Whatever Bob Vokey doesn’t know about wedges isn’t worth knowing.
On the eve of the 2026 Masters, legendary wedge craftsman Bob Vokey welcomed Australian Golf Digest to the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) in California for a wide-ranging conversation about the clubs that transformed the short game. More than three decades after joining Titleist, Vokey remains one of the game’s most influential equipment designers, with his wedges trusted by generations of tour professionals and amateurs alike. From the moment then-Titleist chief executive Wally Uihlein challenged the company to enter, and lead, the industry in the wedge game, Vokey embraced the project that would define his career.
Since then, his relentless pursuit of better grinds, bounce configurations and visual shaping has helped produce some of the most successful wedges in golf history. Sitting inside the TPI just days before the season’s first major championship, Vokey reflected on the unlikely beginnings of his wedge journey, memorable collaborations with players including Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy, and the philosophy that continues to drive him today.
▶ ▶ ▶
Australian Golf Digest: We talked last year for a cover story and I’d love for you to remind our readers of a story from about 1995, when Wally Uihlein asked in a meeting, “Who’s going to take wedges?” You immediately put your hand up and said, “Coach, I’ll take them.” Afterwards, you walked outside and thought, What did I just say?
Bob Vokey: True story. I remember when I first went into Titleist, I was assisting Terry McCabe, who was head of R&D at the time, with the making of the 975D driver. I finished working on the driver and I asked, “What do I do next?” Terry said, “Well, Mr Uihlein wants to get into wedges.” I said, “OK.” I’ll never forget it. We went into an R&D meeting and it was brought up that we were going to do wedges, and I said, “I got it, Coach.” I called Wally “Coach”. When I thought about it afterwards, I went outside the office and said, “Wait a second… what did I just volunteer myself for?” But I knew wedges; they were my hobby.
▶ ▶ ▶
Where did your love of wedges come from?
Well, my dad was a pretty decent golfer back in Canada and I used to caddie for him at tournaments. I was more of a baseball, football and [ice] hockey player. I thought golf wasn’t macho. Little did I realise that when I lost that fixation on macho-ness, I turned to golf.
I loved everything about golf. I wanted to learn a little bit more. I’d watch at the local golf course and see how many people were out there hitting drivers. I remember talking to my wife at that particular time. I said, “You see all those people out there trying to hit that 300-yard drive? They’re never going to hit it.” You’d only see about one or two guys on the putting green or in the short-game area. I said, “The quickest way to improve your score is from 100 yards and in. You can do that with wedges. Wedges are scoring clubs.”
▶ ▶ ▶
You’ve obviously become synonymous with wedges. How much have they changed since that meeting where you put your hand up, right through to the current SM11?
Well, I’ll tell you one thing: they’ve changed for the better. I look at some of my older models, my older creations, and I think, “What the heck was I thinking?” [Laughs.] They’ve improved quite a bit. Every series that we put out, we make a lot of improvements. Visually, of course, the profile is very important. A tour player looks at a wedge – anybody looks at it – and it’s got to look good in the playing position and also when you rotate the face open a little bit, because that’s what you do with wedges. So you have to take all that into consideration.
In all that, I say, “Wow, we’ve come a long way.” Not only that, we’ve come a long way with different technologies. When I made clubs years ago, if I wanted to find the centre of gravity, I would take the head off and almost balance it on my fingertip. That’s how I did it.
Then all of a sudden I got some engineers and we started talking about things. I said that for longer shots, when you’re trying to knock it down, you’d put the weight and centre of gravity high. They said, “No, it’s actually just the reverse of that,” which we did in the SM6. That’s where we started this innovation of weight distribution. I shook my head and said, “Wow, OK.”
So I would take it to certain players out on tour and they would give me feedback. They were not afraid to give me negative feedback, either. Others would say, “Voke, you’ve got something here.” I remember Geoff Ogilvy when I took the SM6 to him and he said, in these exact words, “That’s a game-changer!”
In every one of those series we’ve improved incrementally the whole way through.
▶ ▶ ▶
You worked with Adam Scott on the K Grind, and it helped him win the 2013 Masters.
We were at the US Open at Olympic Club in 2012. I started working with Adam when he was 19, so I know him really well. In 2012 he was struggling a little bit in the bunkers. I had this prototype of the K Grind. I made a 6-degree and a 10-degree-bounce version. I went up to Adam and, one thing I do is what I call a “blind test”. I handed the club to him grip first and said, “Adam, don’t look at the bottom. Don’t look at the sole.” A lot of tour players will look at the sole and the grind and say, “I can’t hit that.” Adam turned around, hit a few bunker shots, then some shots from the rough and then from the fairway. He said, “Wow. Can I put it in play?”
So he put it in play. Then, just a couple of weeks before the 2013 Masters, he was playing a practice round [at Augusta National] and he called in and said, “I need a little bit more bounce because of the bunkers.” So I sent him the 10-degree version and, lo and behold, he won the 2013 Masters.
▶ ▶ ▶
What’s the best feedback you’ve received from outside professional golf?
One time I remember walking inside the ropes at a tournament with Jordan Spieth. I have a hat with “Vokey” written on the back. I was walking and all of a sudden, a guy from outside the ropes, an older gentleman, said to me, “Mr Vokey, I want to thank you very much for what you have done with those Vokey Spin Milled wedges. I’ve never been able to spin a ball like that. I’m enjoying the game more now than I ever have.” And that’s what really keeps me going. That’s my mantra. I want to help everybody play better golf. Do I want tour players to play better golf? Sure. But I want the average player to be able to play and enjoy this awfully tough game a little bit more.
