CHICKENPIEPicture a Sunday practice green: your coffee is cooling on the bench, a tricycle rattles past the fence, and the ball has stopped just outside the putting surface. There is grass between you and the hole. Very little drama. You reach for the club most capable of adding some.
The wedge comes out with a satisfying little clink.
This is an imagined morning. Nobody has lent us a scorecard or claimed a miraculous up-and-down. Stay beside that ball for a moment, though, because the decision deserves a closer look. Before anything has happened, you have already pictured the shot: a soft little flight, a tidy landing, a playing partner who pauses halfway through opening a banana.
Beautiful. Expensive tastes for a ball sitting beside the green.
The appeal is easy to understand. A lofted shot gives the eye something to follow. There is a beginning, a small suspension, a finish. A ball rolling along the ground has the theatrical range of a supermarket trolley. Even when it arrives exactly where you wanted, you are unlikely to replay it over lunch.
That is where this week's reading interrupted the daydream.
In GOLF's October 1, 2026 experiment, Doug Spencer tested three amateurs from 10 yards away. Each hit five hybrid bump-and-runs and five shots with a chosen wedge. Within a 3-yard target corridor, the hybrids recorded six successes out of 15; the wedges recorded five. That is 40% against roughly 33%. The hybrid was new to all three players. The player using a 58-degree wedge scored three successes, better than that player's two with the hybrid.
One extra successful ball across the two groups. Thirty attempts in total. I would take that as a reason to experiment, with plenty left to learn about other players and situations. Calling the wedge obsolete would ask this tiny test to carry an absurd amount of luggage.
What interests me is the hesitation before anyone tries the less glamorous club. Put yourself back beside our fictional green. Your hybrid is under its headcover, looking entirely innocent. It has no idea that you have assigned it a job description. Long shot, yes. Small shot beside the hole? Apparently it needs clearance from management.
Golf bags encourage that sort of bureaucracy. Every club has its compartment. You arrange them, wipe them, remember the good shot you hit with one several months ago. Eventually a useful association hardens into a rule. This is the club for this distance. This is the one I trust. This is the one I bought after watching a video much too late at night.
There is affection in that. A scuffed grip and a scratched sole can hold a private little history. The trouble starts when keeping the story going matters more than looking at the ball in front of you.
On a practice green, you get to interrupt it. Nobody is engraving your choice on the clubhouse wall.
Set aside a little room for a comparison of your own, wherever practice is permitted. Use a spot you can return to and a target you can identify without negotiation. Take your familiar choice and the alternative out of the bag. Write down where the balls finish. Give the ugly attempts the same attention as the one you want to photograph.
This is my proposed practice exercise, not a claim that Spencer's result will repeat for you. Keep it small enough to finish and honest enough to be useful. A note on your phone is sufficient. You do not need a spreadsheet with conditional formatting to admit that a ball went nowhere near the hole.
There is a particular temptation to erase the first bad attempt. You were settling in. Someone spoke. A leaf moved with suspicious timing. Then a good one arrives and becomes the official account of the afternoon.
Leave both in the record.
The exercise also gives you somewhere to put your curiosity before the next round. You can find out how a shot feels without borrowing the patience of the group behind you. If it feels awkward, that is information. If your familiar club behaves better, keep that information too. The point of trying something is to discover what happens; the ending does not need to flatter the suggestion.
I like the modesty of that arrangement. No purchase has to justify itself. No playing partner has to become a coach. You have a patch of grass, a few balls and enough time to pay attention. The rest of Sunday can wait until the coffee is finished.
In our imagined scene, the banana has now been eaten. Its owner is checking the time, then looking back toward the practice green. You have put two clubs beside the bench. One carries a whole highlight reel in your head. The other has barely had an audition.
There is room to enjoy the beautiful shot. Keep it. Golf would be a peculiar hobby if pleasure required an apology. Just give the plain little option a chance to make its case before you decide that every approach to the hole needs a flight sequence.
Later, over breakfast, there will be plenty to talk about. The drive someone wants to measure again. The putt that deserved a better ending. Who ordered extra garlic rice and whether they intend to share it. A quiet shot can go unmentioned and still have earned its place in the morning.
Back beside the bench, the headcover comes off.
