The new club from Callaway, which will be available for purchase on May 15th, has a unique design that gives all golfers (professional and amateur) the confidence to pull off open-face shots with precision. If you have ever skulled a flop from a tight lie, muffed it out of the rough or found it difficult sliding the club under the ball in a green-side bunker, the PM-Grind is crafted to help you be more creative and successful in your short game.

The Mack Daddy PM-Grind wedge is an inspired effort between Mickelson and legendary Callaway wedge maker Roger Cleveland. They took a standard Mack Daddy 2 wedge and grinded out a high toe shape and a tight leading edge radius that allows the club to rest closer to the ground. The new shape, with grooves that extended all the way out to the toe, gives golfers 39 percent more surface area to play with.

“When you open up a face you start to move away from the hosel (which is a good thing) and out toward the toe,” says Cleveland. “And as you open up your contact point is higher up on the face. All the grooves up there and toward the toe gives you confidence where you’re going to get grab and real good control over the ball when you hit it there.”

Callaway's PM-Grind wedge features Mack Daddy grooves that extend all the way to the toe.

It’s hard to imagine a short game magician like Mickelson ever needing help executing an open-faced shot around the greens, but turf conditions on tour have become increasingly more challenging over the years, especially at major championship venues. Last year Mickelson used a combination of Callaway’s Mack Daddy 2 wedges with a U-grind (where bounce is moved back from the leading edge) in the lower lofts along with a Ping Eye2 XG lob wedge bent to 61 degrees. According to Cleveland, Mickelson dusted off the old Ping wedge because the club’s high toe enabled him to open up the face for shots out of the rough without having to worry about sliding the club under the ball with the speed that he’s able to generate.

Cleveland and Mickelson analyzed the strengths of the Ping wedge and came up with a design that featured an enlarged toe area with a wide sole that Mickelson favored in his wedges.

“We nailed the sole right off the bat along with a slight modification of the existing U-Grind,” says Cleveland. “With the shape, you can only do so much because of the high toe and because of weight constraints, which for Phil, is about 306 grams.”

In order to keep the wedge from being too heavy while maintaining the design goal of having both a wide sole and a large impact area, Callaway engineers drilled weight ports into the flange which allowed the club to perform the way Mickelson expected. As for the grooves, it was Mickelson who suggested that they be extended all the way through making the wedge look even bigger than it actually is.

Weight ports in the flange help keep the PM-Grind wedge from being too heavy.

Mickelson began using a PM-Grind prototype at last year’s PGA Championship at Valhalla which he nearly won. Since being released, acceptance on tour has been steadily building. Callaway staffers Jason Kokrak and Pat Perez have added a PM-Grind wedge to their bags while Danny Lee has been getting adjusted to it during practice rounds. Teaching icon David Leadbetter has called it “the most-technical lob wedge he’s ever seen,” says Cleveland.

Without being billed as such, the Mack Daddy PM-Grind wedge is set up to offer a short-game advantage at The Masters where chipping execution is at its most demanding. To give himself an edge around the greens, Mickelson showed up with three models (56, 60, 64 degrees all with KBS Tour V 125 shafts). Using the new sticks, Mickelson hit a variety of pitch shots including a signature flop shot on the 10th hole in the second round that landed pin high for a tap-in par. He also holed out from a bunker for eagle on the difficult par-5 15th hole during the final round.

While most of us will never face the kind of short game examination that Augusta National offers the pros, we could all stand to benefit from having an easier-to-use scoring club in our arsenal. Cleveland says, “it gives you a lot of confidence because it’s so big that it looks like a shovel down there, especially in a bunker or out of the rough. You swing it and the ball goes up.”

Recognizing that this wedge is ideally suited for amateur players, Mickelson insisted that Callaway offer a PM-Grind in a 56-degree configuration which is the highest loft that most recreational players should consider playing.

The Mack Daddy PM-Grind wedge ($129 MSRP) comes in a chrome finish that has a muted look to reduce glare and is cast from 8620 carbon steel. It will be offered in four lofts: 56, 58, 60 and 64 degrees and comes stock with a KBS Tour-V wedge-flex shaft. An alternative graphite shaft will be available at no additional charge which should make this wedge an essential equipment purchase for both seniors and ladies, let alone the rest of us.