Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty nine, published on
September nineteen, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: The faster the green, the less slope you can have
before that point is reached. The slower the green, or
you got a tilted then you reach the point with
a greater tilt.
Speaker 4: But it's always the.
Speaker 3: Combination of the grit speed and the slope steepness. And
so if you say everybody mows their grants today to about.
Speaker 4: Stemp nine, that limit is reached.
Speaker 3: Around a six percent slope. And the all golf course architects.
Speaker 4: Know this one too.
Speaker 3: If they make seven percent slow, the golf course is
going to stamp.
Speaker 4: Tea and you're not going to have holes there.
Speaker 3: He's just luxuriating and spending somebody else's money by design
that sort of green. Because the person that owns the
golf course is not really going to be able to
use seven percent slope unless they get really slow grass,
and that members don't like.
Speaker 4: Slow grass, so they're always step nize or whatever.
Speaker 3: If you inform yourself about golf course architecture, you will
know that the range of steepness of slope kind of
maxes out around six percent.
Speaker 1: Learning to read the practice greens gives you a huge
advantage With Jeff Mangam.
Speaker 2: This 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.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Jeff, Hey Fred,
how are you, Budy?
Speaker 4: I'm doing good.
Speaker 3: I'm in western North Carolina outside of Klowe.
Speaker 1: The where in Western Carolina? And what's an.
Speaker 3: Ncwe It's it's near the Cherokee Indian Reservation on the
west side of Asheville.
Speaker 4: Noway to Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And did you stop and teach there today or where
did you teach?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: I taught in Winston's that set the country Club, and
now I'm headed to Atlanta to teach some friends. Down
in outside Atlanta in a place called Canton, there's a
golf course down there called Bridge Mill that's run by
Tom Lessinger and George Killenhaufer.
Speaker 4: My good buddy's down there.
Speaker 3: George Killenhoffer is a long term legend in golf teaching.
Speaker 4: He taught a lot of the people.
Speaker 1: Oh, can we get him on the show?
Speaker 4: Yeah, he left you.
Speaker 6: He's the inventor. He invents suff about two or three
times a week.
Speaker 1: Wow. All right, So you are obviously not in a
hotel with a direct connection here, because it's kind of
breaking up. Where are you sitting right now?
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm right outside of McDonald's. That caesar salad.
Speaker 4: In the coffee, and it's beautiful weather.
Speaker 3: It's a Bomby sun SETI nice clouds. But I didn't
I couldn't get my Motel six to set up for
you today because I'm still traveling after after we do this,
we'll talk.
Speaker 4: I gotta keep rolling.
Speaker 1: Okay, So your signal just got a little better, and
we'll keep our fingers crossed, and if this signal gets bad,
we'll we'll stop recording and pick it right up and
no one will ever know the difference. But let's I
reached out to you a because you are so much
fun to have on this show. Because in your eye
because you poke sticks in my eye.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: The level of detail that you go into is just
a golf junkies dream, all right, you. I mean, I've
never heard a short answer, and that's why I want
to have you back, because the level of detail is
un unrivaled, unrivaled on what you do.
Speaker 4: We'll call it baroque. Why lots of ornamentation?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, we'll call it baroque. That's not the
name of the show. We're not going we're going for
baroque today.
Speaker 4: We're going.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that was really bad. But and if nobody
has ever heard you on Golf Smarter before, why, I mean,
Jeff's been on a lot. He was also a regular
contributor to Golf Smarter Tips. And there's still all there,
a year's worth of amazing content. And it's putting, putting,
and more putting. I don't know if there's anybody in
the world, Jeff, who has the encyclopedic baroque knowledge of
putting that you have on putting or on Native Americans.
Speaker 4: That's because I'm mainly disturbed.
Speaker 1: And that's why we get along so well.
Speaker 4: Obsessive, compulsive to the square.
Speaker 3: And exponentially multiplied against itself several more times.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's why we're such good friends. So the latest
piece that I got from you fascinating and I think
it just hits right into the heart of it on
reading the pot on the practice green, right right, So
do I need to have you order another cup of
coffee or and and just let you go, or do
you want me to ask you a specific question about
where we should get started when we're on the practice
putting green and how to read and well, okay, my
first question is when we're on the practice putting green,
before we start around, how much should we say to ourselves? Okay,
this is how these greens on this golf course work.
Speaker 3: Pretty much today's green's agronomy and managed practices. There's not
that big of a difference between the practice green and
the golf course. They're mode the same, they're built the same,
there's subject to the same chemical treatments, the same irrigations.
They're in the same weather climate, sunshine and everything. It's
all the same Satame grass, highly engineered grass.
Speaker 1: So hopefully that's gonna give you a good sense of
touch and pace when you're practicing, too that you can
confidently take it out onto your round with you.
Speaker 7: Well, you're just yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: People are overly concerned about the difference between the practice
green to hear little stuff in golf culture, and it.
Speaker 4: Worries them for thirty forty years.
Speaker 3: They need to use their own eyeballs and look at things.
There's no big difference between practice greens and the greens on.
Speaker 8: The golf course.
Speaker 4: Hadn't been for twenty years.
Speaker 1: And so it's gonna break, it's gonna roll, it's gonna speeds.
We're just fine. And so that means that once we
leave the the practice green and get ready for our round,
we should have confidence on on our touch and our
pace when we go out and play, as you know,
from what we just experienced on the practice green.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 3: You're brushing up on your touch, you're brushing up on
your mechanics a little bit for a straight stroke, and
then maybe you mess around with getting a little confidence
or something.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Obviously you've moved out of the front porch of McDonald's, yeah,
and you're something's moving in there, something's playing with your
wires or your headphone. But something's scraping around.
Speaker 4: So I'll try not to touch it.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't touch it. Okay, just put your get your
hands off of that.
Speaker 4: Okay, I actually have my car on powered up. Do
you want me to turn my car off?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: Why is your car making No? You got to probably
have the air conditioning on if you're sitting in North
Carolina and your car with the windows up.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got some piece and quiet in my little
Rudyard Kipling house on my back.
Speaker 7: Sort of a deal here, all right.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about being on that practice green and
what we can learn from it.
Speaker 4: Sure, let's talk about reading putts.
Speaker 3: Yes, I created a thing recently about how you do
two putts on a practice green that will allow you
to get a real good sense of what breaks you.
Speaker 4: Will be facing for the rest of the day. Okay,
let me say that one more time. Two little putts.
Speaker 1: You know, five feet ten feet? Or does it ten?
Speaker 4: I like ten feet.
Speaker 3: The math works out better from ten feet, which I'll
explain to you in a second.
Speaker 4: But ten divide my ten is easy. Just move the decimal. Okay,
to the left.
Speaker 1: Now there's something beeping that's try I'm so distracted by
these little extra noises. I apologize. I'm just a reporting guy.
Speaker 4: I stopped it.
Speaker 1: What were you doing?
Speaker 3: That was the That was my little in car power
unit where I take the plug into the battery the
cigarette lighter and then convert.
Speaker 1: It into a beeping noise. All right, So I.
Speaker 3: Don't know why, baby, it's part of the river lit's
find it made it.
Speaker 1: Be ten foot putts move the decimal point.
Speaker 4: Go okay, here you teach me. All right, here's the deal.
Speaker 3: Most of the putts that you can actually sink are
within fifteen feet, and for most people they're within ten.
Everything else is basically a lag putt's going to be
a two putt.
Speaker 4: Do you have the skill for lag? Yes? Okay, now
we're moved beyond that.
Speaker 3: We want to make a lot of one putts out
of fifteen footers. Yes, and now really for amateur golfers,
you're really talking about ten feeting in then I didn't
good from fifteen feet right now.
Speaker 4: The second one thing you want to know is that.
Speaker 7: Greens have.
Speaker 3: A certain topography where for reasonable areas of size and
diameter around the hole, the same flatness or plane or
shape of the surface persists. Oh usually for at least
three good steps away from the hall in any direction,
maybe as many as five or ten paces. And the
pace that we're talking about is a standard military parade
pace of thirty inches, which is two and a half feet,
and every four of those parade steps is ten feet.
So if you walk four feet away from the hall
in any direction, you got you're talking about a ten
foot putt.
Speaker 4: For most putts, I mean eighty five.
Speaker 3: Percent of them, if you're within ten feet, there's no
aney contour other than a flat surface from ball the
hole lots lots of times, and that's very beneficial because
that means that the break is quote simple unquote You
don't know how much it is, and that's what we're
focusing on now.
Speaker 4: But a.
Speaker 3: Flat surface of a tilted slope of the green from
ball all the way to the hole, without enter any
funny wrinkling of the surface by hills and valleys and
all that.
Speaker 4: That presents a simple break.
Speaker 3: And for most makeable puts in the seventy five to
eighty percent of what you actually fast when you go
to the golf, that happens to be the case.
Speaker 4: And that's because the nature of.
Speaker 3: Designing and maintaining and mowing greens. They can't chain shape
all that radically, or else you have problems.
Speaker 4: Maintain them and mowing them.
Speaker 3: You know that old Urilco commercial that wintertime where Burl
lives is riding a razor across the snowdrifts and rain.
Speaker 1: Buzz or yeah, he was dressed as Santa Claus ears.
Speaker 3: Of singing arel coo as there's all that. Well, that's
the nature of a mowing deck of a Touro triplex more.
And you can't change the the radiacing of the green
surface too radically, or else you'll scout the green every
time you moull it. And that can't happen because you've
got a mold once a day. So the rate of
change of the surface of the green is conditioned and
limited by the technology, and so you happily. You face
a lot of situations in machable putts where there's no
funny contour between the ball and the hall. There may
be subtleties like a footprint and the ball pitch mark,
and maybe a little something a little stand of poe
ai in a way and that sort of thing. But
generally speaking, if you have a good, well maintained golf
course with plane jain uniform homogeneous grass coverage on the
green mode nicely. You got a lot of chances where
you can one put a simple putt right now. What
I teach and what I've created its two puts on
a plane, flat surface with a tilt.
Speaker 4: To get you so.
Speaker 3: You understand all the breaks on the tilts that you'll
be facing from all the distance inside about fifteen feet.
The only assumption is that the green is actually unwrinkled
between the ball and the hole.
Speaker 1: To find unwrinkled, well.
Speaker 3: If you take a piece of paper and you let
it down on a kitchen counter and flatten it out
real good, that's unwrinkled. If you lift it up in
the air and stretch it tight, that's unwrinkled. If you
lay it down over top of your and bend a
little bit, that's wrinkled.
Speaker 1: That's concord contoured, Okay, contract.
Speaker 3: The word contourd means not flat and plain the way
I'm using it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm thinking of I'm thinking of like
those mornings that the groundskeepers didn't drink enough coffee or
they had a bad morning with their wife or something,
and they they put the flag right at the crest
of a hill. No matter what angle you're coming from,
you're going up and over.
Speaker 3: Well there there there are guidelines published by the US
Golf Association about pen placements.
Speaker 1: Is there really?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and I've been I'm a greenskeeper. I've done
this for you know, more than one year US that pens.
So I'm not just a lawyer and a golf coach
and a physicist and neuroscientists.
Speaker 4: I'm also a greenskeeper.
Speaker 1: Well, don't forget you're an Indian expert, and no, I'm
the top Indian expert.
Speaker 3: Sorry, look at my little puddingtone dot com, forward slash
indians dot A stm L and then just drool it
what I've got?
Speaker 4: All right, it's there, it'll see it, all right.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the the.
Speaker 4: The guidelines of the U s g A.
Speaker 3: Basically don't want greenskeepers to do what you just described.
They don't want sudden changes of contour. They want golfers
to have the opportunity, from anywhere on the green in
relations to.
Speaker 4: The whole, to send the ball to the hole.
Speaker 3: And be able to stop it there within about two feet.
Speaker 4: Really, that's one of the guidelines.
Speaker 1: Oh, I wonder if these guys read that because they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't because they're just educated, clod headed, rude individuals
also called cretns.
Speaker 4: I am c r e t I in this Okay,
whatever that word is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want every golf smarter listener ever to
just whenever they see the ball roll, you know, they
get it to the hall and then it just keeps
rolling by another five or six feet it that's against
the rules.
Speaker 4: That's right now.
Speaker 3: There there's a physical issue the combination of green slope.
Speaker 4: That means steepness. How steep is the tilt of the surface.
The surface is flat, let's say that, but you tilted.
That means it's not level.
Speaker 3: Now, golf people on TV, they are frequently also prettons
or cretence how you said, They don't know the difference
between flat and level those words in the English language
that we all are supposed to speak by about age
three four, Flat does not mean level in gravity, it
means uncontoured and plain R. Hate the word planar because
of the way you stretch out the same syllable.
Speaker 8: R are plain r.
Speaker 4: Okay, So, but flat does not mean level.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, now you take a CD rom it's flat, right,
if you bend it, it's not flat.
Speaker 1: Right, it's contoured.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you slap it down on the kitchen counter,
it's both flat and level.
Speaker 1: So flat could be on an angle.
Speaker 4: Right, it's tilted, but it's tilted.
Speaker 3: All greens are. You don't make greens level. The water
comes down, the water won't go anywhere. That'll drown the grass.
It's called root rot. It's most common cause of problems
on greens. All architects in the world not to create
root rot, so they don't. They don't build flat green.
It's level, Mom'm sorry, excuse me, level greens. They don't
build level greens. That kills the grass.
Speaker 1: To wait a minute, all this stuff people going, yeah,
it always breaks to the mountain, it always breaks to
the water.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily true, right, because it's about.
Speaker 4: The golf course.
Speaker 3: Architect must design the subsurface of the green so that
it's tilted. And if it's not tilted a certain steepness,
the water will just pool under the under the surface
and sit there and fester, and it messes up the ecology.
Speaker 4: Of the green system.
Speaker 3: The ancient Athens, where I have been in ancient Athens,
I'm I'm I'm working on my twenty first incarnation right now.
There is a there's a there's a subway in Syntagma
Square in downtown Athens, and you go down into the
subway and they have a little display case, a museum
case where in five hundred BC the engineers of Athens
built terra cotta sewage pipe.
Speaker 4: And the sewage pipes. There's a little placard at little
fold over cardboard.
Speaker 3: Placard in there in the case, you know, like you
did the dinner party that sit here, kind of a
fall over thing, and it explains that unless you tilt
the terra cotta piping at least two degrees of grade
or two percent of grade I'm sorry, not degrees percent
of grade, the water will not build up enough velocity
and momentum to clear the sludge out of the pipes,
and the pipes will fill up and stop up.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 3: So the modern golf course architects, if they don't know
that going in when they start building these five million
dollar golf.
Speaker 4: Courses, they will never work again. Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, So they learn by hard experience that they better
tilt thems under surface of the green.
Speaker 4: They fill.
Speaker 3: French drains in the herringbud pattern, and they collect the water.
Speaker 4: Fourteen or fifteen inches beneath the.
Speaker 3: Surface of the grass into a pattern and then redirect
it back into the general terrain pattern of the erosion
of the local train, which is typically away from the mountains.
Speaker 4: Store it's the ponds, that's true.
Speaker 3: Golf Course architects will play with that because they're crafty
little devils, and sometimes they will tilt it contrariwise to
the natural flow of the landscape in order to mess.
Speaker 4: With the golfers and challenge them to pick up on
what they've done.
Speaker 1: They're primary function mess with.
Speaker 3: Us, that's right, And there's a limit on how much
they can do before the tree reveals itself and the
gig is up. So they're subtle when they do it,
but they do it on purpose. All greens complexes, they
are basically structured by hand by the golf course architectures
and architects, and so they pretty much decide what they
want to do.
Speaker 4: This is a question of whether.
Speaker 3: They're skillful and and concealing their art. If you, I
don't know, if you won't go into all that stuff.
But you remember a couple of years ago they played well.
Speaker 4: Wait, a minute.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'm sorry, I don't hold that thought.
Please remember, because I know I will forget, But I've
also forgotten that I'm supposed to say that. This episode
of the Golf Smarter Podcast is brought to you by
all Right, Jeff, let's get back to your stuff, because sure,
not like we're running out of time. But we don't
have a lot of time left.
Speaker 9: But we are going to do a part We're gonna
do a part two.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a members only episode. So let's
take this to our limit here and then we'll come
back and do a member's only episode.
Speaker 3: Well, let me give you the diamond bullet and the
forehead shot on two butts.
Speaker 1: Okay, two putts.
Speaker 3: You go, you find a flat area of the green
that allows you to make a ten foot without running
over any funny contour, and then you find a flat
tilt that is about percent.
Speaker 4: That would be a very how many because of the
I was telling you that there is a physical limit
on how much you.
Speaker 3: Can tilt the green before the ball will not stay
on that surface. It will always roll downhill no matter
what you do. That limit is really a combination of
green speed and slope the faster the green, the less
slope you can have before that point is reached. The
slower the green where you got to tilt it. Then
you reach the point with a greater tilt. But it's
always the combination of the green speed and.
Speaker 4: The slope steepness.
Speaker 3: And so if you say everybody mows their greens today
to about stemp nine, maybe stamp ten on occasion that
limit is reached around a six percent slope, And the
all golf course architects know this one too. It makes
if they make seven percent slope, the golf course is
gonna stamp ten that he's just wasted pendable positions.
Speaker 4: You're not gonna have holes there.
Speaker 3: He's just luxuriating and spending somebody else's money by design
that sort of green. Because the person that owns the
golf course is not really going to be able to
use seven percent slope unless they get really slow grass, and.
Speaker 4: They don't like that.
Speaker 3: Their members don't like slow grass, so they're always stimp
and izes or whatever. And so the reality of today's
golf course architecture of greens, which should inform every skillful
golfer's mind, which I doubt that it does. But if
you inform yourself about golf course architecture, you will know
that the range of steepness of slope kind of maxes
out around six percent. And if you stretched the numbers zero, one, two, three, four,
five and six out on a bell curve, the zeros
in the sixes are practically non existent, the ones in.
Speaker 4: The fives are rare.
Speaker 3: Two and four percent slopes are pretty calm, and three
percent is the wheelhouse core of the whole deal. Two
and three and four percent are the slopes that you
run into most frequently. And that's what we're about, learning
the ones you run into most frequently. We're not trying
to learn mathematics and physics formulas like these, ya who's
from Yale teaching how to calculate with lang Lagrangians formulas
in four dimensions what exactly the ball will do to
a pinpoint target that is infantasmally small. We're not doing
that kind of silliness. We're playing golf like rough and
rowdy Scots walking across the sheep pasture.
Speaker 4: So what we want to do is to.
Speaker 3: Bushwhack the most common putts that we actually can sink
and actually run into.
Speaker 4: And that means we really want.
Speaker 3: To know inside of fifteen feet and specifically ten footers
on two percent slope, three percent slope, four percent slope,
and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: So here are the two putts. Will tell you that
find a two.
Speaker 3: Percent flat area of the green that you can make
a ten foot put on without running across a funny contract.
How do you know it's two percent slope?
Speaker 1: That's funny? That was my next question. How do you understand?
How do you say that's a x percent?
Speaker 4: Right? To say to a two percent slope? The word
percent means one hundred per one hundred.
Speaker 3: So if you walk one hundred inches straight down the
fall line, straight uphill downhill line through the hole away
down the steepest direction from the hull down that fall
line one hundred inches, and then compare the elevation of
the grass where your foot is with the elevation higher
back up that one hundred inches where the hole is.
If the drop in elevation from the hull to the
foot is two inches, it's two percent slow.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's pretty easy.
Speaker 3: And now how do you know it's one hundred inches
that you walk downhill? Military paces are thirty inches? Three
of those plus ten more inches three steps plus the
one grip of a putter.
Speaker 4: All grips of pudders on conventional putters are ten inches long. Also,
your foot is about ten inches long, so three.
Speaker 3: Inches three military paces straight downhill from the hull plus
ten more inches that's one hundred inches.
Speaker 4: The second way to.
Speaker 3: Know one hundred inches is that most conventional putters are
around thirty four to thirty five inches. If you flip
three putters, you're there good enough for going to work. Now,
if you're standing below the hole one hundred inches away,
how do you sort of assess how different it is
in elevation.
Speaker 4: You have to imagine a string.
Speaker 3: At the hole that you draw out kind of like
a razor stripe or whatever. You draw a string level
away from the hole, over top of that line that
you walk down so that the string is level in gravity,
and you pull it out, and then the string is
poised in the air a certain elevation above the ground.
And if it's two inches above the ground, that would
basically sit on the top of your shoe at the
toe area. That's about how the toe area of your
shoe is. If it's three inches, that string would come
to your foot and meet somewhere about where your laces are,
not quite the top of the lacens. Right in the middle,
near the top of the lacens is about three inches
off the ground. If the strain comes to your foot
and hits the ankle bone or your foot, the ankle
bone is about four inches off the ground. So basically,
you walk three inch three steps downhill from the hole,
straight down the fall line, and they add ten more
inches and you look back at the hole and you
imagine that strain coming out level and gravity and hitting
your foot somewhere, and you say, is it top of
the toe to two percent? Is it laces three percent?
Or is it ankle four percent?
Speaker 1: All right, So here's what I want to do. We
need to continue this because I need to know more
about the percentage and what it is. So, okay, I
figured out it's two percent. What am I supposed to
do with that information? I also want to know, well, no,
don't even answer me, because I know that's gonna be
another site and we still have we have to bring
Terry on for our short game academy. But I also
want you to explain what the hell is DIMP meter
is and where it comes from and any gadgets out
there that are that are fall line gadgets, you know,
like beyond your plumb botty and that stuff. So will
you come back for a members only episode for next week?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all right, then we'll record that in just a moment.
But thank you very much. Is there anything you'd like
to tell our general audience about getting this paper that
you've uh oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, please free well send me an email and uh
and say hello and ask for the papers. You can
ask for the green Reading paper or PDF, a meta pdf.
It's forty forty five pages long.
Speaker 4: It's got pictures, diagrams, videos too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it does I've got my I got a little
YouTube video show I did that string thing I just
told you about. And you send me an email to
Jeff at putting Zone and the Jeff is spelled funny.
Geo starts out like George, ends up like Jeff g
e oh f f at putting Zone dot com and
you send me an emailop, I'll send it right back
to you at three am in the morning.
Speaker 1: And also there are there are Putting Zone certified Putting
Zone instructors everywhere nowadays, aren't there.
Speaker 3: That's right, there's one hundred and forty eight coaches and
twenty countries around the world.
Speaker 1: So if you're as enamored with Jeff's content as I am,
and you want really to work with somebody one on one,
you can find them and they're all listed on your
putting zone dot Com website.
Speaker 3: Correct, I have a Google map that shows exactly where
they are.
Speaker 1: And you're traveling around the country all the time doing clinics.
Speaker 4: I swear I'm going right now.
Speaker 3: I'm going to Kentucky to work with the University Kentucky
coaches and also my friend Matt Jordan there in Lexington, Kentucky,
and before Sunday, I have three more catches.
Speaker 1: Amazing. All right, so uh, we're gonna for all the
Golf Smarter members who want to continue this listening to
this conversation, stay tuned because it'll be coming up next week. Jeff,
we will speak with you on our next episode. Thank
you so much, buddy, and go take a swig of
that at McDonald's coffee.
Speaker 4: Okay, thank you very much, And now it's.
Speaker 9: Time for scre Zone Short Game Academy with Terry Taylor.
If you have a question about your short game, click
on the score Zone Academy button at golfsmarter dot com
and let the experts at score Golf put a new
money club in your bag. If Terry answers your question
on the show, you'll receive a free score forty one.
Speaker 1: Sixty one wedge. Better yet, click on their ad at
golfsmarter dot com and you'll get ten percent off your order.
And here's another reason to join golf Smarter for members,
only fifteen percent off your order from score Golf. At
additional five percent that could easily pay for your membership
for the next few years. Terry, welcome back to our
Short Game Academy. The reaction from our audience to your
advice and generous offers has been pretty awesome. There have
been some great questions that have been coming in, and
I get the sense that more than the opportunity to
get a free wedge, our listeners just love your insights
to the short game.
Speaker 8: That's what we're here for.
Speaker 10: We're here to help people score better and learn more
about their scoring clubs. And the only thing I have
to tell you is if they're looking for a free wage,
they can't get one from score Golf because we don't
make wedges.
Speaker 8: We make precisions scoring clubs.
Speaker 1: Ooh, got me?
Speaker 8: Okay, gotcha?
Speaker 1: You got me? Yeah, And so we would love to
give away some scoring clubs because that's what you're gonna do.
You're gonna score better when you play with your score
golf scoring club. And if I can be a testimony
on that one, I'm loving mine. But because of my
insanity of moving, I haven't gotten a chance to play.
So I'm watching other people play a lot. But I
want to get to these questions. And we're going to
concentrate today on one question that came in from Randy Starbuck,
who lives in Elk Grove, California. And you know, it's
it's just coincidence that they're Californians that are that are
we're doing this. But his question says that the conventional
wisdom is that bounce needed in a wedge, he'll call
it a wedge is governed by one course conditions hard
tight or versus lush and soft, and or two your
swing a sweeper versus a digger. Well, that creates some
wide variations. So when buying a wedge, what should we
lean towards for selecting the right bounce? Courts? Conditions and
our swing type. I hope that makes sense, does it?
I'm sure sense to you.
Speaker 10: Well, that very question is what led me to develop
the patented vesol about twenty years ago. But instead of
getting into a commercial, let's talk about Randy's dilemma, because
everybody has that same dilemma. And what I'm going to
start with is make sure everybody really understands what bounce is.
Because I get hundreds and hundreds of questions through my
blog and people calling in and people are confused. I
had one of the top one hundred retailers in the
country approached me at the Golf Show and this is
a top one hundred teacher and a top one hundred retailer,
and she says, can you really explain to me what bounces?
Speaker 8: So that's how confusing bounds is. Let me try to.
Speaker 10: Clarify for this you got for all your listeners out there.
If you hold up your wedge or any golf club
and look at the bottom of the golf club, look
right down that what I call the worm's eye view,
you will see that a wedge has a downward angle
from the leading edge where the soul meets the face
backwards to the rear trailer edge of the soul. This
downward angle is called bounce. And very simply what bounce
does because of that downward angle is it causes the
turf to reject that golf club, if you will so
on contact the amount of bounce, it acts like an
airplane wing. It provides lift, and so it the turf
will tend to reject that. So the functionality of bounce
is governed by the width of the soul and the
and this actual angle of the downward So when we
talk about high bounce wedges, we talk we're typically talking
about wedges from nine to fifteen degrees of bounce, and
the modern modern wedges typically all have about the same
width of soul. If you look at the you know,
the wedge rack from all the different brands, you don't
see a lot of variation and soul width unless you
get into there. But obviously if you have a lower
bounce angle and a wider soul, you know you're going
to have more bounce effect than a narrow were sold.
The challenge for wedge play comes into if you go
back and look at the history of the wedge. The
earliest wedges had a wide soul but not a lot
of bounce on them, but bunkers were all very firm
back then. As the wedge evolved through the forties and fifties,
we saw wedges get bigger souls. Some of you might
remember the old Hogan shure out There was a bunch
of other wedges out there that had bigger souls and
rounded souls, and bounce began in the sixties, and really
in the seventies and eighties you began to see these
variations of low bounce high bounce. But the industry has
been very consistent. All the wedge companies will tell you
that just as Randy astid, you need a high bounce
wedge for soft and lush lies, you need a low
bounce wedge for hard and tight lives. Well, the challenge
there for all of us is, my golf course has
got all of those. My golf course plays tight and fast,
except at rain last night it's less and soft. The
tour player has an easy solution that he goes into
the equipment trailer and gets a much free new edges
so he can deal with whatevery got dealt with. But
in our world it really doesn't work that way. Conventional
wisdom also is if you have a steep angle of
attack and you're kind of coming down on the ball
more abruptly. You need a higher bounce wedge to give
you more rejecting force. If you have a shallow angle
of attack, you kind of nip the ball off without
much DIBt. You can get away with the lower bounce wedge.
The problem is, if you're a good player, you vary
your angle of approach because the kind of shot you're
trying to hit. So if you're trying to hit a
little lower shot, you're going to swing shallower through impact.
If you're trying to hit a higher shot, a flop shot,
you're going to pick the ball up more, the club
up more abruptly, and have a steeper angle of attack.
If you're a fifteen to twenty handicapper, you vary your angle.
Speaker 8: Of attack completely by accident.
Speaker 10: That's why you're a fifteen to twenty handicapper, because you're
not grooveed into the exact same angle of attack.
Speaker 1: Be nice, I'm trying to be nice.
Speaker 10: But the problem is is that how do you fit
something that constantly changes. And I was talking to a
fitter one day, and I'll divulge off into this little parable.
I'm talking to this club fitter and he says, well,
I like to fit Bounce. And I said, well, let
me ask you this. If a guy came in for
a driver fitting and his first swing he hit a
highest slice. His second swing he hit a smother hook.
His third swing he hit one right down the middle.
His fourth swing he topped the ball, fifth swing he
skied it. Sixth swing he hit a big high hook.
Seventh swing he hit a low, squealing slice. How would
you fit that guy when he can't make two swings
in a row that are the same.
Speaker 1: And I can't fit that guy.
Speaker 8: I can't fit him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I said, well, then how do you fit Bounce when
every wedshot the lie is going to be different than
the one before that? And he said, wow, I never
thought of it that way. So, Mandy, I'm going to
tell you that the easiest solution what you're doing is
to go buy a score forty one sixty one with
our patented vesol which has a high bounce and a
low bounce in every wedge and every soul rather and
you know every one of them is designed for that
particular loft.
Speaker 8: Short of that, you know what a lot of people will.
Speaker 10: Do is carry, you know, a low bounce club in
maybe a fifty eight or sixty degree and a higher
bounce club in a fifty four or fifty six. And
that way, if you have a high bounced situation, you
use that club. If you have a low bounce situation,
you use the other one. It's not ideal, but even
the big manufacturers that make these conventional old style bounces,
they will tell you that's what to do. I never
like turning this show into a commercial for Score Golfer
for the things I designed. But you know, this is
a big problem because conventional wisdom and conventional wedge design
doesn't really lend itself to solve this problem. We believe
we did with our patented v sol. We got a
cult like following out there, as Fred and a lot
of your listeners out there, a lot of you all
know you've tried our idol on wedges and now our
Score forty one sixty one precision scoring clubs, and we're
we're really tackling that into the set. We don't make
drivers and irons, and you know, we're focusing on helping
people you deal with this high end of the set,
because people like Randy, you have questions and challenges, and
so that's.
Speaker 8: What we're trying to do.
Speaker 10: But Randy, and like I say, back to your question,
you know, my recommendation is I'd love you to try
our stuff. We got one coming frequently answered your question.
You can fill out the rest of the set. But
you know, for the rest of you all, if you're
not ready to replace your scoring clubs, and we'd love
a shot at your business if you do. But if
you're not ready to replace that, try to have, you know,
clubs in your bag that have a variety, have a
high bounce and a low bounce golf club in there.
My recommendation is put your lower bounce on the higher
loft club and your high bounce on the on the
lower loft fifty six.
Speaker 1: And why would you separate them that way? And I'm
sorry if this is being redundant, because it's still I
don't know if even with this explanation, if I can
explain to somebody simply, here's what bounces. Is there a
simple answer of which is best, you know, on the
higher loft and the lower loft. Well, sorry to do.
Speaker 10: That to you, No, I mean it's not because it's
a very complex topic.
Speaker 8: It really is.
Speaker 10: If the turf is soft, you need a higher bounce
to help keep the keep the club from digging, whether
it's a bunker or whether it's a chip shot or
a pit shot. If and if the surf turf is soft,
you're you're going to still be able to lay the
club open a little bit, so you can add a little.
Speaker 8: Loft to that fifty four fifty six by.
Speaker 10: Laying it open and get you know, get the ball
flight that you're after on that little short range shot.
On full swing shots, it's not that critical, you know,
because you've got a lot of club.
Speaker 8: EDGs beat to get the ball out of the turf.
Speaker 4: Anyway.
Speaker 10: Uh, the only only time becomes real critical and a
full swing shot is when you're playing off of a
very tight, hard pan type line. A high bounce club
is going to skip right in. If you hit a
little a little a little behind the ball, that high
bounce club is going to skip into the ball. So
if you have a long range shot and you're carrying,
you know that that it's a I'd love to hit
my fifty four degree, but it's a high bounce club
and I've got to I've got a tight lie then
you know, go to your go to your your pea
club or your gap wedge and and just grip down
on a little bit and something with less bounce. But
it's a dilemma. I mean, I would tell you that
there is no answer for this except what we did
with the viola. I'm sorry, guys. I mean, that's just
that's just what it is. And because our soul never
meant a lot didn't like and there aren't any other
wedges out there that do that. Regardless of what these
little nuanced grinds and they say we took some off
the heel and the and the toe and all that,
that doesn't make a big difference. I mean, you have
to have bounce to make a make a club function.
And uh, you know, we've done something pretty pretty march
us with our v soul. But you know, there are
ways to at least overcome some of the limitations of
conventional wedge design. And you know, the only the only
one that I can recommend is that you know, have
ai bounce club and have a low bounce club. I
don't think you want to carry two clubs of the
same loft, but you know, because that gets into your
full swing gapping but again the short end of the set.
You know, one of the things at the short end
of the set, as I mentioned, I've got wedges in
my collection from the thirties, fifties, sixties, seventy eighties, the wedge,
which why I say SCOREGolf doesn't make wedges. The wedge
basically hasn't changed in fifty sixty seventy years. I've got
a nineteen fifties Spaulding dynamiter that if I took all
if I took all the graphics off and rechromed it,
I would defy anybody to be able to tell that
from one of the twenty twelve models out there.
Speaker 8: Interesting.
Speaker 1: All right, buddy, Well listen, we will talk to you again,
and we'll cover another question in a couple episodes for
the next Golf Smarter episode. Thank you very much for
your time and for your knowledgeable answer.
Speaker 10: Always a pleasure. Can't wait for the next show.