Spin is the first number golfers look at when buying a wedge and on a 50 yard dry shot it separates hardly anything. Every wedge in our Most Wanted 2026 test landed between 6,729 and 7,217 rpm. This is a 488-rpm spread over 15 models, which is not great.
Add water and the field breaks. The spread goes from 488 rpm to more than 3,700.
Some wedges give up almost nothing. Others lost more than half of what they had. If you play early tee times, live in a place that it rains often or just the occasional approach out of the rough moisture, this is the number that really decides if the ball stops.
Here’s how all 15 wedges handled.
50-Yard Wet Spin Retention: All 15 wedges
| Wedge | Dry spinning (rpm) | Spin Wet (rpm) | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titleist Vokey SM11 | 6,857 | 6,860 | 100.0% |
| Cleveland RTZ Tour Rack | 6,729 | 6,588 | 97.9% |
| Cleveland CBZ | 6,795 | 6,602 | 97.2% |
| Kirkland Signature GEN 3 Forged | 6,891 | 6,668 | 96.8% |
| PING s259 | 6,760 | 6,389 | 94.5% |
| THE GOLF FS-26 | 7,028 | 6,544 | 93.1% |
| PXG Stick’Em | 6,918 | 5,993 | 86.6% |
| Maxfli XCW | 6,981 | 5,989 | 85.8% |
| TaylorMade Hi-Toe 5 | 6,783 | 5,697 | 84.0% |
| New Level SPN V3 | 7,062 | 5,862 | 83.0% |
| Vice Golf VGW02 Black | 6,784 | 5,040 | 74.3% |
| Edel SMS Pro | 6,862 | 4,883 | 71.2% |
| Tanso Golf Tour-W | 6,930 | 3,860 | 55.7% |
| Performance Golf ONE.1 | 7,217 | 3,506 | 48.6% |
| Forged Ballistic Proto | 6,801 | 3.130 | 46.0% |
What it means for your game
Here’s the part that surprises people: losing spin in the wet doesn’t cost you any distance. Carry was about a yard short of the dry number for nearly every wedge in the test, including the ones that fell. You are not locked in the rain.
What you lose is the stop.
The wedges at the top of the table stretched about two feet on a wet 50-yard shot, the same as they did dry. The bottom three goes from about two feet to somewhere between seven and 11. On a 50-yard shot, that’s a big difference.
When the face can not clear the water, the ball skids up the grooves instead of gripping them. U Vokey’s The launch angle moved a tenth of a degree between dry and wet. of copper climbed 7.5 degrees, The ballistic 7.6, Performance Golf 8.8. This is a fundamentally different shot.
Higher, softer, spinning at less than half the pace, and released when it lands. The problem is that most golfers don’t see this until they get to the course at 8 o’clock in the morning with dew still on the fairway.
A wedge is a scoring club and scoring clubs have to be predictable. The wedges at the top of this table behave the same regardless of the conditions. Those who are basically you a different club and do not tell you.
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Titleist Vokey SM11: The best Wet Wedge of 2026
U SM11 it did something that no other wedge in the test managed. It didn’t lose any spin.
Dry, it produced 6,857 rpm. Wet, produced 6,860. It is the only 100 percent retention figure in the field. It also posted the highest raw wet spine number of any wedge we tested which matters more than the percentage on its own.
Launch tells the same story. Most wedges climb when the face gets wet. U SM11 move a tenth of a degree. The rollout went from 0.6 yards dry to 0.7 wet. Whatever you see on a dry range, you will see on a wet golf course.
This is also why the SM11 took Best for Spin in our 2026 Most Wanted Wedge test and finished third overall. Titleist builds for wet conditions and the data says so.
Cleveland it is good for wedge spin retention
Two Clevelands finished second and third and this is not a one-year case.
Go back to our 2025 test and the picture is the same. The RTZ gained momentum when we added humidity, ending up at 105.3 percent. The RTZ Full-Face came to 104.9. This year the RTZ Tour Rack holds 97.9 percent and the CBZ held 97.2. That’s four Cleveland wedges in two years of testing and all four finished at the top in wet conditions.
Cleveland’s HydraZip is a combination of face sandblasting and laser milled lines designed specifically to maintain rotation when the face is wet and is tuned differently from loft. Its UltiZip grooves are cut deeper, so water has a place to go at impact instead of sitting between the ball and the face. Most brands treat wet performance as something that happens to their wedge. Cleveland treats it as a design goal.
Dial in your wedges
Retention is only part of the story. A wedge that holds its spin in the rain must also hit its number and find the middle of the green, which is why our wedge testers score accuracy, consistency and spin in all three conditions rather than classifying them in one of them.
U Vokey SM11 won the wet back and finished third overall. The wedge that won the entire test costs $ 67. You can see how all 15 stack up in each category in our The best wedges of 2026 results.
The place 2026 Wet Wedge Spin Results: A Single Wedge Keeps All Its Spin appeared first MyGolfSpy.
