Last Wednesday before the start of the U.S. Open, Roger Cleveland, Callaway’s Chief Golf Club Designer, built a few wedges for President Obama inside the Callaway tour trailer. The wedges were done at the request of Callaway Staff Professional Phil Mickelson, who was having dinner with the President on Wednesday night.

Cleveland made 56, 60, and 64 degree wedges for the President, which Phil presented to him. The wedges were a half-inch over, with a multi compound grip (just like Phil’s grip). The tour reps in the Callaway trailer also made the president a 9.5-degree Diablo Octane Driver which Phil delivered to the President.

I wonder if President Obama had any golf tips for Phil?

www.callawaygolf.com

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Nike Golf continues to lead in innovation with the addition of the new Nike VR Pro wedge to Nike’s successful VR Pro line.  The VR Pro wedges are developed out of a precise forging process resulting in a wedge that offers accurate shot-shaping performance.  The face of the VR Pro wedge is the most exact wedge face Nike has ever created.  From materials, to design, to construction, the VR Pro wedge is developed with true craftsmanship to eliminate variance and enhance control.

Each wedge face features more grooves, resulting in cleaner, more consistent ball flight and spin while still conforming to the new USGA and R&A rules.  With more grooves closer together and deeper on the clubface, the VR Pro wedge ensures more control and consistency in all conditions off of the clubface.  A precision laser crosshatch pattern is applied to the land area between the grooves.  This pattern adds three times the surface texture versus conventionally finished faces, creating more spin in all conditions.

Crafted for consistency that Nike Golf Tour Athletes demand, the VR Pro wedge utilizes a new precision-forging technique that immediately delivers the club to a near-finished level.  This precision-forging technique eliminates most hand work and ensures consistency and maximum performance throughout the set.  First, each iron face is milled to a perfectly flat surface.  The face is then carefully die-stamped, pressing grooves to exact specifications for extremely low variance and shot-making consistency.

The VR Pro wedge is already in the bags of Nike Athletes on the PGA Tour, including Stewart Cink, Anthony Kim, Francesco Molinari and Tiger Woods.

Availability: April 1, 2011

Finish Options: Satin Chrome or Brushed Oxide RAW

Loft/Bounce Options:  48/10, 50/10, 52/10, 54/12, 56/10, 56/14, 58/6, 58/10, 60/6, 60/10 (Available in RH) 52/10, 56/14, 60/10 (Available in LH)

Nike VR Pro Wedge $119.99

Heavy Putter is known for its putters that feature a higher center of gravity and weighted shaft in the butt-end of the club,  that forces you to use your larger muscles in your putting stroke.

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At the 2010 PGA Merchandise Show, Boccieri Golf introduced its new control series of wedges, called the Heavy Wedge.

Why a Heavy Wedge?
Your short game is one area that you always need to practice to lower your golf score and so many things can go wrong. Taking the same principles of the Heavy Putter, by adding weight in strategic areas and manipulating the balance point  that will improve your wedge game.

The Technology of the Heavy Wedge
The Heavy Wedge, just like the putters feature a Back Weighting system installed in the grip end of the shaft. The 250 gram weight makes the head of the Heavy Wedge only slightly heavier than a conventional wedge. By making the head slightly heavier, you use your larger muscles in your swing for a more consistent and smoother swing.

This also raises the balance point by 37% on the Heavy Wedge, versus a standard wedge which is much closer to the hosel. The higher balance point produced by the back weighting system is the key to improving your body mechanics affecting the swing’s plane, tempo, transition, impact, and balance. The goal is better control and closer shots with your wedges.

Swinging the Heavy Wedge, I didn’t notice the increased head wieght. What I did notice, is how easily it allowed me to set my hands quickly on the takeaway and retained my angle of retention on the downswing and at impact. It would be kind of hard to flip your hands using the Heavy Wedge or break the triangle when chipping. I’d like to see how the Heavy Wedge performs in real course conditions and if it improves my short game in terms of contact and consistency.

The Heavy Wedge is available in the following Lofts/Bounce combinations: 52/08, 56/11, 60/04, 60/07 and come with FST Hi REV tapered stepless design 120 gram wedge flex shaft.

Would you buy a Heavy Wedge?

Heavy Wedge $109.95 available March 1, 2010

Your wedges are probably one of the most important clubs in your bag and the one club you replace every season. What if you could replace the face of your wedges, instead of having to replace the entire wedge? You’re in luck, because the new TaylorMade XFT wedges allow you replace the face of the wedges with fresh grooves whenever they need replacement.

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The new TaylorMade XFT Wedges utilize a four-step process to produce a face that lies flat and high performance grooves. The grooves of the XFT wedges feature a rough groove surface that help promote maximum backspin and control that you want in your short game.

To replace the face you utilize a similar torque wrench that you use on the R9 or R7 drivers to loosen the bolts on the XFT wedges and washers hold the bolts in place so you don’t lose them. Watch the video as TaylorMade’s Wade Liles demonstrates how easy it is to get fresh grooves.

TaylorMade XFT Wedges $139 and replacement grooves $39

Available in lofts from 50,52,54, 56,58,60, 64 with varying bounces.

Update: Congratulations to Chris Reed this weeks winner!

This week, Sandbox8.com and Cleveland Golf are teaming up to give away the Cleveland Golf Niblick 10 (42*loft) (worth $109) to one lucky reader! 

Classic Concept, Modern Design. The Niblick combines the best features of a wedge, putter, iron and hybrid to create the ultimate hybrid scoring club.Read my review of the Cleveland Niblick

All entries must be received by 8 PM PST on March 27th, 2009. The winner will be announced March 28th, 2009 on this site, via Twitter and Facebook. The contest is open to US Residents only.

Three easy ways to enter to win the Cleveland Niblick

• For (1) contest entry – put your comment at the bottom of this post telling us why you should be the winner Cleveland Niblick. The first 25 people who leave a comment will get 3 chances to win.
• For (5) contest entries-signup for the SB8 Newsletter
• For (10) contest entries – write a blog post or press release about the “Sandbox8.com Cleveland Niblick Contest” and link back to this post. Then simply send us a link to your article…it’s that easy.

Contest Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. PURCHASE WILL NOT IMPROVE CHANCES OF WINNING.

Tell all your friends about this contest!

Don’t miss out on future contests, news, and updates, by subscribing to our Email Updates , SB8 Newsletter, and RSS feed.

Good Luck!

UPDATE : Enter to Win a Cleveland Niblick!

Unless you were born prior to 1940, you probably don’t know what Niblick is? According to Wikipedia, “The name comes from the old golf-club naming convention according to which the short-irons or “approach clubs” were known as “Mashies” and the very well lofted club was called the Niblick.” So when Cleveland Golf announced it was releasing the Cleveland Niblick, I was really curious to see what they would come up with.  Classic Concept, Modern Design. The Niblick combines the best features of a wedge, putter, iron and hybrid to create the ultimate hybrid scoring club. ” I’ve been using the Cleveland Niblick 10 (42 degrees of loft) for the past thirty days and really like how versatile this hybrid scoring club, despite its strange shape.

Look and Feel
In order to make the Cleveland Niblick the ultimate hybrid scoring club, Cleveland golf had to incorporate the best features from a wedge, putter, iron, and hybrid. The Niblick is a little odd looking at first when you view it at address, and notice the alignment guide/fin protrude from the back of the club, similar to a mallet putter. It only takes a few uses of the Niblick, to begin to appreciate how easy it is to setup and align the clubface on your chips and pitches. The other similarity to a putter, is in the 35″ length of the True Temper Actionlite Wedge flex 110 Gram steel shaft. The shorter length in shaft, makes the Cleveland Niblick very easy to chip and pitch your shots. The clubface and sole of the club utilize the best properties of the wedge with 8* of bounce in the sole and Zip Grooves in the face of the club for shot consistency and maximum amount of spin.

An iron leading edge to hosel transition for a natural address position and Cleveland Golf’s Gelback (a lightweight, visco-elastic, vibration-damping material) is placed in the back cavity, directly behind the hitting area of the clubface. The Gelback is vibration-tuned to remove unwanted vibration on mis-hits, while still allowing the player necessary feedback from the clubhead for a soft yet responsive feel. The hybrid component of the Niblick uses an increased heel-toe blade length, perimeter weighting, and CG depth to increase MOI to improve consistency. This is really helpful on those full swing approach shots.

Performance

The 42 degrees of loft on the Cleveland Niblick 10, make this club best suited for fast greens and undulating courses.  The higher loft of the Niblick is going to give you shots that fly at an higher trajectory and have more spin on pitches and approach shots for better control. On a full swing your going to get Pitching Wedge distance. The Niblick is designed to used in four types of  scoring shots and those are: Chip, Pitch, Approach, and Recover (C.P.A.R. System).

The Chip shot, is one area where the Cleveland Niblick really performed flawlessly during my tests. The putter like setup and wedge sole make this club very easy to hit chip shots with. The alignment guide and head weight, made it so simple to aim my chips and stop worrying about missing and focus on scoring. Pitching was equally as easy, thanks to the combination of putter length of the shaft, lie, the loft of the club, and Zip Grooves for enhanced shot control. My 20 yard pitches would fly at such an nice trajectory into the air and stop on dime thanks to the amount of spin imparted by the Zip Grooves. I always felt in control on those shots and knew exactly how the ball was going to behave once I hit my shot.  I had similar results with my approach shots. The larger and more stable clubhead of the Cleveland Niblick, made my approach shots very consistent and accurate, especially from 40 – 50 yards.  The other benefit of the using the Niblick on approach shots, is you can make full swings with the club and get pitching wedge distances and gain the added benefit of superior shot stopping power of the Zip Grooves. I would easily use the Cleveland Niblick in situations when I need pitching wedge distance (for me thats ~ 110 yards) and spin for better control.

In recovery shots or bad lie situations, the Niblick did a decent job of hitting out of moderate rough, thanks to the 8 degrees of bounce in the sole and soft leading edge.  There were a couple of situations during testing that the Niblick 10 higher loft was not best suited for punching my shots out of the deep rough. I would probably would liked to use the lower lofted Niblick 9 (37 degrees of loft) for those situations or just use a regular iron. Overall I think the Cleveland Niblick does an excellent job of combining all the best features of a wedge, putter, iron, and hybrid.  All in all, I really liked testing the Cleveland Niblick 10 and believe that it’s truly a  unique and extremely innovative short iron hybrid that you should consider purchasing.

Cleveland Niblick 10 Specs:
Loft: 42*
Lie: 67*
Bounce: 8*
Shaft: True Temper Actionlite Wedge Flex
Length: 35″
Cleveland Niblick retails for $109