What Is A Texas Wedge?

A Texas wedge, in its original meaning, refers to a shot played from off the green with a putter. For this reason, the putter itself is called a Texas wedge in these circumstances or the shot. Or both. Its name comes from the Lone Star State as it was a popular way to play on some of the courses in Texas. Two highly successful Texan golfers, Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino, were deft proponents of the shot.

Those Texan courses which had hard, burnt fairways with a sparse grass on them could pose specific challenges when playing a chip shot. Chipping from a bare lie can be tricky enough at the best of times, and even more so when the target is one of the small domed putting surfaces typical of several Texan courses.

Add in the winds which can blow in this part of the world, and several golfers concluded that a better percentage shot was to keep the ball on the ground and roll it up onto the green rather than attempt to chip the ball off a difficult lie to a small target buffeted by the wind – a shot which offered little margin of error yet several opportunities for error. So in these circumstances they used their putter.

Links players, particularly at those links which have dry, burnt-brown fairways in summer, are another group familiar with the Texas wedge, especially on those windy days synonymous with links layouts.

Sometimes the term Texas wedge is applied to describe a bump-and-run shot or when a chip shot has been bladed or knifed and so has shot along the ground. But that is not the usual, traditional use of the term.