Course conditions can influence the specifications of a golfer’s equipment. This isn’t a secret. We often hear of Tour players choosing wedges with more or less bounce, from week to week, to meet changing conditions in bunkers, for example.
Do recreational golfers need to be worried about whether their clubs are right for the course conditions? In most cases, no, because most recreational golfers don’t play often enough to have such worries, nor are most recreational golfers good enough to be concerned about the issue.
Let’s say your home course has bunkers with soft, fluffy sand. You don’t want your club digging down into that loose sand, so you need a sand wedge with a higher bounce angle to lessen the digging. Conversely, bunkers with heavy, compacted sand do require more digging to pull off a good sand shot, so you need less bounce to allow the leading edge of the club to do that digging.
Change in equipment does not apply only to wedges. It can apply also to driver and the clubs we choose to put in a golf bag in general. On a wet golf course the most carry distance with driver is desired. On a firm course more penetrating trajectory is desired to increase roll. Most golfers have more than one driver at home and should choose accordingly.
Players should also take advantage of switching what they carry in the bag when they play on different courses. Tight courses may call for a 2 iron or a driving iron that helps put the ball in play easily. Courses with difficult greens and lot of undulation around them may call for more than two wedges around them to make it easier to adjust to these shots.
