Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty five, published on August seventh, twenty
twelve. Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain insight and
advice from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction
Never gets old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app. And one of
the things we've done is taken fifteen eighteen handicapped players even sixes and eights with
one of our top assist of pros who's a scratch guy, and he's a
good player, and we've pled them play nine holes and they get to play
Joe's drive and see what they shoot. The next nine hole Joe plays their
ball in after they get it inside nine iron range, which for Joe is
about one point forty. What we find is they usually drop their score by
one shot if any on the nine holes they got to play his drive,
But on the nine holes that he played their ball in from nine iron range
in he usually beats in by five to nine shots. So where do you
think you should spend your practice time? If you get better inside nine ron
rape. When you put a nine onn and less in your hand, I
don't care what your handicap is. Your next shot should be a birdie button.
Now. If you're a twelve or fifteen eighteen handicapper, I mean give
yourself thirty thirty five feet twenty five feet. If you're a low single digit,
you ought to be hitting those shots on the average fifteen eighteen feet from
the hole, but you ought to be knocking the flag down there once a
while with those two and three and five foot birdies. Short game technology finally
enters the twenty first century with Terry klebs Is golf Smarter sharing tips and insights
from golfers and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's worked for your
host, Fred Green, Welcome back to Golf Smarter. Terry was glad to
be here. Fred. It is great to have you. The last time
you were on back in November, we introduced your new line of well,
we don't want to home wedges just yet, but you score forty one sixty
one, and the response from the golf Smarter community was very impressive. As
far as I'm concerned, you guys got a lot of interest in the clubs
at that point, didn't you. We have, and not just from your
community, but the other communities we've gotten involved in. You know, we're
a small company. We're going up against the giants in the golf industry.
We're going up against a lot of conventional wisdom, which you know you've known
me for a long time. That's something I challenge, you know, willingly
and willfully. And what we've done with score forty one sixty one is is
really challenge how golfers think about their whole set makeup, particularly the short end
of the set. Well, you know, golf is seems to get stuck
in I don't know. I don't want to use the word tradition there,
because that's not stuck tradition. You've got to honor tradition, but just old
ways of thinking well and does And what's interesting, I just wrote an article
the other day for a magazine called how modern technology has hurt your scoring?
And you know what we've seen in the last couple of decades with this emphasis
on distance, and you know, the manufacturers have really pushed the envelope,
you know, from drivers to the golf ball, to fitness techniques to irons
and hybrids and fairways, and you know, all of these things are pushing
you know, longer, longer, longer, hit it further, hit it
further. Athletes are bigger, more finely tuned athletes playing golf than we ever
had before. And this, this all out, relentless pursuit of distance has
changed the game so dramatically, not just at the highest level, you know,
the tour players, but across the board down the rank and file amateurs.
And my take on that, fred is that it has changed our set
makeup and the way we play golf courses entirely. And that has been really
to a detriment of the average player. And I mean the recreational golfer who's
out there trying to break eighty or ninety or even one hundred is not the
tour player. He's not in the fitness trailers, he's not being you know,
spend three days in a fitting van, but he's still hitting it further
than ever before. And the reality is that's changed your whole set makeup.
And this is something whenever I get a chance to have a soapbox, so
to speak, I talk to people about if you thought about your lineup,
your team as I call it. You know those fourteen clubs in your bag
that you have to score the golf course with. And what is the response
to that. Well, when you sit people down and say think about this
for a minute, the overwhelming response is, wow, that makes a lot
of sense. Why has nobody ever done this before? So let me back
up and tell you kind of how this whole evolution. Please, I look
back. I'm sixty years old. I started playing golf as a kid in
the fifty and through the sixties, and you know, all irons were blades
back then, and we learned how to hit. I mean we were admonished,
and you know my generation of Kite and Crenshaw and Watkins and all those
guys, we were admonished to learn how to hit the ball really solid and
really good. Distance will come with size, as you get bigger, you'll
hit it further. But with the equipment, the persimmon woods and the blade
irons, you had to learn how to hit the ball precisely. And we
all learned how to score. We learned how to get the ball in the
hole. And we had what I have called the round club mindset. And
that is when we put an eight nine er pitch in our hand. And
these were the clubs with the rounded top line, hence the round club.
We really could score the golf course with those clubs. Now, back then,
the eight iron was in the low forty degrees of loft, the nine
iron was mid to high forties, and the pitching wedge where the peak club
pitching wedge was a forty nine to fifty to fifty one degree fifty two degree
golf club. We pitched the ball. Our short range scoring club was our
pitching wedge. We pitched the ball all with that golf club. And you
did it from multiple distances. It's not like you had, you know,
your one hundred club, your seventy yard club, your ninety yard club.
No, and you know, and we didn't hit the ball as far because
the balls didn't go as far, and we were dealing with higher lofted golf
clubs. But we scored the golf course with these round clubs. When you
got into the four or five and six iron, the old blades were hard
to hit, man, trust me, they were tough. So when when
the first kind of kicking the pants that we got, so to speak,
was when the advent of the cavity back golf club, and it was a
wonderful innovation that made four or five and six irons hard to hit, I
mean easy to hit. The problem is is this concept we have of a
match set means they all look alike. And so while they changed the four,
five, six, seven iron into these and three iron into these cavity
back, perimeter weighted clubs that were much easier to get airborne, they were
much more forgiving to move the contact around on the face. They made that
eight nine and pitch cavity back, thin faced golf club too, and those
clubs are already our money clubs. Those were the clubs we knew how to
hit straight, but they got dragged along because of this concept of a match
set. So fast forward a decade or two, and now people are having
trouble with these short clubs hitting them so high. Because the design was for
a four iron or a six iron to hit the ball high. You already
got a bunch of loft on that eight nine peak club. You don't need
waiting to get it in the air. It's already got a bunch of loft
on it. And so the manufacturer started cranking the lost now, so that
pitching wedge of when I was a child, of fifty to fifty one degrees
became forty seven and eight and now forty five and six. There are at
least two or three sets of irons on the market today that the peak club,
which I don't call it pitching wedge anymore, is forty three forty two
and a half degrees. This was my eight iron when I was a teenager.
What do you call it? It's a peak club. I call it
peak club club. You could name all your clubs Susie, Joe, Bill,
John. That's just a number. It's just a name. But you
need clubs of high loft. So one of the comparisons I draw to people
is Ben Hogan Byron Nelson, Sam snead to of me to marry fabulous era
of shot makers. Even the moderntor players, if they would pay attention,
would know these guys were awesome. Ben Hogan's book Power Golf that he published
in nineteen forty nine, he listed his yardages, and he listed his regular
minimum and maximum with each club. His five iron regular yardage was one hundred
and fifty five yards five iron, okay, his maximum was one seventy five.
So the first question I would ask your listeners is look at your what
you consider your regular iron yardage, and do you have an extra twenty yards
in reserve with that golf club? Because Ben Hogan was, and I argue
this name made the best shot maker in the history of the game. He
made a golf ball do what he wanted it to do with very inferior product
equipment to what we have now. But he said, a regular five iron
is one fifty five. I can hit it one seventy five if I need
to. A minimum is one forty five. So if you think about that,
now, his five iron for loft and length, what was about the
same as a modern seven or eight. Okay, but ben Hogan hit it
one fifty five. It was also much heavier, and the shafts warn't his
advanced and athletes were in his advance. But here's where I like to draw
the comparison. So Ben Hogan, when he was inside one fifty he had
a five iron, a six iron, a seven iron, an eight iron,
a nine iron, a pitching wedge, and a sandwich. He had
seven club options to navigate that last one hundred and fifty yards. The modern
tour player and the modern amateur that's listening to this podcast right now. Look
at your bag, guys, how far do you hit? What do you
hit? One hundred and fifty yards? A lot of guys are trying to
hit nine iron that far, even eight iron. So you've got an eight,
a nine, a pitch, sand wedge, lob wedge, maybe a
gap. You got four maybe six gulubs that go under one fifty, under
one fifty, under one fifty. Ben Hogan had seve the modern tour player
only has three or four clubs in his bag to go under one fifty.
Yeah, I mean, aren't they talking about you know, he's two hundred
and twenty yards away, he's pulling out a five iron. It's like,
what what it is? And so here's my point. If ben Hogan had
seven clubs to navigate the last one hundred and fifty yards of the each hole,
and a modern tour player or you amateurs have four, you need to
be twice the shot maker ben Hogan was, because you got half as many
options as he had. And if you think about it that way, it's
like that's kind of absurd. Then the other thing is just the geometry of
a golf club set. And if your golfers will go out and take golf
balls in their laser out on the golf course, or they're gps. You
will find that your gaps between clubs out at the long end of your set,
between your three wood and your five wood, your five wood and your
hybrid, and your hybrid and your second hybrid, your hybrid and your fore
n, whatever you carry out there, you will find those gaps at eight
and nine yards. If you go to the short end of your set and
go to your scoring clubs, those clubs over forty degrees a loft, you
will have your gaps at fifteen and eighteen yards or more. Now, really
that does makes sense, right, But that's the geometry of a golf club,
and we've always built them this way. And again I'm a big challenger
of conventional wisdom, but we've always built clubs a half inch difference between club,
four degrees of loft difference between clubs. But the fact is, at
the short end of the set, those gaps widen four degrees and a half
an inch makes gaps too wide. If you're at one seventy five and you
have a four or five iron in your hand, or a six iron whatever.
However, long. You are forty feet long and short from one seventy
five. It is a great shot. Forty feet long and short from ninety
stinks. I don't care if you're trying to play the PGA Tour, if
you're trying to break one hundred, you need to have distance control. Closer
the closer you get to the green, you need to be able to dial
it in. So what really has happened with modern technology is that it has
compressed all of our clubs at the long end of the set. Because they
only made the three iron two degrees stronger than ever, but they've made the
nine iron six and seven degrees stronger than ever. Well, what's that doing
is compressing all your clubs towards the long end of the set. But if
you have over three or four shots outside of five iron foreign range in a
round of golf, you're playing the wrong tees. Man, You're not on
the right tees. This is not a game that is supposed to be attacked
with your fairy woods and hybrid's hole after hole after hole. That is not
the way the game is played. If you find yourself that you can't reach
par fours, you're hitting hybrids and fairy woods constantly move up a set of
tees. Guys, you'll enjoy the game a lot more. This game is
designed to be a middle iron game with five or six seven holes giving you
a short iron or wedge end three or four holes making you hit a long
club in That's the way the game is supposed to be played at any level,
and find the t's that let you play it that way. I mean,
to me, I've felt like the perfect golf courses. When I get
through, I've hit every club in my bag. To me, that's a
great piece of architecture. But in modern golf, golf courses have not kept
up with technology. I mean, like in my little hometown, for example,
I'm playing on a country club that was originally built in nineteen twenty fours
remodeled in nineteen eighty, and we don't have any more room. We don't
have room to link on the golf course. So it's sixty nine hundred some
mid yards. In nineteen eighty when this course was renovated, we were playing
for simmon woods and mostly blade irons. Into that sixty nine hundred. It
was quite the test. But now that's sixty nine hundred. There's a lot
more short iron shots and reachable part fives than there was back then. But
the municipal course in town plays at about sixty five hundred. That's long as
they can make it. When I was living in this town in my twenties,
which I was a whole lot stronger than I am now at sixty,
I had a lot of five, six seven irons on that golf course.
Now at sixty that golf course is a driver wedge course because the course can't
keep up with technology. So golfers are hitting more short clubs than they ever
were before, and they're carrying less short clubs to do it with. I
mean, there is just a disconnect there that makes any sense. Yeah,
it makes a lot of sense. And I you know, we've had so
many conversations on golf Smarter about the marketing dollars that go into big club manufacturers,
the giants as you refer to, and that actually that their marketing budgets
are far greater than their R and D budgets. So you know, it's
the I guess it's the concept of being able to make, you know,
one set of clubs to fit a whole lot of people, right am I
am? I on the right track with that. Well, you know,
I mean, for example, one of the major companies, who I won't
name right now, introduce seven new iron models last year. Seven. Wow,
how can you? I mean, how am I going to start through
this as golf? I need? You know, if I like pure blades,
make me a pure blade. If I like you know, if I
say, I just want to make this as easy as possible, to make
me a cavity back with a bunch offsets, I don't slice it and then
give me something in between. I mean seven nobody can do just at seventh.
Well, here's this losing one hundred and twenty million dollars last year.
Yeah, what I don't understand about coming out with seven new lines of clubs
this year and seven next year. They're not changing there? Haven't they reached
the limits of the rules they're allowed to reach as far as the USGA is
concerned. Aren't there limits on what they can do to golf clubs? Yeah?
I mean you've got a coefficient restitution on drivers and fairways, you know,
hollow clubs, and that's been pushed to the limit, you know,
I mean the big companies. It used to be it was kind of like
cars back in the sixties, if any of your readers are that old.
And you know, my parents went out bought my mom and a new car
every three years, and it really wasn't much different than the one they had,
but it would just that's how w's when you traded, and the car
companies, you know, antiquated their models because they wanted to keep this buying
pattern intact. The big golf companies have gotten into what I think is a
death spiral, and they're introducing new models every six or eight, nine months,
ten months. And I'm sorry, guys, if you have bought a
driver in the last four or five years, chances are there is no driver
out there it's going to give you any more distance. Now, I don't
make drivers. The big companies would tell you, you know, yeah,
yeah, yeah, there is. Well, you know, if you can
give me eight or ten extra yards every nine months, I got to be
hitting at four fifty by now, I mean, but I can't. I'm
not and and but but if you look at that, they're coming out with
a new driver, radical new driver every eight or nine or ten months.
Got five, six, eight, ten companies doing that. Yeah, but
radical you mean like they painted the head of it white. Well yeah,
but I mean they're trying to tell you it's radical because you know, they've
they've got people trained that you know, hey, it's August. I'm not
going to buy last year's model because the new one will be out. However,
last year model is two hundred dollars cheaper than it was. Exactly,
maybe I want to do it. I mean, there is one company who
will remain nameless, but you know, they might make drivers and other colors
than black. But they actually they actually you can buy a twenty twelve model
driver. I mean a trade retail store can buy brand new twenty twelve,
twenty eleven, ten, and two thousand and nine product. They're still making
it. It's all in their pricing strategy interest, so they will throw a
new model out there. Polaroid Camera did this for years. They would introduce
the new Polaroid land Camera at you know, this premium price point, and
they would skim all the early adapters. Then they would facelift it, drop
the price twenty bucks, and skim the next round drop and then do it
again. And they do that three or four times. It's the same technology,
but they keep dropping the price point to you know because that guy that
says I'm not buying it at four ninety nine, but when it goes to
two ninety nine, I'm all over it because my friends like their people that
are slower to adapt, you know, and I'm not. I don't want
to. I want I don't want to pick on the big companies too.
If you read my blog, I only pick on about every other blog.
But you know, the thing is, is you spend money, you want
real improvement in your game. I have to believe somewhere in my heart that
when a golfer goes into a store to get a fix and I think about
a new putter, new driver, pair shoes, Somewhere in the back of
your head, you're going and I'm thinking, hoping that this is going to
help me lure my handicap. Isn't that the ultimate motivation? I mean,
you know some golfers, I'm not sure it really is, but somewhere in
the back of the mind, that's some kind of justification. And I'll drift
into an aside here. People talk about people giving up the game of golf,
and golf is in trouble. We're losing players and the most common thing,
and I'm a drift off here is that's good people say. People say,
yeah, that it takes too long and it costs too much money and
it's too hard. Okay, they don't say it's too hard, but that's
what it is. Well, I thought there was. I thought I actually
thought it was the three. The three things that they identified of why people
are more people are leaving the game than starting is that it cost too much,
it takes too long, and it's too hard. Well, they won't
tell you it takes too hard unless you get into a deep focus group with
them, because that's kind of self defeating. They tell you it cost too
much, it takes too much time. Well, you know what snow does,
snow skiing, and it's a growing sport and it's a lot more expensive
than golf because you can't you know, you've got and all the other things.
What they mean is this takes too much time, it costs too much
to have this little fun. But the guy that the guy that's gone from
a twenty two to a nineteen, to a seventeen to a fourteen to a
twelve, he's as he's not quitting either. He's playing more golf because this
is fun. If you're getting better. This is a fun game. And
people that quit they say it takes too much time and it costs too much
money, so they give up golf. So what do they do just lay
around on the sofa for that five or six hours every Sunday and put their
money in their bank account. No, they find another pastime that's more fun
for that amount of time and money. It may be with their kids.
It may be fishing and maybe boating, and maybe stamp collecting or building furniture.
But they're going to find something else to do with their time and money.
Because they have the time and money, they're just going to reallocate it
because they weren't getting a payoff, so they have to identify something and blame
something but alone. But really what it is, it's an individual thing of
people going, I'm just not getting better. This is not fun. This
game is hard, and it's hard because we get a constant dose from TV
that if you could just hit another fifteen yards, that's the secret. And
then I personally, I mean, like, I don't know if any of
your listeners watch. I watched the Avon Masters of the LPGA tournament the other
day. It was one of the best golf tournaments i've ever seen. These
ladies were knocking flags down and making putts from everywhere. There were no meltdowns.
There were just strictly great golf and it was fascinating. And I'm watching
ladies hit you know, eight irons from one to fifty five. They're in
the mountains and I'm sitting there going, you know, this is what we
average golfers can relate to. And then you go over here to PGA Tour
and this guy's like, you know, he had a three thirty two off
the tee and he's got you know, one seventy five left on a par
on a five hundred and fifteen yard part four and he's hitting seven iron.
Really, I can't relate to that. You're you're little what I would related
at the at the Open Championship, the British Open, I related to one
shot and that's when Graham mcdall almost killed those people. Yeah when you hit
that shot, that just like chilling all these people that hit the deck.
Yeah, it's like that I related to and I was like, awesome,
I can do that. So you know, I kind of got off on
ten, but that's a way, and it's just that if you are trying
to break one hundred or trying to break ninety, trying to break eighty,
trying to qualify for a PGA Tour event, if you will focus on getting
good inside one fifty and and what that means is learning how to hit the
ball one thirty two and one forty one and one twenty seven and one sixteen
and knowing that you can dial in that yardage. You know, there's a
little bit of box on that scorecard, and nobody says, well, you
know, John, you hit it in there with a pitching wedge from one
forty two and I hit it in with an eight iron from one forty two,
and we made the same score. But you win the hole because you
hit a shorter club than I did. That isn't the way this game works.
What's the number? And the fact is if all of your listeners,
and I would tell all of you guys, I don't care what skill level
you played to tour player on down. If you will learn how to hit
the ball shorter and more controlled with your scoring clubs and that's eight iron,
nine iron on down, your handicap will go down because nobody cares if you
hit an eight iron from one forty two or pitching wedge. The question is
how close was it? Did you make it do what you wanted it to
do. And anybody can learn how to hit a good, controlled scoring shot
with a high loft golf club because it's all about technique. These LPGA players,
Natalie Goldbis was on fire. She just kept hitting it all over the
hole. And I personally I don't like Natalie's golf swing that much. And
a great lady and super looking gal and all that, but I don't like
her gosween that much. But man, she was firing darts these flags.
She was. She hit more shots close to the hole than I've seen any
male tour player hit in the last two years. I mean, she was
lasering him in distance. Control was perfect, her directional control was perfect.
And the fact is she hits it like a girl. Well that's my goal
in life is to hit it like a girl. If that's what that means,
you know, so, you know, but if you want to go
away for someone, you hit it like a girl. Thank you, thank
you, yeah, thank you very much. You know that girl made eight
birdies and shot sixty five to win that tournament. That I'd love to hit
it like a girl like that. So you know, the point being is
if you learn how to hit it controlled, and you learn how to control
your short clubs, and you know, this is what you know. My
shame was plug here. This is what score forty one sixty one is about.
I looked at the what the tools were given to try to do that
with, and when the whole groove thing came about, and I started rethinking
the old island wedges and trying new grooves, and somehow I got outside the
box. I said, why do we even carry wedges? I mean Ben
Hogan. I'll go back and refer to him. Ben Hogan listed his maximum
yardage with the sand wedge forty yards because it was a big flanged golf club
that was designed to get the club ball out of the bunker, and Hogan
knew it also was a very good pitching club for short pitch shots, but
it was not a full swing golf club because the weight was so low in
the club it ballooned the ball in the air. And all of your listeners,
I'll ask every one of you, for every one of you that can
legitimately tell me that you hit your wedges too low, there is one point
seven million of you that hit them too high, because they're designed to make
the ball go in the air. And you already have fifty to fifty five
degrees loft in this club. You don't also need all the weight low in
the golf club. And so what we did is we looked at the weighting
of the scoring clubs. We threw away this whole term of wedges, and
we looked at how can I give you pinpoint distance control so I can give
you a vertically enhanced sweet spot. Because we all know when you hit a
wedge shot high in the face, it doesn't go anywhere. Well, there's
nothing up there. Look at your golf club, Look at the way it's
designed. There's nothing up there. But when you hit one real thin,
it goes forever because that's where all the mass is. Well, I mean,
we even that out in the score forty one sixty one line. The
other thing is we looked at at matched irons. The industry designs six irons
at twenty four to twenty seven to twenty eight degrees aloft. They test it,
tweak it, make it right, and then they say, okay,
make all the irons look like this. A six iron to a peak club
is sixteen or seventeen degrees in a modern set, you know where you have.
If you go sixteen or seventeen degrees the other way from a six iron,
you have a driver. Now, nobody ever said I love my six
iron? Can you make a driver look like that? In fact, we've
even found over the last ten or fifteen years that if you go down about
eight or ten degrees lower than the six iron into the four and three iron
range, this thing called a hybrid works a lot better because we can make
that low lofted club easy to get up in the air by moving the way
low and back. Conversely, when we go to the high lofted club,
already got the loft on the club. I've got forty or forty five,
fifty to fifty five degrees a loft. It's going in the air, but
the average golfer is struggling to keep it out of the clouds. He doesn't
know how far it's going to go, because the harder his wings, the
higher it goes, maybe the shorter it goes. Well. Conversely, if
we move the weight up on that club and rethink how that club ought to
be used and what you're after that's what score forty one sixty one does it.
It's a total reinvention of the short end of the set. It's an
approach of making all of your money clubs your club's over forty be a match
set within a set. I have to breathe now. I was wondering,
like, what happened? Why'd you stop? Well, you know the thing
is, is that what you want from your scoring clubs, your club's over
forty degrees is you want three things. You want feel because these are the
clubs that you hit in between shots a lot. You don't really try to
hit in between foreorns very much, but you're always hitting in between pitching wedges
and nine irons and gap wedges. So you got to have feel. That's
part of the shaft, that's part of the head metallurgy. We've done two
great things there. The second thing you want is distance control. Like I
said, thirty feet longer short from one seventy is great. Thirty feet longer
short from ninety is horrible. Well, I remember the last time that you
and I were together on this show back in November. We use the title
of give me ten feet closer over ten yards farther any day of the week.
And I've repeated that so many times that I can't tell you. When
I say that to people, their face it says if I kicked him in
the head with something. They've never thought of it. It's like, oh,
yeah, yeah, you're right. We asked, We offered one time,
and this is we have this thing called the Score Project. We kick
around and one of the things we've done is taken fifteen eighteen handicapped players,
twelve pandicap players out on the golf course even sixes and eights with one of
our top assistant pros who's a scratch guy. I mean, he's a good
player, and we've taken them out with Joe and we've let them play nine
holes and they get to play Joe's drive and see what they shoot. The
next nine hole, Joe plays their ball in after they get it inside nine
iron range, which for Joe is about one point okay, no matter how
many it takes them to get there. What we find is they usually drop
their score by one shot on the nine if any. On the nine holes
they got to play his drive, But on the nine holes that he played
their ball in from nine iron range in he usually beats them by five to
nine shots. So where do you think you should spend your practice time?
If you get better inside nine iron range, If you get better, I
don't care whether that's one hundred and five yards or on hundred and forty five
yards. If you get better inside nine iron range, when you put a
nine ron un less in your hand, I don't care what your handicap is.
Your next your next shot should be a verty, but it maybe if
you're a twelve or fifteen eighteen handicapper, I mean give yourself thirty thirty five
feet twenty five feet. If you're a low single digit you ought to be
hitting those shots on the average fifteen eighteen feet from the hole, but you
ought to be knocking the flag down every once a while with those two and
three and five foot birdies. And if anybody can learn to do that,
it is a one hundred percent technique, zero percent strength. I mean it
is. I mean, I've got to you know. I mean you look
at in look at the ladies that play professional golf, watch them drive tax
I mean, I guarantee you the men on tour are If there's such a
thing as a body strength index, the men are three to five times stronger
than the ladies are more, and yet the ladies can hit it just as
good, you know, and I'm not sure they're not better. To be
honest with your inside one fifty now, I mean, I'm not going to
denigrate the men's game, but you know, these ladies are good. And
it's not about strength. It's about technique and anybody can learn it. Not
that you're going to be an LPGA Tour player, but I would tell you
the average better amateur at every club cannot hold his own with an LPGA Tour
player on a sixty five to sixty eight hundred yard golf court. He'll get
drummed every time. I've always tried to keep in my head of turning three
shots into two inside of one hundred and fifty yards exactly, but I don't
succeed. But I gotta tell you since and full disclosure here, I've been
playing Score the Score golf. It's forty one sixty one wedges now since it's
getting close to a year, I mean probably since I was September October of
last year, and I've fallen in love with these clays. You know.
It's like I get excited when I can pull them out because it's like I'm
feeling and this is something I've always focused on and wanted to achieve. His
confidence. I just feel confident that I'm going to hit the distance I want
to hit. I'm going to get the ball to stick where it hits or
maybe even get a little backspin. It's like, well, who I did
it? You know, because it took me a long time to figure out
how in the hell you hit backspin? Let alone do it. I still
them figured out to drop, but I don't really care. But it's it's
just a confidence factor that I have using these wedges that have made such a
huge difference in the way I approach my shots. Well, and we hear
that all the time. And if you spend a little time and you get
confident with these clubs, you know, and I'm going back to the modern
technology. So you have a very thin faced Losen or Gravity nine and pe
club in your bag, and then you have a break to these aftermarket wedges.
And let's be honest, guys, the wedges that are on the rack
this year from Didlers, from Cleveland, from every other company looked just like
they did forty years ago. What other category will that sell in your shoes,
don't look like the balls aren't like the teas. Even I used to
tell people, you have two things in your bag with forty year old technology.
That's your your wedges and your golf tees. And I can't say that
about teas anymore. And they got all this technology now, thank god it
closed. Don't look alike. But the point being is that is that wedges
are just that they are wedges. They are a throwback to days of persimmon
woods. They're not any different. And right in the middle of money range,
you have your nine and your p that looked like a six iron,
that were designed to work like a six iron. They're not precision shot making
instruments. Then you take a complete skip, totally different shaft, totally different
flex, totally different head design, totally different everything to your gap wedge or
your sand or whatever you carry. Right in the middle of money range,
you have this massive disconnect between the type of club you're playing, and that
just I mean, there's no logical reason why you would do that, except
that's the way it's always been done. Well woods. Roy's made out of
persimmon two And when's the last time he saw somebody with one of those yeah,
you know, golfpit. Yeah, exactly. Golfspikes were always metal,
and the last time you saw somebody wearing those other than the PGA, What
is the last time you were allowed to wear metal? Well, you have
to be on the PGA tour and then you can do it right, exactly
exactly what I have to be my nostalgia is I do miss that that idea
of coming out of the locker room with your metal spikes and walking across the
sidewalk kind of got your game face on it. Well, this sound of
that, it's like the sound of it's like I got my game bas Yeah.
Yeah. Anybody who's ever put on spikes for baseball or played a little
leg or something to get you to that sounded on the gravel, It's awesome.
Hey, listen, Terry, we have kind of reached our thirty minute
limit a little bit past it, but that's okay. So there's a couple
of things I want to bring up. First of all, is can you
and I continue this conversation on a member's only episode next? Oh? Absolutely,
because I I you know, obviously you not only have history knowledge,
but you have an opinion and at least one at least one, and so
I want to really focus in on on scoring, on how to improve our
scoring with these any clubs as you like to refer them as, I'm not
going to call them wedges anymore. So we can we do a member's only
episode next time. Let's do that. We'll get into the details of the
secrets of the tour players, of how they build that technique I'm talking about.
Okay, good. You know we want to help people play. I
mean, that's the driving force behind everything I do is if there's a better
way to get the ball in the hole, I want to come up with
it. I want to help people get it and score. Forty one to
sixty one is something I'm extremely proud of. It's a culmination of thirty year
career in designing golf clubs, and I just I believe we've pulled out all
the stops here and kind of help anybody get better. We've got Champions Tour
players playing them. We've got one hundred shooters playing them. We've got ladies
we've got on the LPGA Tour, We've got Champions Tour guys, we've got
developmental Tour players. You know, Stephanie Louden is an official ambassador for US
on the LPGA tour, and she kind of comes up to that whole hit
it like a girl. Thank Stephanie has got a great short game and so
we and we actually have a set in play at the Pine Valley Club Championship
which starts this weekend, so we know we got at least one set in
play there, so we'll pull for that guy too. Well. Unfortunately it's
last weekend. If you listen to it as soon as we published this show,
and if you listen later on that's okay too. So that's it for
today. And Terry, I'm excited about coming back and really focusing in on
short game scoring. Yeah me too. I'm looking forward to the questions that
your listeners send in. It's always fun answering specific questions from real people.
Terry, thanks a lot, buddy, Thank you, Brett. I appreciate
it. Look forward to the next time.