Companies We Love: Edel Golf
Companies We Love is a running series of articles focusing on the golf companies each Grip Life writer enjoys, works with, or just loves the equipment of. To kick off the series, there's no better choice than Edel Golf. I introduced my fellow Grip Lifers, Keith and Sam to Edel, located just north of Austin, Texas in Liberty Hill, after first meeting them myself 4 years ago.
While Edel Golf is a company packed with personality, memorabilia and innovation, what first caught my eye is the ability to customize your wedges, as you will see throughout this article. Today, unless you want to go an aftermarket route, a tour player, or extreme DIYer, there just isn't an option for more than 2-3 initials stamped on a club. I quickly learned during my first visit to Edel Golf, personalization was the core of the company.
In the Summer of 2015, I was unhappy with my current set up and looking for a change. While surfing GolfWRX, I saw a post about Edel Golf and learned they were in Liberty Hill, a few hour drive from BestGrips. Having just installed the laser engraver at BestGrips, I engraved a few grips with Edel logos and sent them a pic, not really expecting anything. To my surprise, I got an email almost immediately back that they would like to talk grips and invited me over for a fitting/introduction.
On the first of my many visits to Edel HQ, I met both David Edel and Neil Oster while receiving a quick tour of the facility. You really need multiple visits and tours to soak up the entire place. Every time I go, I see/learn about some new or sick club or other golf memento, like David’s incredible collection of golf trophies including Robert de Vincenzo’s runner up prize from the infamous 1968 Masters and a mini Claret Jug (which I finally got to hold during my last visit). The interesting aspects of most golf companies fades after you get past the surface. That's not the case with Edel, as the last thing you see, the fitting room, is their best feature.
Edel’s attention to dynamic loft at impact sets them apart from the competition in irons and wedges and my fitting there 4 years ago opened my eyes to to the importance of bounce for the first time. At the time, their public offerings included 2 iron grinds (a steep and a shallow option) and 3 wedge grinds (digger, driver and trapper) all fit to your impact dynamics. Even today, most fittings are limited to shaft and loft variabes, while Edel takes much more information into account.
Since my original fitting, Edel Golf introduced their single length iron set the SLS-01, with each club individually fit for gapping and flight. With their ability to change the flight characteristics with shafts and not affecting feel, the Edel SL irons hold and incredible advantage of their single length competition which uses the same shaft in each club and presents difficulty with the long and short irons.
Edel’s fitting advantage doesn’t end with their wedges and irons, though. The putter fitting system, which I’ve written about previously, is the best fitting system in golf. An Edel putter fitting spends the first half of the fitting determining your preferred alignment aid, be it sight line, double line, triple line, flange lines, sight dot, double dot, triple dot or some combination of all. This information can be applied to any putter and after my fitting, I found that the alignment aid I was fit into (a sight dot) was on every putter in my collection I preferred. The rest of the fitting is spent adapting the putter to your stroke and balancing it to improve your pace. The results are incredible, just ask Sam and Keith.
In an industry where marketing and hype are treated like science by the media and golfers, Edel Golf “challenges tradition” by pushing real innovation. The resurgence of single length irons on a mainstream scale? Edel Golf. Wedge customization offered at the manufacturer level to everyone? Edel Golf. Club grinds based on impact characteristics? Also, Edel Golf. If you’re looking for a company that takes your game, the paying customer, serious, instead of Tour players, paid to play clubs, look no further than Edel Golf.
