- Welcome back to sunny Naples, Florida.
Adam Bazalgette here, two time PGA teacher of the year
award winner, founder of Scratch Golf Academy,
today's subject, it's a request from several people,
at least we hope we'll touch on it,
golf course strategy, irons.
Especially for irons. Stay tuned.
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So, golf course strategy, irons.
We're going to focus a little bit today,
a little bit on how to hit in between shots,
but especially on some of the
strategies when you might want to pick the longer
or shorter club.
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of courses there, including a whole course on irons,
and you can also go there to learn how you can get
a one on one video lesson with me.
Let's get started.
- Okay so in this video, let's focus on when you're
in between shots with iron clubs.
A little too long with the long club,
not sure you can reach it with the short club.
And let's focus mostly on strategy, although we'll
touch briefly on how you can take a little yardage off
a shot. Let me start with a little anecdote,
friend of mine many, many years ago worked at Indian Creek
in Miami, which is the home of Ray Floyd during his
playing career. One of the great players of all time.
And he used to hang out with Floyd because they had
a little relationship through this guy's dad.
In any case, Ray Floyd, one of the things he used to do,
was he said he practiced in between shots,
and as I'll touch on later he would actually pick
a flag out and hit different clubs to that flag
in terms of distance. Now, certainly he had
a lot of practice time on his hands as a pro,
but what he used to tell my friend Joe was that,
listen, when you're playing golf and you're in competition
you are gonna have quite a few in between shots
in your bag, and most times, you're gonna be going
with the short, with the longer club I should say,
and taking a little yardage off it.
But he said, it's just something that people don't practice
and I found, when I heard the anecdote,
that was really true of me, hey, once I get a chance
to hit some balls, kind of get loose,
get the blood pumping and get warmed up, start to hit
it even further, which is fun,
and you tend to camp out on just plowing the ball out there
and pounding it, which again is fun,
but you don't learn that feel for in between shots,
and as Ray said, you get a lot of them in a given round
of golf. So let's look at some situations
where you might want to take the long club and
take a little bit off it.
- So more typically if we're between clubs,
we'll choose the longer club and take a little bit off it.
And what would be the reasons for that?
Well, first thing, many golfers, unless they're
fairly highly skilled, when they think I've gotta really
get all of this club, in other words, they've chosen
a shorter one, they swing hard.
They often don't make as good a contact,
they just don't make as good a swing, so it often produces
better contact, a little more control in the swing.
Secondly, you're just gonna have more control when you
take a little bit of speed off it, and I especially think
that's true of the wedges and short irons.
Best players bring those wedges and short irons,
reasonably low in there, gives them good distance control,
and if you've got a nine iron or a pitching wedge,
you should have plenty of swing, if you're playing
a quality ball, to stop the ball, even without
swinging super hard.
The other situation of course where you typically choose
the longer club, in fact exclusively you would,
would be against the wind. I've got a little bit
of wind against me here, but really nothing to
bother me in that sense, but if it's a decent
sized wind, choose the longer club.
One, couple of things, when you swing smoother,
the ball will come off lower, and with less spin.
The ball's gonna stop fine against the wind,
the last thing you need is to beat it up in the air
with a ton of back spin and have it balloon up on you
so take less club, and if it's a strong wind,
a couple less clubs or more,
and take some of that spin off it.
That will have a second benefit, not only will it keep
the ball down, and keep it from ballooning,
but when you hit the ball a little bit lower with less spin,
the ball won't curve as much.
Against the wind, will tend to push the ball sideways
and make it curve, so you'll just have more control
if you pick the longer club, and swing a little smoother.
- Okay, so before we look at when you might choose
the shorter club, a little bit less common,
let's at least touch on how you'd take length off
an iron shot.
Now, what's gonna make the difference,
let's assume solid contact for a minute,
is club head speed, the less speed of course the
shorter the ball's gonna go. But the three ways
you might touch on that would be shortening the club,
a shorter shaft will produce less speed,
shorten your swing, in all likelihood unless you
really jump on it, that'll take a little speed off,
and of course finally, if you're so inclined,
you can just smooth it out, take a little bit out
of your rhythm, or you can do a combination of any
one of them, or any two of them. So pick between them,
shortening up, shortening the swing, or
smoothing out the swing, and fine tune it a little bit.
Now, as I said at the beginning, Ray Floyd was
an advocate for this, he practiced this,
and what he would do, is he would get a flag out there
on the range, that he would hit to in terms of distance,
and then he would practice it with the less club,
and even sometimes with two less clubs until he could
work it out, and that would be a way you could
fine tune this a little bit.
Alright, let's have a look at when you might use
the shorter of the two club choices.
- So finally, what might be a couple of situations where,
if you're between clubs, you'd take the shorter club
and swing a little bit harder, and again
we're gonna assume for a second here you can contain
yourself and keep a decent rhythm and just swing
somewhat harder. Well here's a couple of situations
I would see. If you've got a front pin, and you need
to get the ball up in the air and spin it,
you need to be able to stop the ball quickly when you
get up there, it's an ideal situation, but depending
on your skill level I probably would only try that,
in a case of a shorter club, and when the lie is good,
when you feel it's a real green light, contact is
gonna be a cinch, with the lie, it's a great time to try,
go ahead and rip it a little bit, it'll go higher,
it'll spin more, you'll stop it a little more easily.
And possibly the other case, this green here may be
a little hard for you to see, has a really steep drop off
at the back, if you've got a back pin, and hey you go
ten, twelve, fifteen feet too long, you're down a gully
with a nearly impossible comeback shot, just take
a good strong swing with the shorter club,
and you'll likely come out fifteen, twenty feet short,
little bit nearer the middle of the green,
takes a lot of control to take the longer club
and not accidentally cream it, and knock it down the hill.
- Well, I hope you found that helpful,
on golf course strategy for irons,
and if you like the video please subscribe to the
channel, leave a comment, maybe a request, happy to
get to that again ScratchGolfAcademy.com's my website,
got all sorts of courses, all sorts of content
for you there, and you can also learn how you can
get a one on one video lesson with me.
Appreciate your time as always.
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