Sneak equipment review of a great, new wedge: the F2

I don’t normally preview equipment reviews, but this is one I’m pretty excited about.

I’ve been carrying around an F2 wedge in my bag for a while, but I’ve been avoiding testing it because it’s so ugly.

I glanced at it from time to time, but did a great job of ignoring it. Other clubs I’m testing are prettier. This club is so ungainly, it couldn’t possibly be effective, could it?

It looks weird and feels weird, because of its radical design, and to be honest, it’s off-putting. It’s like an ugly woman in a bar making eyes at you – you stare into your beer and talk to yourself, pretending to be psychotic, to avoid her glance.

F2 means “face forward” and that’s the design difference between this wedge and conventional wedges: The face is well forward of the shaft, instead of well behind it. It looks like a mistake or a reject.

But, I bit my lip, finally got around to testing it and the preliminary results stunned me.

The F2 people advertise it as great out of the sand, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet. I hit it off grass at a driving range, at the 100-yard marker. Now, this was at a time when I’m having swing problems, but I was right at or around the marker almost every time, both with distance and accuracy.

It was so accurate that after a while, I started aiming at the very small spot between the two posts that held up the small marker, and finding it a good deal of the time.

I’ll break through the technical mumbo-jumbo and tell you simply why I think it’s so good: The pros will tell you most amateurs leave their divots well behind the golf ball, instead of in front of it, where it should be. You should strike the ball first, not the earth behind it. This enables you to compress the ball, which gives you added distance and spin.

The F2 makes that much easier, because the clubhead is well ahead of the shaft at impact.

A couple of golf magazines have praised the F2, giving it various awards, but I’ve found you can’t always trust those.

In any case, my own testing is still preliminary – I’ve yet to hit it out of sand or rough or even on a golf course. I will soon, though.

It retails at about $100. Look for the full review coming soon.