Scoring clubs are crucial to playing better and having more fun. But it's sometimes difficult for many of us to get consistent results with traditional blade wedges.
That's why Mizuno Golf designed the new ES21 wedges, blending the precision you want from this specialty club with the forgiveness you need to ensure you play your best.
I've played the ES21 56 and 60 degree wedges for about a month now, and the big takeaway is spin and balance. There's a lot of new technology in these wedges you can read about here. But getting to the down to the brass tacks, I can tell you spin is absolutely fantastic on chips and short pitches around green (and even performed incredibly well from rough and soggy grass.
On clean lie half swings from 50 to 75 yards out, and full swings from 100 yards out, performance and spin was even better.50-75 yard half swings and 100 yard full swings even better and spun a ton.
Feel was surprisingly solid considering these have a hollow section. It’s like a slightly clicker T20 sound and feel, but still soft and deep.
ES21 are ideal for players who struggle around the greens or are just inconsistent wedge players. And the big reason for that is because ES21 have exceptional balance and stability. Missing a little out towards toe on both half and full swings pretty much held their lines and maintained excellent spin.
It feels like the head rotates less when you miss out towards the toe (and even to some extent on the heel). And in fact, spin, trajectory, direction, and distance on mishits result in only negligible deviation from pure strikes.
Another way to look at it is the ES21 are more forgiving in the sense that the same miss (say out towards toe) will have more fall off in spin and direction with a T20 or traditional blade wedge than with ES21.
Say you hit a traditional wedge towards toe. You know and feel it, and it doesn't spin like a clean strike and can be too far off line. The same shot with the ES21 you can still feel you didn’t catch it clean, but the spin remains very good and the mishit feels more like a solid hit, the head feels more stable.
From back ES21 looks bulkier than a traditional wedge and the toe-line is thicker than T20, but doesn’t look it (in fact it looks narrower). And as you can see in pics, ES21 sets up nicely and pretty much like a classic wedge at address as soon as you set it down.
Heel to toe length is about the same at T20 (maybe tad longer), but has a taller face and larger hitting area. It also feels tad heavier than T20.
With both the 56 and 60 degree ES21 wedges control on finesse shots as well as on fuller swings further away is very consistent. The spin you get and balanced feel really makes you wanna go right after the pin.
I don’t want to call these game-improvement wedges because the control is fantastic and would definitely appeal to better players. But clearly the stability and exceptional spin make these damn easy to hit. And there's no doubt I saw better results and less variety (more consistency) in spin, launch, and direction when I missed around the face compared to same kinds of misses with a blade wedge or T20.
The ES21 are excellent all around wedges much easier to hit than traditional blade wedges, and yet still deliver the kind of spin and control that would appeal to better players.
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