, the Inbetween
The good, these wedges are awesome, and the technology behind them is very impressive.
The bad, and my bad on these, I feel that even though I am not a very tall person, the wedges feel short, the 35 inches for the 60 degree, the 35..25 for the 54 and 35.5 for the 48th, have me squatting down a little more than what I feel comfortable with, but that is something I can get addressed later and have an inch added to each one of them.
Play it or Trade it?
These are a play it for me, these wedges have improved my game, and indeed it has been a such short time and I think a few more rounds of play will help me get even more accustomed to these wedges, but I do like what I have experienced so far.
The main measure of success for me with these wedges is confidence, I have gained confidence on hitting different shots around the green and know that I can pull of those shots.
I think that everyday golfers like myself benefit from these wedges, as they show a great deal of forgiveness and playability.
I think as I use these and get more comfortable with them, my short game will improve.
Conclusion
Edel has brought forward a great set of wedges, the technology behind these is impressive, the fact that one can customize your shot shapes with the moveable weights is a big plus.
The exceptional forgiveness and workability of these jump out at you as an advantage with these.
As my personal experience, again the word here is confidence, these felt very good on my hands and did improve me game, I have hit a lot more of good shots than I did bad shots with these wedges than my old ones.
Final Score 29 out of 30 Stars