Ever found yourself looking at an iron set and see a club marked not with a P or a 9, but with 9/P? If so, you’re not alone. It’s a common point of confusion for many golfers. This article will clear things up, explaining exactly what a 9/P golf club is, why it exists, and most importantly, how to use it to shoot lower scores.
Think of the 9/P club as a "tweener" that slots right between a traditional 9-iron and a pitching wedge. The “9/P” a very direct label from the manufacturer telling you its loft is stronger than their set's pitching wedge but weaker than their 9-iron. You'll typically find this club in game-improvement or super game-improvement iron sets.
But why create a club like this in the first place? It all comes down to a modern trend in golf club manufacturing: strengthening lofts. Over the past couple of decades, manufacturers have steadily decreased the loft on irons to help amateur golfers hit the ball farther. A 7-iron from a 2024 set might have the same loft as a 5-iron did back in the 1990s. While this helps sell clubs (who doesn't love more distance?), it created a new problem: significant distance gaps at the bottom of the set.
The 9/P club is a direct solution to this problem. It's designed to create a more even and logical yardage progression as you move from your shortest scoring iron into your wedges, ensuring you have a club for every distance.
To truly get what the 9/P is for, we need a quick refresher on loft. Loft is the angle of the clubface relative to the shaft. It's the primary factor that determines how high and how far a golf ball travels.
When club manufacturers strengthened the loft of modern pitching wedges, many of them started flying almost as far as old 9-irons. This left a massive hole between the new, powerful "PW" and the next traditional club in the bag, the sand wedge. A golfer might hit their PW 120 yards and their sand wedge only 80 yards, leaving a 40-yard gap with no full-swing option.
The 9/P helps fill this void. While lofts vary between brands, here is a general idea of how a 9/P club slots into a modern set:
*In many modern sets containing a 9/P, the club simply labeled "P" or "PW" often has the loft of what would traditionally be called a Gap Wedge or Attack Wedge. The terminology can be a bit jumbled, which is why understanding your own lofts is so important.
The takeaway here is that a modern 9/P club often has the exact same loft (around 44-45 degrees) that a standard pitching wedge had 15 to 20 years ago. Essentially, it’s a modern club that performs like a classic PW.
Knowing what a club is isn’t enough, you need to know when to pull it from the bag. This is where you can turn your understanding into a real on-course advantage. As your coach, I want you to think less about the number or letter on the bottom of the club and more about the specific job you need to do.
Your 9-iron is your go-to scoring club for full approach shots where you need more firepower than the 9/P. It provides a strong, high ball flight that still has enough stopping power to hold the green.
Use your 9-iron for:
This is your ultimate gap-filler. The 9/P is tailor-made for those awkward "in-between" distances where a full 9-iron is definitely too much, but you don't want to step on or "muscle up" on a Pitching Wedge.
Use your 9/P club for:
The pitching wedge is a workhorse. It’s a versatile scoring club meant for precision rather than pure power, used for both full shots and a wide array of smaller shots around the green.
Use your Pitching Wedge for:
Labels like "9," "9/P," and "PW" are just suggestions from the manufacturer. Your only concern as a player is knowing exactly how far you hit each club. Forget what your friends hit or what the pros do. Your game will improve dramatically when you build a reliable distance chart for your own swing.
Here’s a simple way to do it:
By the end of this exercise, you'll have real data. You might find you hit your 9-iron 130 yards, your 9/P 118 yards, and your PW 105 yards. Suddenly, those club decisions on the course become simple subtraction problems, not stressful guesses.
The 9/P club is simply a modern tool created to solve a modern problem: inconsistent yardage gaps caused by super-strong lofts. By understanding that it's a "tweener" club designed to give you a reliable option between your 9-iron and pitching wedge, you can remove any confusion and start using it as an effective weapon.
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