We get caught up in what TaylorMade produces at the top end of the bag with drivers and fairway woods, but TaylorMade has been producing high-quality wedges for a number of years.
TaylorMade launched its Milled Grind (MG) wedges back in 2017, which were packed full of technical input from the rich abundance of staff player talent they had on offer, like Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, and Sergio Garcia.
Successive MG wedges refined TaylorMade’s process, which leads us to the recently launched 5th generation, and we’ll take a deep dive into the latest offering, which features a major change to the previous formula.
So, if you’re in the market for a set of new wedges, join us as we’ll cover the following areas to help you make the right decisions for your game:
- The Story Behind The New MG5 Series
- How MG5 Technology Could Benefit Your Game
- Improving Your Wedge Play Through Custom Fitting
- Building Your Wedges To Tour Standards At Nine By Nine Golf
The Story Behind The New MG5 Series
The big story for the MG5 wedges is that they are now fully forged heads, a first in the history of MG wedges.
The desire to make the MG5 heads forged came directly from staff player feedback. The request is understandable, tour players face lightning-fast greens and penalising rough every week they play, and they need maximum control from their wedges to execute the shots they want.
The soft carbon steel used to forge the MG5 heads provides a level of feedback that every player, from tournament professional to mid and high handicap golfers, will appreciate, and puts the MG5 heads in the same league as Mizuno’s Pro T-Series.
In contrast, other wedges like the Vokey SM10s and Callaway’s Opus SP wedges remain cast heads.
Whether players opt for a forged wedge or not comes as much down to personal opinion as anything else.
Regardless of head construction, what all golfers will agree on is that they need consistent spin control from their wedge shots, and the TaylorMade MG5s deliver big time on this front.
TaylorMade has opted for an aggressive saw-milled groove configuration. In creating these new grooves, TaylorMade has gone to the legal limit in a bid for players to gain maximum control from the MG5 wedge by steepening the walls and sharpening the radii to gain as much purchase on the ball at impact as possible.
Another area that TaylorMade has paid particular attention to is the area between the grooves, which features Spin Tread Technology and RAW Face.
Spin Tread Technology debuted in the last generation of MG4 wedges, but with TaylorMade upgrades made for the MG5. When playing in wet conditions (a common occurrence in the UK), moisture is channelled away from the face, helping to maintain the same levels of spin as if playing in bone-dry conditions.
TaylorMade states that the MG5 wedges manage moisture 13% better than the MG4.
TaylorMade engineers have also created what they term a RAW face finish, which works in unison with the Spin Tread Technology to aid the consistency between wet and dry conditions.
While the talk of moisture management might not seem that relevant to some of you reading this, we’ll explain shortly why this is proving to be a key battleground in the world of wedges and why it is beneficial for your game.
Finally, the TaylorMade MG5 golf wedges boast an array of bounce and grind options, helping to dial in the right configuration for your game.
If you’re not familiar with the terms “bounce” and “grind”, let’s bring you up to date.
Bounce refers to the angle created from the sole to the leading edge of any given wedge. Wedges with more bounce will see their leading edges sitting more off the ground than those with less.
For the MG5 series, TaylorMade has created a slightly more rounded leading edge, which helps if you like to manipulate the clubface for certain shots, aiding turf interaction.
Grind refers to how the sole of the golf wedge is sculpted by removing or adding material, helping the sole move through the turf or sand more effectively.
TaylorMade have created five different grind options for the MG5 series based on the various types of shots you like to play around the green and the course conditions you regularly play.
Some of the grind options only appear on the more lofted wedges, where golfers like to open the face to add more loft, which they won’t do with a 46 or 48 degree wedge.
The new TaylorMade MG5 wedges will be popular, and the technology TaylorMade has packed into the MG5 will help many golfers.
How do we know that? It’s time to look at what the MG5s offer for your game.
How MG5 Technology Could Benefit Your Game
We’re guessing that many of you reading this piece live in the UK, which means you know first-hand that we aren’t blessed with living in tropical climes with lots of warm sunny days.
Knowing if the ball will check up quickly or is more likely to release is based on how we know our wedges will perform, given the type of shot we want to play.
When the weather turns foul, the ball won’t spin the same way as we’re used to.
Think of it like a tyre on a car. When the road is wet and the tyre tread isn’t good, it can’t channel water effectively, making the car handle less predictably and stopping distances are longer.
Something similar happens to wedge shots in the wet. Grooves alone can’t channel enough water away at the point of contact, which means the ball can spin and fly differently from dry conditions.
All of a sudden, we are second-guessing how the ball will react if faced with pitch and chip shots, which can ruin the scorecard.
TaylorMade’s Spin Thread Technology is designed to take the guesswork out of playing shots in the wet, helping you play your normal shots as you would if it were dry.
Having sharp grooves in a wedge might produce some impressive backspin you can show off to your playing partners in your regular Saturday game. However, that “tour-like” spin isn’t much good to you if the ball sucks back to such an extent that you are faced with a difficult two-putt or worse yet, the ball sucks back off the green, leaving you with a tricky pitch.
TaylorMade’s saw-milled grooves are designed to offer impressive stopping power. The key to the saw-milled groove design is to maintain consistent spin levels, whether you are hitting a full or half wedge shot into the green. If you trust how your ball will react when it lands on the green, you can work out your shot strategy more effectively and pinpoint exactly where you want the ball to land on the green.
We earlier established what bounce and grind mean in wedge terminology. Now let’s bring it to life to help you identify what combination might be best suited for your game.
There are three easy ways we can break this down for you, which are:
- What Type Of Golf Courses Do You Play?
- Do You Take Chunks Out Of The Ground Or Barely Graze The Turf?
- How Do You Set The Face On Chip Shots?
What Type Of Golf Courses Do You Play?
In the UK, we have a variety of course types, ranging from links golf, where you’ll be used to hard and bouncy conditions (especially this summer). A sharp frost on a winter morning can also make a links course rock hard, which can lead to a ball lying on extremely bare patches of ground near the green.
Inland courses tend to play softer than their links cousins, but that doesn’t mean to say they don’t face their own challenges. Lush rough can require a combination of brute strength and deft touch, and greenside lies can see the ball perched up on the grass almost as if it is on a tee.
What we see with both types of courses is the need to have perfect turf interaction with the sole of our wedge to execute consistent contact with the ball.
Do You Take Chunks Out Of The Ground Or Barely Graze The Turf?
If you are the type of player who takes deep divots, you’re likely to have a steep attack angle into the ball. Being steep on the ball can easily lead to chunked wedge shots on both hard and soft conditions.
If you barely graze the turf, wedge shots can become difficult off of hard and wet lies, where the danger can be the skulled shot, when the leading edge of the wedge makes contact halfway up the golf ball, sending it shooting across the other side of the green.
As fitters, we pay close attention to your angle of attack during a wedge fitting session to ascertain how much bounce is needed on your wedges to give you optimal contact.
How Do You Set The Face On Chip Shots?
We see a lot of golfers automatically reach for their most lofted wedge to play a variety of shots from around the green by opening or closing the face down, depending on the shot they want to execute.
To help you get the purest of strikes more consistently, TaylorMade offers five variations on the new MG5 wedges to choose from, which are:
| Grind Name | Grind Characteristics | Available Lofts |
|---|---|---|
| SC | Heel and toe relief to provide maximum flexibility around the green | 54-60 degrees |
| SB | Four-way cambered sole design for an array of swing styles and turf conditions | 46-60 degrees |
| SX | Wider sole and mid-bounce. Ideal for flop shots | 58-60 degrees |
| HB | High bounce sole for players with steeper swings or courses with softer conditions | 54-60 degrees |
| LB | Low bounce sole for shallower swing plains and tighter turf conditions. | 56-60 degrees |
Improving Your Wedge Play Through Custom Fitting
Creating better scoring opportunities with your wedges is vastly improved when they are built specifically for your game, and this is where custom fitting makes such a crucial difference.
When you come for a custom fitting session at Nine By Nine Golf, you get to spend an hour with our highly experienced fitter, who is on hand to help you understand how your current setup can be improved and uncover what will work best for your game.
We use launch monitor data to uncover spin rates, launch angles, and attack angles, details you can’t see with the naked eye.
Interpreting this data helps the fitter understand if you are steep or shallow into the ball, which can help determine the correct bounce and grind for your wedge setup.
The launch monitor can indicate where improvements can be made in distance gapping, which can result in introducing an additional wedge to your set. TaylorMade’s MG5 wedges range in loft between 46 and 60 degrees, providing flexibility to build a wedge system with four degrees of loft difference between each wedge to build consistency.
Better loft gapping can help you play different types of shots, which are often required on UK courses, such as punching a lower flighted wedge into the wind or gaining as much loft as possible playing downwind. A strategy that the best players in the world tend to favour.
The fitting is also a consultation session, so the fitter will want to know the types of courses you play, the condition of the bunkers you face regularly, and the types of chip shots you favour from around the greens.
By the end of the session, your fitter will be able to advise exactly what you need for your game.
Building Your Wedges To Tour Standards At Nine By Nine Golf
Nine By Nine Golf is two equal parts. One is the quality fitting experience we provide for any level of golfer, the second is our in-house workshop and the quality of technicians on hand to build your clubs.
Building your golf wedge set doesn’t just come down to choosing the correct lofts, bounce, and grind angles. Ensuring your golf wedges are built to the correct length and lie angle helps to ensure you make consistent contact with the ball.
The tour-standard build quality we operate ensures that when you receive your golf clubs, they are built exactly the way that was outlined to you during the fitting, which gives you the confidence that when you’re on the course, your wedges will perform just how you expect them to.
You can browse the TaylorMade MG5 wedge range by going on to our website, where you can see the different loft and grind options along with an extensive range of shafts and grips to personalise your set.
You can also choose between either a chrome or charcoal black finish to your MG5s to add another layer of personalisation.
If you’re looking to sharpen your short game and turn your wedge play into a real asset, book a custom fitting session at Nine By Nine Golf and see how the TaylorMade MG5 wedges can help you achieve your short game goals.