Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and fifty eight,
Speaker 1: published on November twenty, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
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Speaker 3: If you're playing the right teas for your skill level,
Speaker 3: in your distance, you're going to hit seventy eight to
Speaker 3: seventy five percent of your shots inside nine iron range.
Speaker 3: Do you give that seventy five percent of your practice time?
Speaker 3: If not, that's one part of your problem now. Nineteen
Speaker 3: forty nine, Ben Hogan in his books at the maximum
Speaker 3: distance of a sandwich is forty yards. I was with
Speaker 3: a group of golfers last night that reached from seven
Speaker 3: to eighteen handicap, and the average person there said they
Speaker 3: hit their sandwich routinely eighty and eight five yards. I said, really, well,
Speaker 3: then you must be twice as good as Ben Hogan
Speaker 3: using it is over forty What we have in our
Speaker 3: bag that we call wedges our very short range golf
Speaker 3: clubs twenty to twenty five yard golf clubs, but we
Speaker 3: use them in a full swing environment today, So the
Speaker 3: fact that you have distance control issues may not really
Speaker 3: be your fault. It may be the tools is sus
Speaker 3: bag because you're a new golfer. There's also some technique
Speaker 3: and probably some time is used there, but the third
Speaker 3: element of that is the tools. And if you don't
Speaker 3: have the right tools in your bag, you're not going
Speaker 3: to have good distance control.
Speaker 1: More Score Zone Short Game Academy with Terry Kaylor. This
Speaker 1: is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 4: Each week we tap the best minds in golf to
Speaker 4: help lower your scores with tips, drills, insights and advice
Speaker 4: in conversation with course pros, architects, authors, players, teaching gurus
Speaker 4: and coaches. Is here's your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Golf Smarter for members only.
Speaker 3: Terry, Well, good evening.
Speaker 1: It is a good evening, indeed, So here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Usually Terry Taylor joins us for about ten minutes on
Speaker 1: the regular Golf Smarter episodes. But I thought it would
Speaker 1: be fun because we're getting so many questions in that
Speaker 1: we can't answer all the time. I thought it'd be
Speaker 1: fun to spend an entire members only episode with Terry
Speaker 1: answering more of these questions. So here's the deal. Usually
Speaker 1: on the Short Game Academy Score Zone Short Game Academy,
Speaker 1: if we use your question, you're eligible to win a
Speaker 1: free scoring club from score Golf. But because this is
Speaker 1: outside of the normal range, our normal realm. Here, here's
Speaker 1: the way we're going to play this one out. You
Speaker 1: are still eligible if we use your question in this episode,
Speaker 1: you are eligible to get a free scoring club from
Speaker 1: score Golf. But there are two caveats to that one.
Speaker 1: If we use your question, you have to email me
Speaker 1: and said Fred, I heard my question. So the way
Speaker 1: to do it is click on the Heyfred button at
Speaker 1: golfsmarter dot com and say I heard my question on
Speaker 1: the members only episode. The other element that we have
Speaker 1: to we have to throw in a curveball here is
Speaker 1: you're going to have to pay for the shipping. But
Speaker 1: that's all you're going to have to pay for. You're
Speaker 1: going to get one of these amazing clubs. You'll get one,
Speaker 1: You'll pay for the shipping, and then you're going to
Speaker 1: want to use your golf Smarter for members only discount
Speaker 1: you're fifteen percent with the coupon code golf Smarter fifteen
Speaker 1: to get discount and buy the whole set because it's
Speaker 1: just going to change your game and you're going to
Speaker 1: enjoy yourself so much more. Terry, is that fair? Is
Speaker 1: that an okay way to do?
Speaker 3: All?
Speaker 1: Right? Well, then then it works. Okay. So We've got
Speaker 1: four really interesting questions that I'd like to cover today.
Speaker 1: See if we can do this, and we have as
Speaker 1: much time as we want to do it, So I'm
Speaker 1: going to go start right here. Let's do this one math.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Edter of Durham, North Carolina right and says, what is
Speaker 1: the recommended approach for handling flyer lies around the green?
Speaker 1: Great question? In my area, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: Bermuda grasses and when cut high, there can be a
Speaker 1: lot of space between the ball and the ground. Should
Speaker 1: you still try to hit down on the ball to
Speaker 1: impart spin? It seems to me, at least to him
Speaker 1: to Matthew, that there's no way you're going to compress
Speaker 1: the ball when it's sitting up so much. But trying
Speaker 1: to scoop the ball with the ascending blow doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like the right approach. Either, So what are the alternatives?
Speaker 1: What are your suggestions?
Speaker 3: Well, we played the Bermuda rough down here in Texas too,
Speaker 3: so I'm very familiar with that. First of all, a
Speaker 3: flyer lie, there's nothing you can do about that. The
Speaker 3: ball is going to fly out of that lie. Its
Speaker 3: sitting up in the Bermuda. You're going to get grasped
Speaker 3: between the club face and the ball, which is going
Speaker 3: to fill grooves on the club with grass, which is
Speaker 3: going to make the club. It's kind of like your
Speaker 3: car hydroplaning. That ball is going to hydroplane, so to speak,
Speaker 3: off the face of that golf club because the grooves
Speaker 3: are going to fill with grass.
Speaker 1: Could you I'm sorry for interrupting, but can you explain
Speaker 1: flyer lie? Because you know some of this inside baseball stuff.
Speaker 1: Not everybody knows every term.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, a flyer lies when the ball is sitting
Speaker 3: kind of halfway up in the stems or blades of
Speaker 3: the grass and the ball the bottom of the ball
Speaker 3: is not really on the ground. The bottom of the
Speaker 3: ball is above the ground and there's a grass around
Speaker 3: the ball, so it's nestled in this grass. What happens
Speaker 3: with the flyer lye what we call a flyer lie
Speaker 3: is you cannot make crisp impact on the golf ball
Speaker 3: because this grass around it. So when you hit that,
Speaker 3: when you make impact at that fraction of a second,
Speaker 3: this grass between the ball and the club face is
Speaker 3: going to press into the grooves of the club fase,
Speaker 3: so it creates an effect similar to when your car
Speaker 3: hydroplanes on the highway. There is a loss of friction
Speaker 3: there because this grass is between the club face and
Speaker 3: the golf ball and the grooves i e. The tread
Speaker 3: of the tires is now filled with material, so there
Speaker 3: is not a coefficient of friction happening. So the ball
Speaker 3: rockets off of the club face with a minimum of spin,
Speaker 3: and you see one of two things happen. Either the ball,
Speaker 3: which is kind of a quasi knuckleball, it either just
Speaker 3: flies forever, or in a windy condition, you'll quite often
Speaker 3: see the ball jump up in the air and then
Speaker 3: just look like it's being thrown back to the ground
Speaker 3: because it doesn't have underspin back spin to keep it airborne.
Speaker 3: So you'll see one of those two impacts. In other words,
Speaker 3: the effect of this is you don't know how far
Speaker 3: that ball is going to go. How it's going to
Speaker 3: stay airborne. There are some and a flyer lies is
Speaker 3: the penalty of being in the rough. This is what
Speaker 3: the whole USGA groove rule was about, is to penalize
Speaker 3: you for hitting it in the rough. And with the
Speaker 3: old hard edged square grooves, you could cut through that
Speaker 3: material and still impart backsmen to the ball from a
Speaker 3: flyer lie. And what the USGA watch I'm kind of
Speaker 3: diverting here, but kind of what happened is the USGA
Speaker 3: saw that there was a deteriorating relationship between hitting the
Speaker 3: ball in the fairway and scoring because guys could hit
Speaker 3: these square groove wedges as good out of the rough
Speaker 3: as they could out of the fairway, and that took
Speaker 3: away the premium of hitting the ball in the fairway.
Speaker 3: So back to your flyer line, what happens is you're
Speaker 3: going to get material between the club face and the ball.
Speaker 3: You cannot pinch the ball into the turf. You can't
Speaker 3: trap the ball or however you want to express that,
Speaker 3: because the ball isn't sitting down on the turf, suspended
Speaker 3: up in the stems and leaves of the grass. What
Speaker 3: you have to allow for iss no matter how skilled
Speaker 3: you are. This ball is going to jump on you
Speaker 3: a little bit. This ball is not going to have
Speaker 3: the spin that you would normally effect to have. So
Speaker 3: if you've got this flyer lie and a close cut pin,
Speaker 3: if there is trouble right behind the pin, your best
Speaker 3: shot may be to play right or left of that flag.
Speaker 3: Your best shot may be to allow for that ball
Speaker 3: to hit short of the green and run on. One
Speaker 3: of my favorite approaches to a flyer lie is to
Speaker 3: take a lower lofted golf club and nine are and
Speaker 3: even a pitching wedge where you have less loft, so
Speaker 3: not as much of the club is going to go
Speaker 3: under the ball, and play that ball to kind of
Speaker 3: jump out of there with the minimum of spin and
Speaker 3: bump and run it into the green. Even if it's
Speaker 3: an eighty or ninety or one hundred and twenty yard shot,
Speaker 3: play that ball with the lower lofted club, a softer swing,
Speaker 3: and play that ball to release into the green. If
Speaker 3: that green is protected by water or a big bunker,
Speaker 3: this is a hole, maybe you need to consider, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get this shot to stop, and
Speaker 3: if there's trouble behind the green and trouble shark, maybe
Speaker 3: this is a hole that I lay it up short
Speaker 3: of the trouble into the fairway where I can then
Speaker 3: nip a wedge in make sure I don't make worse
Speaker 3: than bogie on the sole. No, not every hole is
Speaker 3: a par hole. Not every hole as a birdie hole.
Speaker 3: Some holes aren't even a bogie hole. This is where
Speaker 3: reading your lie and knowing what you can expect to
Speaker 3: be able to do out of that lie determine the
Speaker 3: way you play the rest of that hole. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: have to take your medicine in this game and go,
Speaker 3: you know, I hit it over here in trouble, I'm
Speaker 3: going to have to play this sole for no worse
Speaker 3: than a bogie and still give myself a chance at
Speaker 3: par Instead of saying I think I can pull this
Speaker 3: shot off. I've never done it before in my life,
Speaker 3: but I think I can pull it off this time,
Speaker 3: and then you end up with a six or seven
Speaker 3: or eight.
Speaker 1: Practice. Don't try it for the first time when you're
Speaker 1: on the course.
Speaker 3: Practice Well, you know, it's like that holiday in commercial
Speaker 3: and the guys you a surgeon. He goes, no, but
Speaker 3: I did stay at a holiday in the press last night.
Speaker 3: I think they're down here in the South. There's a
Speaker 3: saying about the famous last words of a redneck, and
Speaker 3: that's hole my beer and watch this.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't even know what happens afterwards. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that was good. That was really interesting. It made
Speaker 1: me think about on the last score Short Game Academy
Speaker 1: that we did, and you were talking about keeping your
Speaker 1: hands in front of on the short ones, keep your hands,
Speaker 1: making sure that you keep your hands out in front
Speaker 1: of the club. And I actually went out and played today.
Speaker 1: I had so much fun. It's been so long since
Speaker 1: I've had a chance to play a great five mile walk.
Speaker 1: Just loved it. Anyway, So I went out in the
Speaker 1: practice green before the round and I was working on
Speaker 1: that shot I was working on. I was so excited
Speaker 1: because I remembered what you said. I was working on
Speaker 1: get my hands out in front of me, not gripping
Speaker 1: too tight. And it all worked until I got on
Speaker 1: the golf course and then I just wee right across
Speaker 1: the top of the.
Speaker 3: Green from the driving race to the golf course. That's
Speaker 3: the longest trip in golf.
Speaker 1: Well, let's work our way from the green backwards. Here's
Speaker 1: the next question. This one comes from Matt McElroy. He
Speaker 1: lives in Brentwood, New Hampshire and is a longtime Golf
Speaker 1: Smarter listener. So I'm happy to ask your question, Matt.
Speaker 1: And again, if we use it, you hear it, send
Speaker 1: me an email saying you heard us, use it and
Speaker 1: we'll put you in touch with the folks that score golf.
Speaker 1: You can get your club and you just have to
Speaker 1: pay for the shipping. So he wants to know how
Speaker 1: do we know which scoring clubs? See that he even
Speaker 1: put scoring club? This is how well he listens. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good. How do we go, yo, Matt? How do
Speaker 1: we know which scoring club to use? From the sand?
Speaker 1: Are different types of sand a factor?
Speaker 3: Well, you have two things when you're in a bunker, Matt.
Speaker 3: There's two things you need to consider, and the first
Speaker 3: thing is the texture of the sand, and the second
Speaker 3: thing is how far do you want this ball to
Speaker 3: fly and how do you want it to roll out?
Speaker 3: So you know, it's the same thing the decision you
Speaker 3: make in the fairway, whether you're going to chip the
Speaker 3: ball to release and run or whether you're going to
Speaker 3: try to throw it all the way back to the
Speaker 3: flag with your lob wedge. Let's take the bunker texture first,
Speaker 3: the softer the texture of the sand, the higher bounce
Speaker 3: club you want to use. So if you're carrying three
Speaker 3: or four scoring clubs, and in our world we have
Speaker 3: this patented vesol that combines a high and a low
Speaker 3: bounce into each club, but you still have some variances
Speaker 3: on how much bounce it has. So know your golf clubs, Matt.
Speaker 3: First thing, know your golf clubs, and if you're in
Speaker 3: a very soft, fluffy bunker, take a club that you
Speaker 3: can put more bounce into that you can lay the
Speaker 3: club open. It increases the bounce and helps the club
Speaker 3: reject out of that sand. If you're in a firm bunker,
Speaker 3: maybe a rain last night or the sprinklers were running
Speaker 3: and or just that particular golf course has tighter firm
Speaker 3: or sand, then go with your lower bounce golf club.
Speaker 3: There's really nothing wrong with hitting bunker shots with gap wedges,
Speaker 3: even with your pitching wedge you're a nine iron. These
Speaker 3: clubs have low bounce and you can lay the club
Speaker 3: open still and get a little more bounce out of it.
Speaker 3: But if you have a long seventy eighty ninety foot
Speaker 3: bunker shot, don't grab your lob wedge and walk in
Speaker 3: there and try to make a big, old hard swing
Speaker 3: to fly it all the way back to that hole.
Speaker 3: If you've got a lot of green to work with,
Speaker 3: which typically you would on a long bunker shot, go
Speaker 3: ahead and take that nine iron or pitching wedge and
Speaker 3: lay the club open and make a softer swing where
Speaker 3: if you catch it a little thin, you're not quite
Speaker 3: so penalized. If you catch it a little heavy, you're
Speaker 3: not quite so penalized. I'm a big believer that we're
Speaker 3: all trying to play this game for a number and
Speaker 3: look at your risk reward on any shot. And I
Speaker 3: was just joking about the hole my beer and watch this,
Speaker 3: but a lot of golfers play the game that way.
Speaker 3: You know. I don't know if I can pull this off,
Speaker 3: but I saw it in a cartoon once, or I
Speaker 3: saw it on tour once. But you know, play within
Speaker 3: your skill set. So firm sand go to your lower
Speaker 3: lofted club. Longer shots, go to your lower lofted club
Speaker 3: and give yourself the maximum margin of error and the
Speaker 3: way to gauge the sand when you walk into the
Speaker 3: bunk or feel it in your feet, you know, when
Speaker 3: you set into a shot, if you feel like this
Speaker 3: is pretty crusty, tight sand, and you step in there
Speaker 3: and wiggle your feet a little bit and find that, hey,
Speaker 3: there's a little crust, but it's real soft underneath. Don't
Speaker 3: be afraid to go back out and get a different
Speaker 3: golf club, you know, get a club with a little
Speaker 3: high bounce. Uh. Soft fluffy bunkers are the hardest bunkers
Speaker 3: to play. That's why you never see them on the
Speaker 3: PGA Tour. If you look at a PGA Tour, those
Speaker 3: guys never get fried eggs, they never get buried lies.
Speaker 3: They play firm, wet bunkers. Because you can spin the ball,
Speaker 3: you can make the ball do a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: out of that. Uh, most of us play much harder
Speaker 3: bunkers than the PGA Tour players play. So don't expect
Speaker 3: to hit bunker shots like they do.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: No? Absolutely. The PGA Tour has the standard for sand texture,
Speaker 3: and that's why when we see on the PGA Tour
Speaker 3: of the ball always flies into the bunker, his splashes
Speaker 3: then releases over and they're they're firm, wet sand. And
Speaker 3: that's the easiest bunker shot there is is firm wet sand,
Speaker 3: you can spin the ball, you make it do all
Speaker 3: kinds of things out of that, because that's about the
Speaker 3: TV audience they want. They want to see these guys,
Speaker 3: you know, knock the flags down.
Speaker 1: Well, and I remember I've heard numerous times where they're
Speaker 1: the announcers saying, well, he's going to try to hit
Speaker 1: the bunker on this one, so it doesn't go hit
Speaker 1: the green and bounce over right from it from a
Speaker 1: far distance that they prefer to hit in the bunker.
Speaker 3: Well, I know exactly what they're going to get. We
Speaker 3: just talked about the flyer line, right. You don't get
Speaker 3: flyer lives out of a bunker, right, And and these
Speaker 3: tour players, I mean, and granted these guys have phenomenal skills.
Speaker 3: They spend hours and hours and hours in bunkers, but
Speaker 3: think of how good your bunker play would bleat be
Speaker 3: if every bunker you ever went into from now on
Speaker 3: was exactly the same m that's what they get. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but they are the best player in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well of course can you And hey, here's blatant
Speaker 1: plug for your your product line, but can you explain
Speaker 1: more about VSOL technology because someone's I was showing off
Speaker 1: the clubs today, as I do every time I'm on
Speaker 1: the golf course, going oh, you got to check these out,
Speaker 1: and we appreciate that absolutely, and I can get you
Speaker 1: a discount and so and so it's someone says, well,
Speaker 1: what's the uh, you know, what's the bounce on this?
Speaker 1: And I was like, VS Soul patent did, I'm really what?
Speaker 1: So can you help us that? Explain that? Again?
Speaker 3: Well, in conventional wedges before we created the v SOL,
Speaker 3: you have high bounce and low bounce wedges, and the
Speaker 3: big manufacturers talk about high bounce is good for fluffy
Speaker 3: lives and soft bunkers and low bounce is good for
Speaker 3: tide lines and firm bunkers. Well, what we just talked
Speaker 3: about is, you know, there's not a listener out here
Speaker 3: has a clue what the next bunker lie is going
Speaker 3: to look like, absolutely, and or what the next fairway
Speaker 3: or roughly, so, I don't know what I'm going to
Speaker 3: have for my next webshot, but I do know that
Speaker 3: the wedge I have in my bag better be able
Speaker 3: to handle it. And so we created this thing called
Speaker 3: the v SOL And what it does is it takes
Speaker 3: a low bounce in the main part of the soul
Speaker 3: and compliments that with a very high bound in the
Speaker 3: first quarter inch of the soul. So we essentially combine
Speaker 3: a high bounce and a low bounce into each club
Speaker 3: so that you never find a lie your club doesn't like.
Speaker 3: One of our customers many years ago put it better
Speaker 3: than I could ever put it, which kind of made
Speaker 3: me mad because I'm a copywriter. But he said, it
Speaker 3: lets me dial in exactly the bounce I need for
Speaker 3: whatever line my ball finds, and that's really what you
Speaker 3: need to do. You need to be able to dial
Speaker 3: in the bounce our club like any other club. If
Speaker 3: you lay it open, you increase the bounce. If you
Speaker 3: square it up, you decrease the bounce. But within that framework,
Speaker 3: we give you a wider range. So you can take
Speaker 3: your fifty seven or fifty nine or fifty five degree
Speaker 3: score and you can make it a low bounce wedge,
Speaker 3: you can make it a high bounce wedge. You can
Speaker 3: make it do what you want it to do. And
Speaker 3: one of the other comments I always loved from a customers,
Speaker 3: he said, my wedge just knows what it needs to be.
Speaker 1: So I bet you like that comment, I mean, and.
Speaker 3: That's the feedback we get. It's a different soul, it's patented,
Speaker 3: it's different than anything you'll find in the store on
Speaker 3: anybody else's wedge. I encourage all of your readers to
Speaker 3: try it. If you don't like it, send it back
Speaker 3: to us. That's always our guarantee. And I like that.
Speaker 3: A shameless plug. No no, no, no to pay better go.
Speaker 1: Now you're allowed to make shameless plugs, and the guarantee
Speaker 1: is a huge one. Give me another five seconds on that.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, our whole thing is, we sell a
Speaker 3: lot of clubs online. We're a young company. We don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of distribution. You can find them in
Speaker 3: most of the ED and watch stores now, but your
Speaker 3: club probably doesn't have it yet. We haven't gotten out there.
Speaker 3: So if you go online read about our golf club
Speaker 3: and decide you like, you know, hey, this looks pretty
Speaker 3: interesting to me, then buy one. Go play it by
Speaker 3: a full set, Go play them, because what we've taken
Speaker 3: is a full set approach to the short game. We're
Speaker 3: not about sandwiches and lob wedges and gap wedges. We're
Speaker 3: about the systemized approach to the short end of your set,
Speaker 3: and we want you to be better inside nine iron range,
Speaker 3: and we have built a set of golf clubs. That's
Speaker 3: all we do is nine inron on In. We've been
Speaker 3: doing and this is kind of an aside, but we've
Speaker 3: been doing a very deep dive into PGA Tour statistics
Speaker 3: and what we really are finding is is the difference
Speaker 3: between the haves and the have nots on the PGA
Speaker 3: Tour is not their long range performance, it's their short
Speaker 3: range performance. It's a very interesting study that we'll be
Speaker 3: publishing probably later this year or early next.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that that's a really good lead into
Speaker 1: our next question, and this one comes from Ron hampl
Speaker 1: who's in Portland, Oregon. And let me say before I
Speaker 1: read the question. Ron, listen, I've been playing golf now
Speaker 1: well for about fifteen years, and I still consider myself
Speaker 1: a new golfer. I learned stuff from these interviews that
Speaker 1: I'm like that are epiphanies for me that I'm like York.
Speaker 1: I never knew that, you know. So when you say
Speaker 1: I'm fairly new to golf, having taken the game up
Speaker 1: eighteen months ago, you're an infant. You know. There's just
Speaker 1: so much to It's true, there's so much to learn,
Speaker 1: and some of the stuff that you hear, but it
Speaker 1: takes years before you even get it. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing that I find so fascinating about this game is
Speaker 1: that I'm like, you know, I've heard it over and
Speaker 1: over and then I'm finally, Oh, that's what they meant,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of stuff. So, anyway, this is
Speaker 1: Ron's question. He said, my play from tea to about
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty yards or so is really coming
Speaker 1: along about seventy to seventy five percent driving accuracy. That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: That's what better anybody on tour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know what, I hate to break this
Speaker 1: to you, Ron, but if you make it, if your
Speaker 1: ball is not in the fairway and it's in the
Speaker 1: first cut, then you're not really you're driving.
Speaker 3: Practicing your driver. You're as good as you're going to
Speaker 3: get game. Right.
Speaker 1: So, he says, here's what's holding back my scoring back
Speaker 1: is what happens from inside one hundred and twenty yards.
Speaker 1: My short game distance control is all over the place.
Speaker 1: Why we'll adding a wedge or two to my sett
Speaker 1: at that end of my set make my distances any
Speaker 1: more accurate. In other words, he says, is my lack
Speaker 1: of consistency due to the skills of being a new
Speaker 1: golfer or incorrect club gaps. Yes, thank you.
Speaker 3: Next question, so Ron, we're here to offer absolution tonight.
Speaker 3: It's not your fault. What happens is that the scoring
Speaker 3: range performance inside nine iron range inside eight iron range.
Speaker 3: I've created this little thing. I call it the scoring triangle.
Speaker 3: And on one side of the triangle is technique, and
Speaker 3: you have to learn a good technique for hitting short
Speaker 3: range shots. The cool thing about that is that if
Speaker 3: you learn a good technique for hitting short range shots,
Speaker 3: that same technique will help you hit mid range shots
Speaker 3: and long range shots. But the one side of the
Speaker 3: triangle is technique. Second side of the triangle is time.
Speaker 3: This is the bulk of your shots on the golf course.
Speaker 3: If you take your drives and your putts out, you're
Speaker 3: gonna hit seven. If you're playing the right teas for
Speaker 3: your skill level in your distance, you're gonna hit seventy
Speaker 3: to seventy five percent of your shots inside nine iron range.
Speaker 3: Do you give that seventy five percent of your practice time?
Speaker 3: If not, that's one part of your problem. The third
Speaker 3: side of the triangles you have technique, you have time
Speaker 3: The third side of the triangle is tools, and you
Speaker 3: have to have the right tools. And what we have
Speaker 3: in our bags today, I say we, I should say
Speaker 3: you guys have in your bags today because I've got
Speaker 3: score forty one sixty ones in my bag. So does spread? Yes,
Speaker 3: I do, and at about ten thousand other people, congratulations,
Speaker 3: thank you. But what you have in your bag and
Speaker 3: you can I can prove this to you photographically. I
Speaker 3: can prove this to you technically. You have these things
Speaker 3: that you've called wedges that have not changed in the
Speaker 3: waiting distribution and the basic design sixty years. I have
Speaker 3: in my collection of nineteen fifty vintage Vaulding tournament model
Speaker 3: that if I rechromed it and put slip graphics on it,
Speaker 3: you would swear it's the coolest new thing in wedge.
Speaker 3: It's got some really neat, nuanced grinds on it. But
Speaker 3: the essence of a wedge is that it has all
Speaker 3: the weight on the bottom of the soul and a
Speaker 3: very thin upper three fourths of the face, and that
Speaker 3: produces great disparity of ball performance off of the face
Speaker 3: of that golf club. So your distance control issues very
Speaker 3: well might be sixty percent technique seventy percent technique, but
Speaker 3: they may only be thirty percent technique because your new
Speaker 3: brand A brand, B, brand C. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: slam anybody looks just like your old brand, A brand, B,
Speaker 3: brand C, because they look like this nineteen fifty spaulting
Speaker 3: tournament model now nineteen forty nine. Ben Hogan and his
Speaker 3: book said the maximum distance of a sandwich is forty yards.
Speaker 3: I was with a group of golfers last night that
Speaker 3: ranged from seven to eighteen handicap, and the average person
Speaker 3: there said they hit their sandwich routinely eighty and eighty
Speaker 3: five yards. I said, really, well, then you must be
Speaker 3: twice as good as Ben Hogan hit his over forty.
Speaker 3: So the tool is not designed. What we have in
Speaker 3: our bag that we call wedges are very short range
Speaker 3: golf clubs, twenty to twenty five yard golf clubs, but
Speaker 3: we use them in a full swing environment today. So
Speaker 3: the fact that you have distance control issues may not
Speaker 3: really be your fault. It may be the tools. I
Speaker 3: suspect because you're a new golfer. There's also some technique
Speaker 3: and probably some time issues there, but the third element
Speaker 3: of that is the tools. And if you don't have
Speaker 3: the right tools in your bag, you're not going to
Speaker 3: have good distance control. And what we see happening in
Speaker 3: golf is the companies are strengthening the losts of our irons.
Speaker 3: You know, a pea club, as I call it, has
Speaker 3: gone from when I was in my twenties forty nine
Speaker 3: or fifty degrees to in my thirties forty seven or
Speaker 3: forty eight degrees. Now I'm sixty, and I see companies
Speaker 3: making peak clubs of forty three and forty four degrees.
Speaker 3: We're compressing the set by strengthening these short clubs, but
Speaker 3: we're not giving you better tools to fill in those gaps. So,
Speaker 3: and I'll go back to this tool question. I had.
Speaker 3: A guy told me the day he got a new
Speaker 3: set of XYZ irons, and he said, they're unbelievable. He said,
Speaker 3: I used to not be able to hit a pitching wedge,
Speaker 3: but one point fifteen and I'm hitting my pitching wage
Speaker 3: one twenty five now. And I said, really, well, what
Speaker 3: do you hit when you're one hundred and fifteen yards
Speaker 3: from the hole then, because you still need.
Speaker 1: That shot, Yeah, you really do.
Speaker 3: They took that away from you. But what they did
Speaker 3: is they didn't give you an extra ten yards with
Speaker 3: your foreign, but they did give you an extra ten
Speaker 3: yards with your peak club, so they compressed your set.
Speaker 3: The other thing I look at is I look at
Speaker 3: the guys on the PGA tour and carrying four or
Speaker 3: five clubs that go over two hundred yards, some of
Speaker 3: them six, not counting the driver. Well, outside of two
Speaker 3: hundred yards, the difference between average distance to the hole
Speaker 3: for the best guy on tour and the worst guy
Speaker 3: on tour is nine feet. The best guy on tour
Speaker 3: averages forty two feet proximity to the hole from outside
Speaker 3: two hundred yards. The number one twenty five guys fifty feet. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't make a lot more forty two
Speaker 3: footers than fifty footers, So they're really kind of equal
Speaker 3: out there. So the whole tour is essentially equal outside
Speaker 3: two hundred yards, But if you go to the one
Speaker 3: hundred to one twenty five range, the best guy is
Speaker 3: thirteen feet and the number one twenty five guys twenty
Speaker 3: one feet. Well, you're going to make a lot more
Speaker 3: thirteen footers than twenty one.
Speaker 1: Footers, especially in the tour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean especially, but any of us we're going
Speaker 3: to make more putts from thirteen feet than twenty one feet.
Speaker 3: So doesn't it make sense that that guy is not
Speaker 3: going to get any better with a five iron from
Speaker 3: two fifteen or to twenty. But he could spend a
Speaker 3: lot more time and get better equipment inside one twenty
Speaker 3: five and he could start closing that gap to that
Speaker 3: thirteen yard guy, I mean thirteen foot guy, and he's
Speaker 3: going to move up the money list pretty quick. What
Speaker 3: would one more birdy a week be worth to an
Speaker 3: average tour player? I did this calculation many years ago
Speaker 3: that one more birdy a week would be worth something
Speaker 3: like one hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year. That
Speaker 3: was when the leading money winner was making a million.
Speaker 3: Eighty moneyminner is making eight million. I mean, I would
Speaker 3: like to I need to get my college student. It
Speaker 3: does market research for us. I need to get her
Speaker 3: to go in and find out what would happen if
Speaker 3: you took the number one hundred and twenty guy on
Speaker 3: the money list and gave him one more birdy a
Speaker 3: week for his twenty five or twenty eight tournaments? What
Speaker 3: would that have done for him? One stroke a week?
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I'm booking right now a PGA Tour player,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask.
Speaker 3: Him that, ask him that what would you have done
Speaker 3: last year if you'd have made one more birdy a week?
Speaker 3: And do you think you're going to do that with
Speaker 3: your four, five and six iron? Are you more likely
Speaker 3: to do that with your nine and your wedges?
Speaker 1: I'm writing that done. I'm going to ask that.
Speaker 3: Question all about the tools in your bag. The average
Speaker 3: gown tour today carries three clubs maybe four that he
Speaker 3: plays the golf course inside of one fifty with. Ben
Speaker 3: Hogan had seven clubs in his bag to play the
Speaker 3: inside one fifty shots. So if you're going to try
Speaker 3: to be as good as he was inside one fifty
Speaker 3: and he has seven tools and you have one, or
Speaker 3: I mean you have three, you're not gonna be as
Speaker 3: good as that guy. Just can't. You can't practice enough.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like if you go to in your
Speaker 3: auto mechanic and you look at his toolbox and he's
Speaker 3: got a Crescent ranch and Philip screw driving a pair
Speaker 3: of Ivice scripts. He's probably not going to be that
Speaker 3: good at fixing your car.
Speaker 1: You're probably not gonna charge your top dollar either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's not gonna do a very good job
Speaker 3: because the other guy's got, you know, three toolboxes full
Speaker 3: of snap on tools, and he's got every tool possible.
Speaker 3: So it's about having the right tools in your bag,
Speaker 3: your distance control. What I would do is go out
Speaker 3: and go back to this question. We're kind of rambling here,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, but if you go out and take your
Speaker 3: short game clubs, your high loft golf clubs, and get
Speaker 3: your laser range finder or stepping off if you have to,
Speaker 3: and go find out how far you hit each of these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I So Matt every Is is on the
Speaker 1: tour now and he's going to be on the show.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be interviewing him in the next week.
Speaker 1: So if you're hearing this episode the week it's published,
Speaker 1: then I'm coming up next probably is going to be
Speaker 1: this guy, Matt every And I'm real curious if you
Speaker 1: have questions that you'd like to ask this new young
Speaker 1: PGA tour player. I've already got a couple here from Terry.
Speaker 1: Send him in to me. I'm curious, Terry, do you
Speaker 1: have any questions if you got a chance to ask
Speaker 1: a PGA tour player, a young, upcoming, young stud who
Speaker 1: was highly decorated in his college career. I'm curious about
Speaker 1: his distances as.
Speaker 3: Well, so ask I would ask him, do you know
Speaker 3: your statistics, Matt of how many shots you hit from
Speaker 3: outside two hundred yards and how many clubs you have
Speaker 3: to do it versus how many shots you hit from
Speaker 3: inside one point fifty and how many clubs you have
Speaker 3: to do it? And is your set makeup really matched
Speaker 3: to the way you play the game today.
Speaker 1: I'm taking notes.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's great, thank you. I'm curious when you
Speaker 1: asked that the guy you were playing with and you
Speaker 1: said that he seems so excited about getting these new
Speaker 1: clubs that he was getting ten more yards on his
Speaker 1: nine iron, and you said, yeah, what do you do
Speaker 1: for that one fifteen now that you don't have anymore?
Speaker 1: What was a look on his face when you asked.
Speaker 3: Him that it was incredulous? He he was like a
Speaker 3: deer in the headlights. Yeah, sure, what do you mean?
Speaker 3: What do you mean? Is it good that I hit
Speaker 3: everything further? Because you know every ad I read says
Speaker 3: if I hit it further, I'm going to be better.
Speaker 3: And I will offer your readers and or your listeners.
Speaker 3: I would like to offer everybody a challenge, and I
Speaker 3: invite you all to go do this and then sendpread
Speaker 3: your email. Go play eighteen holes of golf some afternoon,
Speaker 3: just a recreational round, and every every hole, take your
Speaker 3: drive and walk it fifteen yards further on the line
Speaker 3: it was going on, not further down toward the hole.
Speaker 3: But if it's going right, walking right, it's going left,
Speaker 3: walking left, if it's in the middle of fairway, walk
Speaker 3: it down the middle of fairway and add fifteen yards
Speaker 3: to every drive. Just walk it fifteen steps, put it
Speaker 3: down and play the hole out and tell us what
Speaker 3: you shoot, and I will guarantee you that fifteen more
Speaker 3: yards will not lower your handicap PA stroke.
Speaker 1: That's an awesome challenge.
Speaker 3: Now challenge all of you. But then I'm going to
Speaker 3: offer you the other challenge, and go write your score down,
Speaker 3: and every time you're inside nine ron range, no more
Speaker 3: than three strokes. If you're inside nine nine range, you
Speaker 3: average three strokes, regardless whether you're a sixteen or a
Speaker 3: six handicap, and just add that up. Going, okay, I
Speaker 3: played eighteen holes, and every time I got inside nine
Speaker 3: iron range, I gave whether it took me three or
Speaker 3: four shots to get there. But when I got inside
Speaker 3: nine iron range, I wrote I added three to that
Speaker 3: and that was my score on the hole. But then
Speaker 3: I played it out and see how many strokes you
Speaker 3: beat your real score by if you were really decent
Speaker 3: inside nine iron range.
Speaker 1: Yeah, turning three shots into two, right.
Speaker 3: No, just I mean turning three shots into three instead
Speaker 3: of turning three shots into five. That's what the average golfer. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it gets down there. He's one hundred and thirty five yards,
Speaker 3: got a nine iron in his hand, and he hits
Speaker 3: it long short, you know, and then it makes a
Speaker 3: bad chip. Next thing you know, he's put a five
Speaker 3: or six on the card. It's like I was. And
Speaker 3: then you know what happens. You walk off the hole
Speaker 3: and your body's go, hey, nice drive, Fred, you know
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And that actually happened to me today. I had a
Speaker 1: with my three wood. I had a great drive right
Speaker 1: up the center and it went a very good distance.
Speaker 1: And now I am I am nine iron in and
Speaker 1: I just collapsed and four putted. It was awful.
Speaker 3: It was so bad because what happened when you hit
Speaker 3: a bad shot. Now you're pressing your putt and you know,
Speaker 3: all that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 1: And it also reminds me of one of the shows
Speaker 1: that you and I did a while back, and that
Speaker 1: was and it's a challenge that I that I talk
Speaker 1: about on the course a lot, and is I'd rather
Speaker 1: have ten feet closer than ten yards farther any day
Speaker 1: of the week.
Speaker 3: Oh, it'll change your scores dramatically. Ten yards longer does
Speaker 3: not make that big a difference in your scoring.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, all of us are way longer than we were,
Speaker 3: say twenty years ago. Sure, but us handicaps haven't changed. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: playing it shorter than we were, playing it into the
Speaker 3: green with a shorter club than we ever have, and
Speaker 3: handicaps haven't changed.
Speaker 1: And the obsession with distance, even on golf course design
Speaker 1: just out of control.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So you know what's interesting. And I was
Speaker 3: talking about tour statistics while ago, from one hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five to two hundred yard approaches, the number one
Speaker 3: guy on tour and the number one twenty five guy
Speaker 3: on tour are five feet four inches apart. Okay, But
Speaker 3: if I go to one hundred to one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty five yards, the number one guy to the number
Speaker 3: twenty five guy are five feet four inches apart. So
Speaker 3: if you look and then you go to seventy five
Speaker 3: to one hundred yards, the number one guy to the
Speaker 3: number one twenty five guy is six feet apart. So
Speaker 3: there is more separation the closer you get to the
Speaker 3: green from the best and the worst on tour. So
Speaker 3: I'm not going to pick on anybody, but Jim Furick
Speaker 3: is number one on tour. From seventy five to one
Speaker 3: hundred yards, he averages eighteen feet from the hole. Number
Speaker 3: one guy on tour is Bo van Pelt at twelve
Speaker 3: feet one. He's a third closer to the hole on
Speaker 3: average inside one hundred yards. Well, who's going to make
Speaker 3: more birdies? The guy that puts from twelve feet on average,
Speaker 3: a guy that puts from eighteen feet on average. You know.
Speaker 3: And so if you go back and you go to
Speaker 3: this one seventy five to two hundred range, Robert Gerrigis
Speaker 3: is number one on tour at twenty nine and a
Speaker 3: half feet. Kyle Reefers is number one twenty five at
Speaker 3: thirty four to ten. Well, you know you're not going
Speaker 3: to make a lot more twenty nine footers than thirty
Speaker 3: four footers, but you are going to make a lot
Speaker 3: more twelve footers than nineteen footers, a lot more. So,
Speaker 3: where are you going to cut the strokes on your score?
Speaker 3: You're going to cut them with your high loft clubs.
Speaker 3: You're going to cut them with your nine iron to wedges.
Speaker 3: And if you give, if your guys would all go,
Speaker 3: give eighty percent of your practice time to your high
Speaker 3: loft golf clubs for a month, your handicap will come
Speaker 3: down guaranteed. Has to fascinating.
Speaker 1: All right, last question for this one, and again thanks
Speaker 1: for taking so many of these questions and for offering
Speaker 1: the clubs to these people. And if I've used your question,
Speaker 1: make sure you send me an email saying you heard it.
Speaker 1: And then you will get a chance to get a
Speaker 1: customized score forty one sixty one, but you have to
Speaker 1: pay for the shipping. And this could be an interesting
Speaker 1: one because Martin Baker is from Pereghian Beach Parod. I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to pronounce it, but it's in Queensland, Australia. Sorry, Marty.
Speaker 1: So actually interesting Martin Baker and we'll call him Marty.
Speaker 1: He uses the old idol on wedges and he's been
Speaker 1: listening to the podcast for a long time, and he
Speaker 1: was really intrigued about you talking a while ago about
Speaker 1: the grip, and he sent you a photo of his glove. Now,
Speaker 1: he said, from the so we may be able to
Speaker 1: work out whether I'm holding the club too much in
Speaker 1: my hand instead of my fingers as you have talked about.
Speaker 1: He was also intrigued by your comments about keeping the
Speaker 1: grip light on the club. I think this would naturally
Speaker 1: relax the forearms and therefore give a more relaxed looking
Speaker 1: swing like the professionals. Is that true? So yes, let's
Speaker 1: you've seen the picture of his glove, uh huh, and
Speaker 1: describe it for us please, and then you're.
Speaker 3: The picture he sent in had a wear spot right
Speaker 3: on the heel of the hand, and that's the most
Speaker 3: common wear spot you see on golf gloves. There's a
Speaker 3: couple of reasons for that. One reason is because golf I.
Speaker 1: Just want to confirm the heel is the base of
Speaker 1: the hand opposite your thumb.
Speaker 3: Right the heel pad. Yeah, at the heel.
Speaker 1: Pad, got it, okay.
Speaker 3: And the reason golfers wear their gloves out there is
Speaker 3: there's a couple of reason. One is, as he mentioned,
Speaker 3: you need to have the club in your left hand,
Speaker 3: really in your fingers, and you roll your fingers up
Speaker 3: so that the club is below that heel pad. That's
Speaker 3: first thing. Second thing is that the butt end of
Speaker 3: the golf club has to be outside that heel pad.
Speaker 3: And when you think of gripping down on a club,
Speaker 3: you know what we want to do is we want
Speaker 3: to grip just enough to wear that the grip cap
Speaker 3: is not up in our glove. We have to get
Speaker 3: our Think about it. You've got your smallest finger on
Speaker 3: your hand gripping the biggest part of the grip. You
Speaker 3: would be amazed. And I invite all of you to
Speaker 3: do it, to watch what happens to your distances in
Speaker 3: your ball flight if you will go out and just
Speaker 3: hit shots with every one of your golf clubs and
Speaker 3: grip them down a full inch to where you get
Speaker 3: down into a narrower part of that grip. But the
Speaker 3: other reason is, and I think it was the last
Speaker 3: week or week before last show or the show before that,
Speaker 3: we talked about the proper release of the club and
Speaker 3: the club. Your hands cannot hinge. They have to rotate
Speaker 3: to release the golf club. And you want to grip
Speaker 3: the club with the upper three fingers of your left hand,
Speaker 3: so the club cannot move around in your hand, it
Speaker 3: cannot slide. And what causes that wear spot on the
Speaker 3: heel of your glove is because that club is sliding
Speaker 3: up and down across that heelpad and the grip has
Speaker 3: got a friction of surface, and so it's wearing away
Speaker 3: at that leather. But a really good player doesn't let
Speaker 3: that happen. A really good player has a firm grip
Speaker 3: on the club with the last three fingers of the
Speaker 3: left hand, and they're not hinging through impact, they're rotating
Speaker 3: through impact. So that club stays down in those fingers,
Speaker 3: and if it's not moving, it can't wear your glove out.
Speaker 3: The only way a grip can wear your glove out
Speaker 3: is if it's moving in your hand. And if you're
Speaker 3: regripping the golf club orth the club is sliding around, obviously,
Speaker 3: you're losing a lot of control of that golf club.
Speaker 3: So move the club further down in the fingers than
Speaker 3: you ever thought possible and maintain a firm grip on
Speaker 3: it with your last three fingers your left hand, not
Speaker 3: your pincher fingers and your thumb. But those last three
Speaker 3: fingers your left hand. That's where you want to control
Speaker 3: the golf club. You want to feel throughout the golf
Speaker 3: swing that you have total control of the golf club
Speaker 3: with those last three fingers of your left hand.
Speaker 1: And you are talking about right handed golfers, right.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, yeah for the lead hand, let's put the
Speaker 3: upper hand.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, okay, awesome. Well that was phenomenal and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you giving us the time to be able
Speaker 1: to answer a bunch of questions at once. But on
Speaker 1: our next episode of Golf Smarter, you will come back
Speaker 1: and it will be a full score zone, short game
Speaker 1: academy where we will answer one more question. So, Terry,
Speaker 1: thanks so much again and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3: Okay, sounds great, but I'd look forward to the next one.
Speaker 3: H