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Great read MD. I too am pretty poor out of the sand, but we have very little sand here and few places to practice it. Sounds like you are making great headway.
Those were some excellent pics, griff. Interesting wear patterns between the different clubs.
Griff I love to see face wear pics! Matt we need to get together. Great writeup.
Spent the night night at the range last night working primarily on greenside bunker shots. To be perfectly blunt, I am lousy out of the sand.
I pulled a muscle in my back at work so warming up was a bit more of a task than usual. But after about a third of a large bucket I went to the beach. After raking it up to give myself some consistent lies, I drew a line and placed 10 balls about an inch-and-a-half in front of it. I worked my way towards the balls just trying to hit the line. Once I got to the balls I was making good (for me) swings. The pin is about 15-20 yards from the bunker and elevated about 2' - 3' above my feet. We have been getting nightly rain showers for over a week, so the sand is pretty heavy. Using the 55 I opened the blade and all of the first ten would have made it out of the sand but that's about the only positive I came away from it with.
For the next round of ten, I opened the blade a bit more, and opened my stance until the leading edge of the club was perpendicular to the target line. My results were better this go round. I got one to nestle up to about 3 feet, had 3 run about 6-8' past, caught one thin, and had only five fatties that barely made it out. Again I got all of them out, and this time I was able to start feeling the bounce of the club as it made it's way through the sand.
Several rounds later, as I started to get a feel for the club getting through the sand, I was making more confident swings with better acceleration through the ball. In my best 10 ball round I put 5 right up near the stick. I had another 3 get out past the flag further than I would want. I hit only one fat, and picked one clean.
I mentioned all of the rounds above only as a way of letting you all know how horrid my sand game is/was. I still have a ton of work to do but I'm getting there. I can't say for sure that my technique is correct, but I was able to start getting the club to work through the sand after making adjustments to how open I had the blade and my stance. Initially I did not have the blade opened far enough and the primary bounce was grabbing the damp sand and sucking the life out of the swing. As I made adjustments to utilize the tool more appropriately I saw better results. Once I was fully engaging the secondary bounce I was hitting 40-50% where I wanted them, 20-30% were out but long leaving the last 20-30% as just bad shots.
After working on greenside shots I spent the last ten balls of the night hitting full swing fairway bunker shots out to 110 with the 45. It's another shot that I have never practiced, but one that I may start playing with more regularly as a means to work on ball striking. The 45, last night, was nearly perfect. Out of ten balls, I hit all of them straight at the target catching the last heavy and losing 30 yards of distance. The sound at impact was phenomenal, and the balls landing down range were stopping dead in their tracks. With this shot, in this sand, I had to ensure I made ball first contact and then allow the club to work through the sand. To say I was impressed with how the club came through is understating it. Even on the fat swing the club came through the muck without hurting me (physically).
The V-Sole, as I have said before, is not magic. The player has to learn how to utilize it correctly. The club does not do the work for you. This is the first time I have ever really practiced in the sand, so it's difficult to speak intelligently to the clubs performance. I am very happy with how we both did learning how to hit out of the sand for a first go round.
Those were some excellent pics, griff. Interesting wear patterns between the different clubs.
Griff I love to see face wear pics! Matt we need to get together. Great writeup.
Griff, any thought about maybe bending that 45* SCOR back up to standard? I bet you wouldn't see near the amount of toe strikes. It's pretty odd that with that wedge you seem to be predominantly hitting in out in the mid>toe region. Then on the 60* it looks like you're predominantly in the heel region. You might want to have the lies checked.
Nice writeup Matt! Not really surprising you saw better results once opening up the face and putting that v sole to work. Keep up the good work!
Griff, thanks for the face wear pics. Add me to the list that's a little suprised at the different areas of wear from club to club. I concur with TC that you may want to check the lies on your sticks.
Thanks guys!
I do need to hit a lie board just to rule it out. Wonder if all this choking up and down is causing inconsistent striking?
Np G4L. Just reporting the facts.
I do need to hit a lie board just to rule it out. Wonder if all this choking up and down is causing inconsistent striking?
MD, good read. I've struggled with the bunker game, but the greenside game has become progressively better. Fairway bunkers are difficult for me. Lately, I've choked down too much and now I thin most of them. It's consistency that I've struggled with. Like most anything, it's practice makes perfect and I know it will get better as it will for you.
Really like the insight you've given on the V-sole and they intrigue me. Thank you.
Hope the back thing is just a minor twinge.
I do need to hit a lie board just to rule it out. Wonder if all this choking up and down is causing inconsistent striking?
Good stuff MD! I am playing xFTs and I like these wedges, but I am not in love with them. I feel the spin is lacking on both full shots and chips/pitch shots. You guys are going to be bad for my wallet
It could be possible if you haven't done it before. Sometimes choking up or down can results in one needs to move closer/farther from the ball to get the right angle and not jam yourself up. If you're equadistant from the ball all the time it could be enough to change the strike location a bit. I agree with getting the lies checked just to be sure.
On another note, I've found an interesting thing with spin and contact with these wedges out of the rough. I took a distancey ball, a spinny ball and then hit shots with a MX200 GW, Pro combo PW, SCOR 47 and xFT 50 and tried to see the differences in stop power vs running out. For the record, the MX200 GW is also 50 loft, the distance ball was a Nike Vapour and the spinny ball was a Bridgestone B330 RXS. All shots were hit from the same lies, 3 shots with each club on each ball. Not a large enough sample group for my liking but even still, the results where interesting.
As expected (for me), the MX200 GW had the most run out with either ball despite having 3 degrees more loft then the NPC and S47. Contact through the rough to the ball was spotty and the sole/head had issues getting in and out cleanly. Not a giant suprise since the GW is much more iron then wedge and the double grind on the sole doesn't come into play when the ball isn't on the fairway or first cut.
The xFT produced slighty better results then the MX. The additional bounce helped getting to the ball nicely but you could see the club get a little stuck when it was coming through and the spin was greatly reduced if there was any grass between the ball and the face. For the fun of it I tried to come in really steep and the bounce level (09) wasn't able to handle it.
In terms of the NPC, the xfx grooves lived up to their billing more or less. The spinny ball clearly spun a lot more then with the M or X even with the same amount of grass between the face. The extra grooves got a got latching on to other parts of the ball and did their job. The bounce is the same as the X though, so diggers could have issues with getting in and out.
With the S47 what happened was essentially the reverse of the NPC. Like the X, the lesser amount of grooves clearly didn't like have grass between the face and the ball. There was still spin but certainly less. In exchange, the sole bull dozed it's self through the grass to get full contact on the ball and came straight out. I might have put a touch more gusto on the shot, but I don't believe that to be the case. The extra head weight really plowed into the rough and got to the ball with, more or less, the same amount of energy that it came in with. This caused the ball to pop up and out with some impressive vigour. The high amount of bounce also meant that the full face of the club was presented to the ball for full contact.
I found the S47 and the NPC to have more performance out of the rough then the other two but for different reasons. The NPC was better at getting the ball up with more spin and stopping power. It was easy to get a stop or a hop and stop. The S47 came out lower and a bit hotter but with impressive distance control. Unless I was trying to flop the ball, run out was certainly there but the distance consistency with each ball was impressive. I found it much spinnier then the M and equally as spinny as the X. The leg up over the X was the contact was much more consistent and thus so was the distance.
Again, I'd like to do this again with multiple people using 3 or 4 balls and 8 or 10 clubs but I seem to have trouble rounding up people to be my guinea pigs. Something about a mad scientist laugh seems to put people off...