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Are you as good as your best club, with every club?

Tadashi70

Tadashi70

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The title says it all. Are you as good as your best club with every club in your bag. Think about it, think about the strongest club in your bag. If every club in your bag lags behind the best, you might have some work to do.

Ask yourself, why is this club so strong and what do I have to do to get better with the other clubs. Start with one club and get to work.
 
Great advice Freddie.
 
I'm equally bad with all my clubs!
 
I wish I could say yes. If I would do with all other clubs what I can do with a 58* in my hands, I may be dangerous at this game! Time to do work...
 
To be honest a fairly well struck Topped shot can come from any club in my bag at anytime.
Having said that , Throughout most of my rounds I make solid contact with any club except the 4 iron. That's the club I wish I could hit as well as my 7 iron. I Don't know if its set up or ball position before the swing , that club gets me every time.
 
Irony know if I have one best club...I am hoping to have 14 of them and am putting in the work to get there.
 
Nope, because I spend more time doing drills with one or two clubs out of the bag.

I have already started to spend more time with each ranges session with more clubs to get the proper swing engrained throughout the bag.
 
wubears71 said:
I'm equally bad with all my clubs!
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Come on, you have that 15th club dialed in or is it the 16th..who knows, lol. There is a lot of truth in your statement
 
Is difficult to say, my best club changes with every round! Played two rounds at the weekend where my 20 degree hybrid was working perfectly, but kept hitting my wedges fat. Played last night and was the opposite way around. This game is infuriating!
 
I wish I could say yes to this. I just am not that great with the lob wedge. Compared to let's say my 56* or my driver even...
 
I seem to be most comfortable with my 8 iron. It seems the longer the club the more I want to "hit it" instead taking a normal swing at it
 
I must be the odd man out. I know that when my swing is on, then I'm as good with my wedges as I am with my driver or what ever. But my swing is not always "on". So I don't have a club that needs more work than over another one. I need swing work to increase the consistency across te board. And when my swing is on, I want it to be better, but that's another story in itself.
 
I'm equally good with groups of clubs. Meaning my metalwoods are all about the same and my irons are all about the same. There are times when I trust my fairway woods and times when I'll pull a long iron instead. My driver is improving and my putter...well, I'm considering going with the Happy Gilmore hockey stick at this point. But I've never had a putting lesson, which is going to change tomorrow after work. I'm not afraid to pull any club out of my bag and swing it. I still hit plenty of bad shots, but I've got more confidence in all of my clubs than I had when I started.
 
Not even close.

In terms of hitting the ball off the ground, the longer and lower lofted the club, the more I struggle.
 
My best club(s) change from round to round. Lately it's been pretty consistent throughout the bag and the "trouble" clubs seem to be my 6 & 5 irons.

You're right Freddie, I've got work to do.
 
I'm with Mike. My best club changes round to round. For the most part everything is pretty similar overall except for the driver. But my best club just happens to be a day to day thing I think.

I've been trying to get range time in 3 times a week and work on drills. I certainly know I'm no where close to as good as I can be.
 
I'm not even close. I've got lot's of work to do from 30 yards and in. Took a putting lesson yesterday and he changed a lot - ball position, grip, and shoulder alignment. Golf is always a process about getting better which is why it still has my attention after 37 years.
 
My weakness is definitely in my wedge game. Whereas I normally play a high fade throughout the bag, I'm way more successful playing a bit of a trap draw with my wedges. But I still don't score with my wedges as much as I would like to.

The bigger question, and more to your point, is where to focus during my very limited practice outings and what to practice. I'm sure I would benefit from wedge lessons to find a proper technique, then practice that. Would it make sense to try and play cut shots with my wedges, duplicating my normal swing so I wouldn't have "good clubs" and "bad clubs"? I don't know... I wouldn't want to change what I'm doing with the rest of my clubs.
 
Hawk said:
Not even close.

In terms of hitting the ball off the ground, the longer and lower lofted the club, the more I struggle.
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Why do you think this is the case for so many people? Is it just a mental thing or is it something about a proper swing that makes it harder?

I ask because I'm totally comfortable with my 3W and my 3i and 4i, but I know a lot of people struggle with them. I can't figure out if I just don't have a mental block, or if I have some weird swing fault that makes those easier to hit that I might "fix" at some point that will make them hard to hit. I hit my driver so short, I get *lots* of opportunities to hit long clubs off the fairway. Maybe I'm just ok with them because they get such a workout.
 
My comfort and skill level go something like this:
A2_1.3.11cSlope.jpg


Where the vertical references are how good of a shot I will hit and 'Y' is the best I can hit, and the horizontal references are a progression of short to long clubs with 'X' being my driver.

To be fair, I'm comfortable hitting my 3 iron and do so off the tee a lot when I'm really doing bad with the driver. But I know I'm good for a great shot (for me) with the 3 iron 1 out of 10 strikes. 5 out of 10 will be acceptable/playable, and I'll get away with a few shots. But the 3 iron is just barely in the range of my goal of having playable results with it 80% of the time or more.

The only thing I can do to fix it is to continue to put in the time and effort to improve. I already spend 20 or more hours a week on the range and course. I'm better with my shorter clubs because they are easier to hit. I get help from the loft of the shorter clubs to keep the ball from moving as much left or right, I don't tend to over swing them because they are shorter, and the swing is shorter and more compact which means there is less opportunity for me to screw something up in the swing.

The exception for me seems to be the putter and driver. I'm hot and cold with both. 50% of the time, my driver works every time! The other 50% usually results in a penalty or horrible second shot position, but I'm working on that.
 
Good question. I use to have a couple favorite clubs that i could always count on more than the others. But after some swing changes (and/or should I say corrections) via lessons past couple seasons I no longer have that. I can hit any club in the bag equally as good as another. I have no more or less confidence with any of them. My percentage of good and poor hits is now fairly equal with them all. Of course I use certain clubs more than others as I paly but its the swing itself that lacks repetitive consistency and is not club related. At least that's how things are going at this current time with my current set of clubs. .
 
Dave Alvarado said:
Why do you think this is the case for so many people? Is it just a mental thing or is it something about a proper swing that makes it harder?

I ask because I'm totally comfortable with my 3W and my 3i and 4i, but I know a lot of people struggle with them. I can't figure out if I just don't have a mental block, or if I have some weird swing fault that makes those easier to hit that I might "fix" at some point that will make them hard to hit. I hit my driver so short, I get *lots* of opportunities to hit long clubs off the fairway. Maybe I'm just ok with them because they get such a workout.
Click to expand...

I'm going to toss this out there, because I want you to really think about it. Better yet, I'd love it if you actually took the time to do it. It's not anything intended to be cast in a negative light and goes back to one of my first real learning moments as a new golfer (I came to this forum in pretty much the same place you are today on your journey). I think it's a good exercise to really look at the statement you made. There's a difference between not being scared to hit a 4i and actually having consistent success with one (whatever your measure of success is at your skill level)

If I gave you 10 balls each to hit with your PW, your 8 iron, your 4 iron, and your 3 w, what do you think you'd see? And I mean that on a few different levels. How many balls do you hit solidly of the 10, how many go the intended distance, if we drew a circle around the them how big would that circle be, how many are big/penal misses with the potential for penalty strokes?

I am a big believer that if you're hitting 3w, 3i, 4i very often in a round of golf you are playing the wrong tees. Those are shots you should have anywhere from 0 to a few times a round. Now, in your case at the moment it's a little different since you're preparing for an event played at a length that will require those shots, but after that.

Regarding the question though:

I don't think it's a mental thing, at least I don't think it can be attributed purely to a mental thing.

I think it's a combination of factors. Practice time is a big one - we tend to practice what is easiest to make ourselves feel good, we tend to swing longer clubs differently (harder), more margin for error in lateral contact and low point in the swing as length increases, in irons especially the launch conditions and speed needed to hit a low lofted club well are not things many amateurs possess, and I'm sure there is an element of fear/tension created by poor past experiences.
 
I think I'm fairly consistent driver through pw relatively speaking. Of course I'm more likely to hit a really poor one with my driver or 4i, but isn't everyone? The outlier for me is Wedges, I'm awful with them. It's something I definitely have to change.
 
good thread Freddie. The best club in my bag is my adams pro 20. Even on a bad day I seem to hit it great most of the time.
I wish I had an answer as to why this is, but I have no idea. Whats funny is before the adams event last year I did not even carry a hybrid.
 
Hawk said:
I'm going to toss this out there, because I want you to really think about it. Better yet, I'd love it if you actually took the time to do it. It's not anything intended to be cast in a negative light and goes back to one of my first real learning moments as a new golfer (I came to this forum in pretty much the same place you are today on your journey). I think it's a good exercise to really look at the statement you made. There's a difference between not being scared to hit a 4i and actually having consistent success with one (whatever your measure of success is at your skill level)

If I gave you 10 balls each to hit with your PW, your 8 iron, your 4 iron, and your 3 w, what do you think you'd see? And I mean that on a few different levels. How many balls do you hit solidly of the 10, how many go the intended distance, if we drew a circle around the them how big would that circle be, how many are big/penal misses with the potential for penalty strokes?
Click to expand...
I appreciate the insight and I see what you're saying. I'm going to take this to the range and see whether my thinking matches my performance.

I know that hitting those clubs for me is "advanced the ball and it's still in the fairway" probably 80% of the time. But in terms of accuracy, I'm not sure how they're doing. It'll be interesting to quantify.

As for why those clubs get pulled, it's because I hit everything short. My proper tee right now is probably the reds, but like you said I've got an event to prep for. :D
 
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