The hole in your bag is probably 30 yards wide.

The WeekWe built you a gap map

Ask a golfer how far they hit their 7-iron and you'll get a confident number. Ask how big the step is between their pitching wedge and their sand wedge and you'll usually get a pause. That second question is the one that costs strokes. Carrying fourteen clubs only helps if each one owns a distance — if two clubs go the same yardage, one of them is dead weight, and if there's a 30-yard canyon between two others, every shot that lands in it becomes an awkward guess.

So the club distance chart now has a Gap Lab built into it. Tick the clubs you actually carry, type in your typical carry for each, and it maps every step in your bag — flagging the overlaps, flagging the holes, and telling you the one yardage you currently have no comfortable club for. It runs entirely in your browser; your numbers never leave your device.

Here's how ordinary this problem is: fill the tool with the average amateur numbers from our own chart, and it immediately finds a 30-yard hole between the pitching wedge and the sand wedge. That's the gap a gap wedge was literally invented to fill, and it's sitting in the default bag.

Worth Your TimeThree from the desk

• The Gap Lab — Map your own bag in about a minute. It gives you the biggest hole, the midpoint yardage to go test on the range, and where to look next depending on whether the hole is at the top of the bag or the bottom.
• The 56 vs. 60-degree wedge question — Where most gaps actually live. Which lofts to carry, how the bounce changes what the club is good for, and why the answer depends on your turf more than your handicap.
• Junior clubs, sized by height — Back-to-school season, so: how to size a growing player's set, and how to avoid buying the whole thing twice. Fit the player they are now, not the one they'll be next summer.

The Honest TakeThe tool is only as good as your numbers

A gap map built from wishful yardages is worse than no gap map at all, because it sends you shopping for a club you don't need. The number to enter is your typical, repeatable carry — the shot you'd bet on landing eight times in ten — not the one 7-iron you flushed 165 in 2019 and have been clubbing off ever since. Hit several, throw out the best and the worst, use the middle.

And a caveat we'd rather say out loud: this is a carry-gap check, not a club fitting. It compares the numbers you give it and shows you where the spacing is wrong. It can't tell you what loft, shaft or lie you need — only a fitting with real ball data does that. What it can do is tell you whether the problem is worth a fitting in the first place, which is a genuinely useful thing to know before you spend money.