The club designed to hit the ball the very shortest distance is your putter, used for gently rolling the ball across the green. When it comes to taking a full swing, the golf club that hits the ball the shortest is your highest-lofted wedge, which for most golfers will be a lob wedge or a sand wedge. This article will explain exactly why these clubs travel the shortest, break down the family of short game clubs in your bag, and give you practical advice on how to choose the right one for any shot around the greens.
In golf, the single biggest factor determining how far a club sends the ball is its loft. Simply put, loft is the angle of the clubface relative to a vertical shaft. Think of it as how much the face is angled open, pointing towards the sky.
The relationship is straightforward:
This is why your driver, with only 9-12 degrees of loft, hits the ball the furthest, and your highest-lofted wedge, with as much as 64 degrees of loft, hits it the shortest (during a full swing). It’s the laws of physics at work. The wedge's angled face deflects the ball upward more than forward, while the driver's vertical face transfers almost all its energy into forward momentum.
The clubs you use for your shortest shots - generally inside 100 yards - are often called the "scoring clubs." This is because mastering them is what allows you to save pars, make birdies, and truly lower your handicap. These clubs are the putter and the family of wedges.
The undisputed champion of short-distance travel is the putter. It is specifically designed not for flight, but for roll. With an average loft of only 3 to 4 degrees, its job isn't to get the ball airborne. That tiny bit of loft actually helps lift the ball out of the slight indentation it sits in on the green, getting it to roll smoothly on top of the grass rather than digging in or hopping at the start.
You’ll use your putter on the putting surface, but it's also a fantastic and often safer choice when you're just off the green in the fringe. Using a putter from just off the green (sometimes called a "Texas Wedge") removes the risk of a mis-hit chip shot, like a thinned or chunked shot.
For any golf shot that needs to travel through the air but not go very far, you turn to the wedges. These are the highest-lofted clubs in your bag, built for precision, control, and stopping power. While many golfers just have one "wedge," a complete set includes several, each designed for a slightly different job.
This is typically the shortest-hitting "full swing" club in a golfer’s bag. With its incredibly high loft, the lob wedge is a specialty tool for producing maximum height and minimum roll. It's the club you use when you need to pop the ball straight up in the air to clear a bunker or some other obstacle and have it land as gently as a butterfly. Think of those impressive "flop shots" you see the pros hit - that’s the lob wedge at work. It's also fantastic for getting out of deep greenside bunkers with soft sand since it can slide underneath the ball with ease.
Perhaps the most famous and versatile wedge, the sand wedge is a staple in almost every golf bag. As the name suggests, it was originally designed for getting out of greenside bunkers. It features a unique design element called “bounce” on the sole of the club, which helps it skid through the sand without digging. However, its usefulness extends far beyond the bunker. The sand wedge is an all-around workhorse for pitch shots and chip shots from anywhere around the green, offering a great blend of height and control.
The gap wedge does exactly what its name implies: it fills the yardage "gap" between a golfer's pitching wedge and their sand wedge. As clubs became more powerful, a large distance difference (sometimes 20-30 yards) opened up between these two clubs. The gap wedge solves this problem. It’s perfect for those in-between shots - longer pitches and shorter full-swing shots - where a sand wedge isn't enough club but a pitching wedge is too much.
The pitching wedge is the lowest-lofted of the wedge family and typically comes included with a standard set of irons. Because of its lower loft, it hits the ball farther than the other wedges. It’s a dual-purpose club, used for full-swing shots into the green (from 100-130 yards for many players) and also for shorter chip shots around the green where you want the ball to fly low and run out towards the hole, a shot is often called a "bump-and-run."
Knowing that a lob wedge travels the shortest is just the first step. The real art of the short game comes from understanding that you are in control. By changing how you swing the club, you can make any wedge go an almost infinite number of distances.
You don't need a full-power swing for every short shot. Great players control their short-game distances by adjusting the length of their backswing. A simple way to think about this is like the hands on a clock:
By keeping your swing rhythm the same and simply changing the length of your backswing, you can develop reliable distances for all your "in-between" shots. It is this understanding of how a simple rotation of the body - small or large - produces a predictable result that separates great short-game players.
This is a an area of frequent confusion for many players, but a core concept for controlling short-shots. They are two different techniques for two different situations:
Where your ball is sitting has a huge impact. Performing the perfect high, soft pitch shot is much easier from a perfect fairway lie than from deep, thick rough. When the ball is sitting down in the grass, the blades get trapped between the clubface and the ball at impact, which drastically reduces spin and makes the shot less predictable. In these situations, you often need a more lofted club (like your LW) and a bit more speed just to get the ball out and onto the putting surface.
Here’s a simple cheat sheet to help you start making better decisions around the green:
In the end, while the putter is the shortest-distance club by far, your high-lofted wedges are your ultimate tools of precision and control. Understanding what each wedge does - based on its loft - and learning the simple difference between a low-running chip and a high-flying pitch will give you the framework you need to slash strokes off your score.
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