Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind Wedge – Is This Even A Good Idea?

Written By: Tony Covey

If you’re just hearing about the Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind Wedge for the first time today, let me give you the quick backstory:

After decades of professional golf Phil Mickelson came to the realization that he hits a lot of shots high and towards the toe. This isn’t a Phil phenomenon, it basically happens to anyone who likes to open up the faces on his/her wedges.

Phil decided he’d like to try a wedge that provides a bit more meat in that region of the club, so he approached Callaway; together, team Callaway started welding bits and pieces of other wedges together. A bit of creativity, shaping, some other refinements, and boom…one hell of a strange looking wedge.

And well, since this is Callaway, where if 3 weeks go by without a new product release people inside the company start to get twitchy, the company decided to bring Phil’s Franken Wedge to retail.

Lucky Us.

Sarcasm? Maybe not.

Along with the release came a semi-brilliant tagline quote from Phil Mickelson: It looks different because it’s designed different (I guess adverbs aren’t Phil’s thing, but given my personal propensity for leaving out entire words and inventing new ones, I’ll let it slide), and the money stat that the PM Grind has 39% more groove area.

My god…look at that massive toe, you’d better put some extra grooves on it.

It’s Versatile, But…

And so as I considered this most unconventional wedge, and it’s original target demographic (Phil Mickelson), I started to wonder if this newfound versatility would come at the expense of playability.

Flop shots, bunker shots, pine straw, desert, and nut-deep fescue aside, sooner or later all of us need to hit a full shot from the middle of the fairway.

So when I began evaluating the Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind wedge from the perspective of the average golfer, I really had a single question:

Is this even a good idea?

Design Obstacles

Those of you who read my work frequently already know that while my job is primarily to tell you how well a given piece of equipment works, I’m absolutely fascinated with the engineering side of it – the hows and whys behind why clubs behave the way they do.

In the case of the PM Grind a couple of things were glaringly obvious. All that additional surface area means a lot more weight – and where weight goes, the center of gravity follows. Basically we have all the makings of a total disaster.

Without some refinements, PM Grind would have been totally unplayable.

Saving Weight

To get around the weight obstacles Callaway did some creative things. The most obvious one was to remove some mass from the back of the club. Those shiny green dots, they’re not purely decorative, drilling holes/removing metal saves quite a bit of weight.

Other, more subtle weight-saving refinements include a shorter hosel, a thinner topline, a much steeper than average transition from the top of the toe to the hosel, and again (though not as pronounced) in the transition from the lower toe to the sole.

While Callaway declined to provide specifics about the center of gravity position – and we haven’t measured…yet – my suspicion is that while Callaway was able to make weight, the center of gravity is likely still higher and more toe-ward than it would be in a conventional wedge.

So again, I ask…is this even a good idea?

It’s not totally unusual for wedge designers to try and push the CG higher anyway. If you’re looking for a flatter ball flight with more spin, raising the CG will give you that.

Toss in the fact that some of us tend to hit wedges a bit high on the face anyway, and, well…a higher sweet spot isn’t without its advantages either.

Finally, when you consider that this wedge was designed to increase the hitting area towards the high toe, it makes sense to put some weight up there. On design alone, I can see how this could actually work.

What’s With the PM Grind?

In very simple terms, the PM grind is a big dimple of sorts on the sole of the club that provides the relief necessary to open the wedge up – and this is a wedge that absolutely wants to be opened up.

I know some look at the bounce numbers, particularly on the 60° and 64° models and assume there’s too much, but that couldn’t be further from reality.

Roger Cleveland is a firm believer that bounce is your friend (I’ve come to agree with him) and that philosophy comes through in the PM Grind. What you get is a wedge that has enough actual bounce to prevent digging, and a low-enough effective bounce that sliding an open face under the ball is basically effortless. The grind is the foundation of wedge’s versatility. It’s subtle, but it works.

What About the Rest of the Sole?

Some of you won’t love the rounded sole that leaves the heel and toe above the turf when the wedge is sitting square. For guys who demand a square leading edge, we may have reached the end of our story.

The totality of the design, however, is actually quite fascinating. The sweeping heel relief provides the illusion of offset, but the rounded leading edge has been pulled down and forward such that it actually sits in front of the hosel.

What you end up with is sole design where multiple elements blend together in near perfect harmony. The onset leading edge sets up perfectly under the ball, the PM grind works with the contours of the sole to keep the wedge flat against the ground, while the rounded leading edge works with the bounce to prevent digging.

Looks Don’t Matter, But They Do…

Regardless of whether you call it hideous, or just unconventional, I understand. For me the Mack Daddy PM Grind is like Fairuza Balk in The Waterboy. By any reasonable standard, it’s ugly, but it’s not without its sex appeal either.

Of course that’s purely subjective. What’s less subjective is what happens visually as a result of that big high toe.

First and foremost, there’s more wedge.

It looks bigger because it is bigger.

Makes sense, right? For those of you who love compact wedges, PM Grind may prove too much of an adjustment.

What’s harder to quantify in absolutes is the effect the high toe has on the presentation of loft. Because the face extends farther up and out it gives the illusion of additional loft. While individual results may vary, to my eye, the 56° presents at a 60°. The 60° presents as a 64°, and the 64° presents as a spatula.

The consequences of this are two-fold. Firstly, you have to learn to trust the loft. While it may look like there’s too much loft for a particular shot, there isn’t.

Secondly, and maybe this is just me…while it’s almost counter-intuitive, I find myself fighting the tendency to open the additional face and add even more loft – even when there’s no practical reason to do so. The wedge presents a certain way at address, and my initial tendency was to fight that and instead try to manipulate the face to get it to look the way my mind thought it should.

It’s a bad plan, and one I’d advise you not to adopt.

To be sure, the PM Grind is a wedge that wants to be opened up…and because of how the loft presents itself, you really need to be more aware of face orientation than you might otherwise with a conventional wedge.

Ultimately, the PM Grind is like most anything else. It may appear strange at first, but if you look at it long enough, it becomes familiar.

Is it actually versatile?

In a word, yes? Quite frankly, there isn’t a shot I haven’t been able to hit with the PM Grind. Stupid high flop shots, little runners, 2 foot kill shots, and it’s really good out of the sand too.

There isn’t a lie I haven’t been able figure my way through either…maybe not the first time, and maybe not with 100% positive results, but with enough time spent learning the way of the wedge, there’s not much it can’t handle.

Interestingly, and I suppose this is a cautionary tale as well, square faced shots have presented the most difficulty for me.

It should be pointed out that I’ve had some combination of PM Grind wedges in my bag, 3-4 times a week, for over a month (and that’s before we start talking about the around the house stuff). Initially I loved the wedge at 64°, liked it well-enough at 60°, and considered selling it for scrap at 56°.

The higher the percentage of shots played with a square face, the less I cared for the PM Grind. Over time, and with plenty of reps (it’s a process), however, I have grown more comfortable playing it square. First with little runners around the green, then with ½ and ¾ shots, and now finally with full swings.

Again, individual mileage will unquestionably vary, but it took me the better part of a month hitting the 56° 85 yards (sometimes less) before I figured out what I needed to do differently to get my expected 100-105 out of the club.

To be clear…I wasn’t hitting shots fat or thin, I just wasn’t hitting them how they need to be hit with the PM Grind. It requires an adjustment, but here’s the crazy thing:  The damn thing is so good out of the bunker that I contemplated trying to play my way around the 30 yard gap between wedges.

I should also mention that having the 64° in the bag is like having a bottle of tequila with you at all times. It creates an opportunity for infinite fun and excitement, but can very often lead to some extremely poor decisions.

That said, for the guy who has never been able to hit high, soft wedges, Callaway’s PM Grind is a literal game changer. I’ve carried 64° wedges off and on for years, and have never found it easier (necessary or not) to hit a flop shot from virtually any lie. In that regard, the 60° actually plays closer to a normal 64° while the 64° PM Grind plays like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Buyer Beware

As much as I’m becoming more and more of a fan of this wedge with each trip to the golf course, I’m not going to feed you so much as an ounce of bullshit.

Putting a Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind Wedge in your bag is not a decision that should be taken lightly.

As I said, I’m heading into month two, and while I’ve mostly figured out how to hit every shot I’d ever want or need to hit, I certainly haven’t mastered them.

I have hit some tremendously good shots with it. I have hit some tremendously awful shots with it, and  lots of shots somewhere in-between.

My distance control, particularly inside 50 yards, still needs a lot of work before I’m dialed in (even by my standards) or consistent. Frankly it’s not close…yet.

Before the Mac Daddy PM Grinds even arrived on my doorstep I put in a call to one of the smartest wedge guys I know. We talked about the potentially good in this wedge, and the potentially bad in this wedge.

Having spent quite a bit of time with it, I can tell you that there is a lot of good in this, but as my designer friend surmised, to really master the PM Grind will almost require more practice than the average golfer can truly be expected to put in.

I believe that is the reality of it, and you have to be honest with yourself. Don’t believe for a second that you’re going to walk out on the course for the first time with a PM Grind and shave two shots of your game. Initially it may cost you a stroke or two.

To find regular success with the PM Grind wedge, you will need to work. You will need to learn the wedge.

On the course you’ll need to plan every shot right down to where on the face you’re going to make contact. You have to understand where your hands need to be on full shots, how different areas of the face behave, and the launch conditions they produce.

You need to know precisely how the head moves through different lengths of grass, how it moves through the sand, and you’ll need to control your backswing accordingly and always commit fully to the shot.

If you don’t do that, you will fail…often ingloriously.

It’s not hard, especially at higher lofts, to leave a 30 yard shot 20 yards short, or hit a 10 yard shot 20 yards too far.

There is a learning curve, and I believe it’s steeper than with most any other wedge.

Now I’m reasonably certain that better players will read this and think that’ s no big deal because it’s what they do every day and with every shot. And in that lies the lesson.

For the average golfer to be successful with the PM Grind wedge, he’s not only going to need to put in the practice time to learn the nuances of all those things I just talked about, but to be successful he’s going to have to fundamentally learn to think like a better player, and that’s easier said than done.

If you can’t do that, what I think you’ll find is that while the PM grind makes it incredibly easy to hit one set of shots, it can also make it next to impossible to successfully hit others. Consistency won’t come easy.

If you rarely open your wedge up, don’t even bother.

But It’s So Good

If I haven’t scared you off yet, you might have what it takes to get the most out of the PM Grind.

In 5+ years writing for MyGolfSpy I can’t recall a single product that has fascinated me this much. Nearly every time I pick up the wedge I discover something new…some subtle curve that that makes me further appreciate the design.

There’s a lot more to this than a big high toe.

The Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind wedge isn’t something I’d recommend to the recreational golfer. It’s not for the guy who plays once or twice a year. It’s a tool for the avid golfer, for the guy willing to put in the time it takes to learn how to do everything this wedge is capable of doing.

All of that said, it’s a wedge I’m really growing to love. I’ve got two of them in the bag right now, and as long as my personal progress with the wedge continues, they’re both staying in the bag.

Far be it from me to begrudge anyone for letting curiosity get the better of them. It couldn’t hurt to try one…right? I promise you it will be fun.

If you’re contemplating taking a shot with the PM Grind, my final word of advice is to start with the 60°. I find it to be the most playable loft. There’s a ton of potential on the 56°, but it’s not easily realized.

So to bring this thing full circle and answer my question: is the Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind Wedge a good idea?

My answer is an emphatic YES*.

As with many things Callaway these days, there’s plenty of fine print and qualifiers. There is an adjustment. There is a learning curve, and you’re almost certainly going to hit some atrocious shots, but when you figure it out , it’s so good.

The Callaway Mack Daddy PM Grind Wedge has a retail price of $130, and is available now.