Ever see a fellow golfer walk up to the edge of the green with a club that looks like a putter and a wedge had a baby? That unique-looking tool is likely a DW, or Dual Wedge, a type of chipper designed with one profound goal in mind: to take the terror out of those tricky little shots around the green. This article will show you what a DW club is, why it works so well, and how to use it to save strokes and eliminate your two biggest chipping fears - the dreaded chunk and the infuriating bladed shot.
A "DW Golf Club" is a name often associated with Cleveland Golf's line of chippers, specifically their Smart Sole models. The "DW" stands for Dual Wedge, but you can think of it as a modern chipper. It’s a specialty club that isn’t a traditional iron or wedge. Instead, it blends the forgiving setup of a putter with the loft of an iron to help you get the ball onto the green and rolling toward the hole with a simple, repeatable stroke.
Here’s what makes a DW club different:
Essentially, it’s an engineered solution to one of the game's most frustrating problems. It's built to perform a specific job with maximum forgiveness, taking complicated swing thoughts out of the equation so you can focus on a simple movement.
Every golfer knows the feeling. Your ball is sitting just a few feet off the putting surface in that tight fringe grass. It's too far to putt, but it feels too close for a real pitch shot. This should be an easy up-and-down, but your mind starts racing.
"Don't chili-dip it."
"Don't blade it over the green."
The pressure mounts. You try to hit a delicate little chip with your sand wedge, a club with a sharp leading edge designed to cut through sand. On a tight lie, the margin for error is razor-thin. If you swing down just a fraction too early, that leading edge digs into the ground behind the ball - the "chunk" - and the ball embarrassingly dribbles a few feet. If your fear of chunking it makes you lift up, you strike the ball's equator with that same leading edge - the "blade" or "skull" - sending a line-drive screaming across the green and into trouble on the other side.
This is precisely the scenario the DW club was designed to prevent. It gives you an alternative that turns a high-stress, high-skill shot into a low-risk, simple procedure.
The effectiveness of a DW club isn't a gimmick, it's smart engineering that addresses the root causes of poor chipping. Let's look at why its main features help you play better.
This is the game-changer. The wide, rounded bottom of the club is physically designed to resist digging into the turf. Think about it: a traditional wedge has a sharp edge that acts like a knife, wanting to cut into the ground. A DW club's sole will bounce off the turf instead of digging in, allowing the club face to still make solid contact with the ball. This feature almost single-handedly chunk-proofs your short game.
When you use a high-lofted wedge for a simple chip, you often have to manipulate your hands and the club face - leaning the shaft forward to "deloft" it for a chip-and-run. This adds complexity and room for error. A DW club has a settled loft (again, around 42 degrees) that does the work for you. It's enough loft to pop the ball gently into the air to clear the fringe or rough, but not so much that it flies too high. The goal is to get it airborne for a short time and rolling like a putt as quickly as possible. You don't have to think about the loft, you just have to make the stroke.
The club's design, with its more upright lie angle and shorter shaft, encourages you to get in closer to the ball. This promotes a stance that feels much more like a putting setup than a full swing. Why does this help? Because a putting stroke is the simplest, most stable motion in golf. It minimizes the unnecessary hinges of the wrists and messy body movements that lead to inconsistency. It encourages you to use your shoulders to rock the club back and through, creating a pure pendulum motion that is far easier to repeat under pressure.
Ready to try it? The beauty of the DW club is its simplicity. The fewer moving parts in your technique, the better. Here’s a simple, step-by-step guide to hitting clean, consistent shots with it.
Forget your normal iron stance. Get yourself set up for success with a much simpler approach.
The key here is to eliminate your wrists. This isn't a power shot, it's a precision shot. The motion should come from the rotation of your upper body, not from flicking your hands.
Imagine a triangle formed by your shoulders and arms at address. The goal is to move that entire triangle back and through as one unit. Rock your shoulders back away from the target, and then rock them through toward the target. It's a simple, back-and-forth pendulum motion. The hands, wrists, and arms are just passengers along for the ride.
Distance control with a DW club doesn't come from hitting the ball harder or softer. That’s a recipe for disaster. Instead, you control distance by changing the length of your backswing. Just like with putting:
Practice with different swing lengths to see how far the ball carries and rolls out. Keep the tempo - the rhythm and timing of your stroke - exactly the same for every shot. A smooth, unhurried pace is what you're after. This consistent rhythm will lead to consistent results.
While incredibly useful, the DW club is a specialist, not an all-rounder. It shines in specific situations:
It's important to also know when not to use it. The wide sole that works so well on tight lies can struggle out of thick, heavy rough, as it can get caught up rather than gliding through. It’s also not a bunker club - stick with your sand wedge for that job.
The DW Golf Club, or chipper, isn't about laziness or "cheating" - it's about playing smarter. It's a USGA-conforming tool specifically engineered to make a difficult part of golf simpler and much more reliable for the average player. By embracing its forgiving design, you can eliminate big misses, lower your scores, and replace fear around the greens with newfound confidence.
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