Lee Trevino and Gary Player are two of the greatest golfers to have ever swung a club.
Trevino, 86, and Player, 90, have both stunned golf fans throughout the years with their genuinely incredible talent.
However, back in 2022, the Texan was left genuinely gobsmacked after he noticed one club that the South African was carrying in his bag.
Trevino and Player are both golf obsessed, by their own admissions, and they have always been real characters both on and off the golf course.
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With 15 major championships and an extraordinary 251 professional tournament wins between them, Trevino and Player are quite rightly regarded as two of the most successful golfers to have graced the game.
Due to their success and charisma on the golf course, Trevino and Player always draw a real crowd whenever they play together.
Lee Trevino was shocked to see one club in Gary Player’s bag
Trevino and Player have always been very close with one another, but that does not mean the South African is immune from the Texan’s razor-sharp wit.
At the PNC Championship back in 2022, the two former PGA Tour stars were playing together when Trevino noticed something peculiar in Player’s golf bag.
The six-time major winner then began what was almost like a stand-up comedy act in reaction to seeing the club that Player was carrying.
“This wedge here, I don’t have a spoon at home like this, I could eat soup with this!
“You’ve got 65 degrees on this wedge? You know you could hit yourself in the mouth with this thing! Look at that, you’ve got 65 on there, that’s beautiful.“
Interestingly, Trevino recently urged all amateur golfers to throw their 60-degree wedges away!
So it’s clear to see that the six-time major champion believes those extremely high-lofted clubs are very much made for expert use only.
The data backs up that notion as well.
Amateur golfers should lose the 60 degree wedge immediately
There are genuinely no benefits for amateur golfers carrying a wedge with 60 degrees or more loft in their bags.
They actually do more harm than good.
In the below table, it’s clear to see that better golfers much prefer to use clubs with more loft when they are chipping, while the opposite is true of high handicap players.
| Club | High handicappers % use | Low handicappers % use |
| 8 iron | 0% | 12% |
| 9 iron | 0% | 14% |
| PW | 16% | 22% |
| SW | 9% | 12% |
| GW | 24% | 6% |
| LW | 42% | 8% |
| Putter | 9% | 18% |
The problem with amateur golfers using lob wedges to chip around the green is highlighted even further still by the fact that that the more they utilise the club, the less often they get up and down:
| Handicap | Lob Wedges use % | Up and down % |
| 8 | 24% | 11% |
| 14 | 35% | 7% |
| 20 | 55% | 6% |
Stats and data don’t lie. While Gary Player may be good enough to use a lob wedge with more than 60 degrees of loft, 99 per cent of the golfing population almost certainly are not.
Play the percentages, simplify the game in the best way you can, and watch your scores come down.
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