Titleist began tour seeding of its unreleased Vokey SM9 wedges at the 2022 Sentry Tournament of Champions in Maui two weeks ago, and players have already been switching in droves to the new models.

Although Titleist still isn’t yet commenting on the new designs (which will likely replace the company’s former SM8 models), GolfWRX got its first in-hand look at the new SM9 versions this week at the 2022 American Express at PGA West’s Stadium Course.

• Check out our forum thread for all of the Titleist Vokey SM9 in-hand photos here.

In addition to the photos, I was also able to catch up with legendary wedge maker and SM9-designer Bob Vokey himself. While tech details are still under wraps for the time being, he provided some awesome insight into his two-year design process.

“It takes us two years to put a product together…what happens every time is you make an improvement based on feedback from all the players,” Vokey told GolfWRX. “This is my 10th iteration of launching over the years, and each one I’ve learned something, from my series 200s, to SM1s, 2s, 3s, etc., you learn a little bit each time.

“What happens is you don’t know really how to improve it until we get it in the players’ hands, like we’re doing now, and that’ll take a few months when the players first take it live. Because there’s things that may happen on a certain shot under the heat of the gun on the backside Sunday afternoon. They hit a shot and go, ‘Whoa, what happened?’ There’s certain little things that nobody could ever see at all, and we’ve done so much testing, but you can’t replicate the human element under the heat of the gun. Then someone will tell me something, or they’ll tell Aaron [Dill] something, and we’ll bring it back to the wedge team. We can change that, work on that, modify it, get it right, without mucking up all that we have. That’s how we improve. “

For Vokey, player feedback is extremely important, and it starts with keeping a similar profile from address. As Vokey says, you don’t want to “muck up” something that works.

“We sit there and scratch our heads and get together and say, something’s been working so good, it’s tour-proven for so many years, you know, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… retain the same profile, it’s so very important…a pro will come up and say, ‘What do you got Voke?’ Boom, they put it down right away. Then they hold it up and say, ‘What’s the bounce?'”

Speaking of bounce, and how the profile looks from address, GolfWRX got a look at a number of different lofts, grinds and bounce options at the 2022 American Express this week.

Below is a taste of what the Vokey SM9s look like in-hand, but make sure to click here for all of our photos.

Titleist Vokey SM9 52-degree F-grind

Titleist Vokey SM9 56-degree S-grind 

Titleist Vokey SM9 60-degree M-grind

Titleist Vokey SM9 60-degree D-grind

Check out our forum thread for all of the Titleist Vokey SM9 in-hand photos here.