Vintage Wilson R-20 Gene Sarazen All Original Sand Wedge Introduced in 1935, this club is early version with a line scored face with 21 lines. Later versions had 17 to 19 lines. Original grey sheathed shaft is 35 inches in length with the original leather grip and end cap. The club shows signs of wear with moderate rust but no pitting. It has not been restored and is all original. Sarazen Bio: Gene Sarazen was one of five golfers to have won all four professional majors. He won the 1935 Masters with his Shot Heard Round the World, a double eagle on 15 during the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club. Three years before that, in 1932, he won the U.S. and British Opens with a nifty new club in his bag: a Wilson Sand Wedge that he designed. He didn't invent the sand wedge. Scottish golfers in the 19th century had special clubs for getting out of the sand. Walter Hagen was using a battle ax of a sand wedge in the late 1920s with a hickory shaft and a smooth concave face with a lot of loft and about a half pound of weight in the flange. A man named Edwin K. MacLain had a patent on that club and assigned the rights to Hagen's manufacturing company. Gene designed the first modern sand wedge with a steel shaft, markings on the clubface, and the amount of flange on it that is still widely used today. Bob Mendralla, a club designer who began working at Wilson in the late 1940s, knew Gene and for years had some of those homemade sand wedges in his office. They didn't have as much loft as the modern sand wedge, but when Bob measured them they had about 10 degrees of bounce — close to the standard for a sand wedge today. Wilson added about five degrees of loft to the prototypes, to 55 degrees. Gene added his "reminder" grip on them, which showed you where to put your hands. His first sand wedge had punch marks on the face instead of scoring lines, and over the years Wilson has sold duplicates of that club, not as some sort of museum piece but because people like to use it. Gene was also a pioneer of the explosion shot. It is the game's easiest shot, golf teachers say, because the clubface never touches the ball. The explosion shot and the sand wedge made golf easier for the average player. The Sarazen-Wilson relationship, which lasted 75 years, is said to be the longest-standing endorsement contract in all of sports. As for Wilson, when knowledgeable golfers think of the company, they think of sand wedges, and they think of Gene Sarazen.