Opinion & Analysis
How long between rounds?
I’m on a trip now where there won’t be any golf for almost three weeks. Since I live in Southern California and play year-round, this will be the longest I’ve gone without teeing it up in probably 14 years.
Three weeks seems like an eternity to not pick up a 7-iron to me, but I realized as I talked with other golfers before the trip that some of us endure even longer layoffs over the course of a year.
“I’m from New York,” Albert told me while playing a vacation round in Orange County. “I’m feeling like I’m just getting the hang of the game again after a few months off. We didn’t start playing until mid-March this year so I didn’t pick up a club from November until then.”
I asked him if he has to relearn the game each spring.
[quote_box_center]“No, I have the same swing — I just hit the ball shorter every year. No, really though, it’s the short game, the touch, that takes a while to get back to. By the end of the summer I’ll be in mid-season form, finally, and just about then it will start getting colder and once there’s frost our course closes for the season.”[/quote_box_center]
“Let’s see…the longest I’ve gone without playing is probably a month or two, but that was a few years ago,” C.J. from Long Beach said. He’s probably in his mid-40s and he’s a 5 handicap. “I usually play every weekend, once or twice, and I try to practice at least once a week.” He was on the driving range at Recreation Park.
“We have some nice short courses around here, too, so during the summer when it’s light late I’ll play there. If I had to go two weeks without playing I might go through withdrawal.”
Sometimes you’ll hear a pro golfer say after three consecutive tournaments that he needs a break, and when he comes back a few weeks later I’ll read how he never picked up a club for two weeks.
“I feel like I’d lose my swing if I went that long without playing,” C.J. said.
I found Matt at another driving range — this might sound like the set-up of a bad golf joke, but no, he was hitting balls off of the grass. “I haven’t played for like two months,” he said.
“But I’m playing with some old fraternity brothers Saturday at White Dove and I don’t want to look like a total fool,” he said while hitting driver after driver, each one struck solidly but often a little right, and then once, way right.
“See,” he said after the big slice, “that’s what I can’t do Saturday, but when you don’t play very often, it’s hard not to.”
I asked him why he doesn’t play more often.
[quote_box_center]“I like golf but it takes too much time, costs too much money, and it’s too hard to play well,” he said. “I get frustrated when I’m out there if I suck really bad. I need to play more to get better but because I don’t have much time or want to spend the money, that’s hard to do.”[/quote_box_center]
I played 36 holes one day the other week to celebrate my birthday and in my morning round one of the guys I was paired with, Rodney, said he had played golf at least once every month for 18 years and counting. That didn’t sound that impressive to me until he mentioned that he’d lived near Detroit for the first eight of those years.
“During the winter sometimes I’d drive down near Cincinnati to play if I had to, even then sometimes it was barely in the 40s outside.”
“That takes dedication,” I said, perhaps in understatement.
“Yeah, but it got me out of the house and on one of those drives I decided it was time to move to California. My wife says it was the best idea I ever had, besides marrying her.”
I asked Rodney how long he goes between rounds now. “Play every weekend and every Wednesday,” he said. “So I have no excuse for playing as badly as I am today. But Saturday will be another story, that’s when I’m with my boys and I’ll take their money.”
In my afternoon birthday round I played with a couple from San Diego. Carol made more pars than her husband, Edward, through the front nine but she confided to me, “He’s having a really bad day…”
“We’re going to play again tomorrow,” Edward said. “Maybe I’ll get my game figured out by then.”
Inconsistency is the one trait infrequent golfers usually share. They hit enough good shots to know they can do it and so they visualize and even expect that good outcome, but because they haven’t played enough to hone their skills they’ll sometimes hit embarrassing shots.
“I think if I could play twice a week every week,” Edward said on the back nine after he’d started making a few pars, “then I could really start playing well.”
I asked how long it had been since his last round.
“A couple of weeks. We’re doing some remodeling and I’ve been helping with that and it seems like there’s always something to do that stops me from playing.”
The other guy in our foursome was Evan. He told me that he played pretty much every weekend, but usually never picks up a club from Sunday afternoon to Saturday morning.
“Some Saturdays I feel like I’m just relearning the game for the first few holes, even if I go to the range to warm up before the round,” he said. “In some ways the Saturday rounds are almost practice rounds and I play my best golf on Sundays when I’ve played the day before.”
I told him I was going away and wouldn’t be near a golf club for more than three weeks.
He’d seen me kick my way around to a 43 on the front nine. “Good luck with that,” he said. “My advice: Don’t bet with anybody the first round back.”
How long do you usually go between rounds? Let us know in the comments section below. And check out the inspirational story of one golfer trying to shoot the round of his life at 7-ironpress.com. The book is called A Perfect Lie – The Hole Truth and you can get free shipping on the paperback with the code GOLFWRX, or $4 off the e-book when you enter the code GOLFWRX1 at check-out.
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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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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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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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Joew2328
Jul 29, 2015 at 2:47 pm
I play in a golf league 2 nights a week, and try to get in at least 18 holes on the weekend. Unfortunately, I live in Michigan so every year I am forced to take a 2-4 month hiatus from the game. It is kind of nice to “reinvent” your game every off season though.
Chet Steadmana
Jul 18, 2015 at 9:27 pm
Until this past April, it had been 53 weeks since I last played. The comment in the article about time and cost rings true. First round back was a terrible 93 on a course I had never seen before. Two weeks later, shot a nice 79. I probably won’t play again for another few weeks, but find it pretty easy to come back after a long layoff. When I haven’t played for a while, I don’t get overly aggressive. The third or fourth round back normally brings me back to earth though.
Golfgirlrobin
Jul 12, 2015 at 12:25 am
The longest I’ve ever gone was four weeks when I hit a root with a six iron and separated a rib from my sternum. Turns out you can’t play through that one.
Otherwise, never longer than a week. Even when studying for the bar exam, I needed to get out and play or the the stress would have killed me.
felchone
Jul 11, 2015 at 3:58 pm
Lol…try being a golf nut in Saskatchewan. No golf happening around here for at least 5 months of the year. 3 weeks with no golf isn’t going to be getting much sympathy from this part of the map haha
Regis
Jul 8, 2015 at 2:59 pm
I’ve been playing since I was 13. I’m 64. My entire life has been spent on the East Coast so for the most parts long winter layoffs are the norm. When I resume I usually put in one range session then hit the course. By the 7th or 8th hole I’m amazed at how well I’m playing, tee shots, wedges, putting. But then like the proverbial squirrel , I start to implement all the swing tips I’ve stored over the winter from mags, TV and internet. And then my game deteriorates to its norm. Crap. I need a lesson.
Scott
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:11 pm
I’ve gone 31 years avoiding a wife and kids so I’m good to play everyday. You just gotta decide what’s more important in life. I think I made the right choice
headymonster
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:03 pm
I have a driving range mat in the garage and a cheap carpet I use for putting. I can get a few swings/putts in taking out the garbage. Keeps game in check.
Double Mocha Man
Jul 7, 2015 at 9:46 pm
Gavin, Doc… If your daughters could talk they’d tell you to go out and play. Makes for a happier papa. Then come home and hug them and describe all the details of that lone birdie you made. Your little girl will hang on every word, unlike your golfing buddies.
Lucas
Jul 7, 2015 at 6:16 pm
almost 24 hours on a bad day.
Gavin Lee
Jul 7, 2015 at 4:47 pm
Other than a 9 month span when I thought I was giving the game up, the last three months have been the longest I’ve gone. After my daughter was born in May, the golf course became a bit of a mythological place…How long is appropriate to wait after your kids is born to go back?
Doc Todd
Jul 7, 2015 at 8:27 pm
Depends on your situation I suppose. My daughter is 14 mo now and I feel guilty of not seeing her except through a baby monitor half the week that I find myself not going to the course when I so badly want to. An easy solution would be to have the weekend mornings free to golf, but I feel guilty that my wife is up early on the weekdays so I let her sleep while I take the baby duty. If my wife were an early riser I would be in a much better position on the weekend, but she could sleep till 10 am everyday.
Scott
Jul 8, 2015 at 1:43 pm
My son was born 2 weeks ago, and I’ve already played twice. We’ve had people over a lot, so wife isn’t alone, but honestly there isn’t a heck of a lot I can do right now.
I expect next year to be more challenging actually, once he’s more active.
Danny
Jul 7, 2015 at 4:45 pm
Time away from the game helps your swing and mentally, but your short game touch goes away so it’s a net wash.
Scooter McGavin
Jul 7, 2015 at 9:07 pm
Lol. True. There’s no magic or voodoo to it. It’s a skill-based activity, so the more you practice the better you get.