The best guess I’ve heard so far is a ‘Bump-and-Run’, anybody know for sure?
If you want a little more info; I recently inhereted my Dad’s old golf clubs and found a 10-iron amongst them.
The iron in question has a shorter shaft than a 9-iron, but a flatter face than a 2-iron. It looks like a 1-iron driver except for the short shaft, and it looks like a putter except for the ‘iron-looking’ club head.
If you know, please answer promptly. Four parties have already played through and I’m getting hungry.
At first just by your thread title, I thought it would be between a 9 iron and a pitching wedge, but after reading your description I would say it is the same thing as a “chipper”, which I am fond of using just on the fringe of the green, and use the same stroke as I would putting. The slight angle gives it a little loft up onto the green and forward spin to roll.
That’s my guess, for what it’s worth.
I’ve seen a pitching wedge called a 10-iron before, but I can’t imagine a use for the club you describe. Given that you are only allowed 14 clubs in your bag, you’d better off just choking down on a 3 or 2-iron to produce the same club as you describe.
According to this site it looks pretty much like pitching wedge to me.
John, I checked out that site for a few minutes but I never found mention of a ‘10’.
My own wedge has a much sharper angle than this club. Again, this thing looks like a 1-iron on a putter shaft.
I’m going to ‘bump-and-run’ with it and putt out unless somebody has a better idea. two more parties have played through and if I don’t get a sandwich and a triple Manhattan at the club house I’m going to pass out in the water hazard.
Is it a 10 iron or perhaps a 10 degree chipper? One of my favorite clubs is an old 11 iron I found in the used club barrel in a golf shop for 2 bucks. Drops a ball perfectly at 100 yards.
It also might actually be a 10 iron but the face got bent? I had a 60 degree chipper that within 3 months, had become nearly 0. In it’s final days, I used it to tee off on par threes, reaching the green from 180 yards. The metal was soft and it had just slowly bent down each time I used it. Eventually it broke completely.
From the clubs I have seen, most 10 irons were a gap wedge, a club with a higher loft than a pitching wedge but less than a sand wedge. What it sounds like you’ve got Bullwinkle is a chipper wedge for use around the green.
As some of the answers contradicted my experience (I owned a full set of clubs that went 1 to 10 iron plus Sand Wedge), I did a bit od googling. It looks as if the 10 iron means different things to different manufacturers. For example, this page has the Taylor Made 10-iron as clearly being the same thing as a pitching wedge. They even call the SW an 11-iron, which I’d never heard before.
However, this site refers to Callaway introducing a 10-iron between the 9-iron and wedge.
Reading the OP again, it sounds as if that particular 10-iron is something else again - it sounds like a chipper.
So the answer to the OP is: it depends. Helpful, huh?
My grandfather has a 10 iron in his bag and it was used as his putter. It looked like any other club except it had a flat face and was slightly shorter. I guess that was before putters got so complicated and shaped uniquely.
Your description sounds very much like a chipping wedge. My fellow golfers sometimes kept one around for a low-trajectory hop of the frog-hair surrounding the green.
My own set (Hale Irwins, maybe?) had the sand wedge labeled as a 10.
And then of course, there is the 1-iron, which one holds above the head in lightning storms. Not even God can hit one of those things.
Nowadays a 10 iron is a gap wedge, but in the old days (I’d guess before 1980) 10 irons were in fact pitching irons. They are generally used around the greens to get the ball over the long grass but to start the ball rolling like a putt as soon as possible.
It is also useful if your ball comes to rest with the back side (away from the hole) up against the fringe.
My mom’s clubs in the early 1950’s had a “10” molded into the head of the putter. The numbering of the irons (which had once been called things like mashie, cleek, and niblick) has not been stable over time. I’d like to claim that club numbers are not in the rules, but in fact, I’m not well grounded in golf lore. I am sure of only the first sentence of this post.
My mom’s clubs in the early 1950’s had a “10” molded into the head of the putter. The numbering of the irons (which had once been called things like mashie, cleek, and niblick) has not been stable over time. I’d like to claim that club numbers are not in the rules, but in fact, I’m not well grounded in golf lore. I am sure of only the first sentence of this post.