Opinion & Analysis

Growing Up Golf Part 9: The Aggravation Factor

Published

11 years ago

Feb 1, 2013

For you parents with little golfers ages 3 to 5 and maybe even beyond those ages, we need to talk about parent aggravation and frustration. There is going to come a time when your little golfer is going to give less than the effort he or she should. It’s not a matter of if, it’s going to be a matter of when. Every single one of us will encounter this at some point and time. My time came last week during my daughter’s golf class.

Our daughter is enrolled into a kids golf clinic called “Little Tigers” which is held on Saturdays. It’s a golf clinic designed for kids ages 3-5, and the curriculum is very basic. There are no complicated instructions — it’s basically designed to have kids involved in golf and to be around other kids their age. The class is 45 minutes long and is usually broken into two halves. The first half of the class is geared around hitting irons and drivers. The second half is focused on putting.

Friday night we had snow fall, with about 3 inches of accumulation in Indiana. When she woke up and saw the snow she did what all kids do when they see the fluffy white stuff everywhere: She jumped up and down and asked if she could go out and play in it. My wife said to our daughter that we can play in the snow after golf school. My daughter and I arrived to class today, paid our registration fee and headed out to the heated tees.

Now, I am not a big fan of having these young kids hit outside during the winter even if the tee’s are heated. So I had sympathy when my daughter said to me:

“Daddy I don’t want to hit outside, I want to stay in here.” I replied with, “Sweetheart we won’t be out there very long and look the rest of your class is already walking out.” So we headed to the heated tees.

Normally, we share a mat with another student and the kids hit four balls and rotate. Last week, we had our own mat and didn’t need to rotate. I thought to myself that this was better because she can get antsy waiting for her turn. I could tell early on that she wasn’t into hitting balls that. She had what I call “wondering eyes” — she was more concerned about everything else around her except the ball we were hitting. Her swings were half-hearted and there wasn’t any effort in trying to hit the ball.

My daughter was able to finish her bucket of balls (which is about 20 balls total) and during those 20 swings, she asked if she could go onto the range and touch the snow. She used her driver as a microphone and was singing into it and was dancing. All typical acts of a normal 3 year old. The only problem was that we were on a driving range and not at home in the family room where she likes to entertain the audience.

Well, since we had our own mat, we finished before the rest of the kids. My daughter was sitting on my lap trying to stay warm and she looks at me and said, “Daddy I want to go home now.” I said, “Honey, we are getting ready to go inside and play the putting game.” I thought that might make her change her mind since that’s what she wanted to do in the first place. She then says again “No Daddy, I just want to leave now.”

So I was in that uncomfortable place that all parents visit from time to time. I wanted to say, “Class is not over and we need to wait until we are finished before we leave,” and at the same time I didn’t want to force her into doing something she didn’t want to do. So we grabbed her bag and headed to the car.

As I loaded up the car, I could feel the aggravation building inside of me. My daughter has never walked out of anything midway through. She takes gymnastics, and never once left in the middle of a session. At this point, I was in complete shock that we were leaving. So on the way home, we made our stop at Dunkin’ Donuts (we do this after class each time — in the summer we get ice cream and in the winter we get hot chocolate and munchkins). I didn’t want her to think she was being punished for not finishing class. On the way to Dunkin’ Donuts she asked me if she did good.

Now, this is where I make my biggest mistake during this whole incident, I replied “You were doing great until you quit and wanted to leave.” Not even realizing the negativity of the word “quit.” I was so aggravated and frustrated about having to leave in the middle of class that it slipped right out.

She said: “I didn’t quit Daddy.” I replied: “We left before class was over, that’s quitting,” and she replied, “I’m not a quitter.”

I can’t begin to tell you how embarrassed I am to be telling you that those words came out of my mouth. Shame on me! I know better than to use a negative word like “quit.” What I should have said was “You did great, you hit all the balls in the bucket” and followed up with “I wish we could have stayed longer and gone inside to play the putting games with the rest of the class, maybe next week we can stay longer.” So when we get home my wife asked our daughter how golf went and my daughter says “I quit Mommy.” My wife said, “What do you mean you quit? We don’t quit sweetheart” My daughter then said, “No Mommy, I quit and came home.” My wife gives me the what-did-you-say-to-our-daughter-on-the-way-home look. So I had to explain to her what I said and how it slipped out.

I am sharing this story with you because I want you to understand how one negative word can affect your child. She finished her bucket of balls and instead of staying positive, I expressed a negative feeling because of my aggravation. Now my daughter viewed herself as a quitter and not having a feeling of accomplishment for doing so. I can tell you this, it feels horrible inside to hear your daughter say she’s a quitter when asked how golf class went. She now associated today’s class as a failure rather than a sense of accomplishment. So now instead of class being fun (which is what I have been pushing this whole time, to keep it fun) I now took the fun out of it with one word.

I had all day to think about why my daughter didn’t want to finish class and there are several factors that play a role in this.

1. She expressed immediately that she didn’t want to hit outside.

2. Because we didn’t have to share a mat, she was hitting ball after ball after ball. She didn’t get her break while the other child hit his four balls. The activity became monotonous for her.

3. She had playing in the snow on her mind all day and couldn’t wait to get back home so she could go out and play in it. That explains why there wasn’t an effort to hit balls.

4. When we putt inside, there is a bell that rings when you sink a putt (like a reward for making a putt go in). Outside on the range, there’s no sense of accomplishment when you hit the ball well. There are no targets or flags set up close enough for these little kids to strive for. That makes hitting outside not fun for her.

You add up numbers one through four and what do you get? Not fun, and what’s the No. 1 factor that has to remain for kids to be interested in golf? FUN!! We have to keep it fun for them to stay active in this sport. I failed today in keeping it fun. I ignored the fact that she said she didn’t want to go outside and hit. Golf already lost the battle from the start. She had no desire to even want to be there in the first place. She said she wanted to stay inside and putt — I should have asked if she could skip hitting outside and see if it was OK to hit into the one of the indoor nets and then moved onto putting.

I hope my experience from this event helps you understand that what we say to our children can really affect how they feel about golf or anything else in life. We need to concentrate on what we say and even though frustration and aggravation is getting the best of us, we have to remain positive. There were plenty of positives from the 20 balls that she hit and I let frustration get the better of me and left a negative impression on my daughter.

As I tucked her into bed for the night I whispered in her ear, “I had fun today watching you hit balls,” and she gave me a kiss and a hug and said, “I had fun with you too, Daddy.” Hopefully she forgives me.

Click here for more discussion in the “Junior Golf” forum.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

3 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.

TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.

Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.

However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.

Past Winners at TPC Louisiana

2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)

2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks

Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)

Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.

This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.

McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.

Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)

Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.

Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.

Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)

Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.

NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 LIV Adelaide betting preview: Cam Smith ready for big week down under

Published

3 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.

For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.

The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.

The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.

*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*

Past Winners at LIV Adelaide

2023: Talor Gooch (-19)

Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami

Green in Regulation

Richard Bland
Jon Rahm
Paul Casey

Fairways Hit

Abraham Ancer
Graeme McDowell
Henrik Stenson

Driving Distance

Bryson DeChambeau
Joaquin Niemann
Dean Burmester

Putting

Cameron Smith
Louis Oosthuizen
Matt Jones

2024 LIV Adelaide Picks

Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)

When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.

At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.

The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.

Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)

Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.

In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.

For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

7 days ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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