Instruction

10 rules for sticking your irons

Published

12 years ago

Dec 5, 2011

By Johnny Miller
A Golf Digest Article
With Guy Yocom
Photo By Joey Terrill

01 Play more than you practice.
Shortly after I turned 14, in 1961, I became the first junior member (whose father was not a member) at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Playing Olympic day in and day out made me the good iron player I turned out to be. You never seem to get a level lie at Olympic. You’re required to hit a lot of awkward shots, such as playing a fade with the ball above your feet. You can’t work on shots like that on the practice tee, which is why I always played more than I practiced. A lot of things I learned on Olympic defied conventional teaching. For example, from a sidehill lie with the ball below you, the tendency is to pull it dead left—not slice it, as most instructors say—because you straighten your right arm to reach the ball, and you swing over the top. Don’t be one of those driving-range superstars: players who can make their irons sing on the practice tee but are only so-so on the course. Get out and play.

02 Don’t fall in love on demo day.
In 1974, I got a set of old Tommy Armour irons with no chrome on them. These dull-gray clubs had a soft feel to them that was just exquisite. The irons were 25 years old, but after I sawed down the hosels and added some lead tape here and there, they were like magic. I got on the hottest streak of my career. I won eight times on the PGA Tour in 1974, knocking down flags every week. The following year I signed an equipment contract and had to put the Tommy Armours in the garage. Big mistake. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make the new clubs perform like the old ones. If you’ve got a set of irons you really like, think twice before switching to a new set. There are a lot of great new irons out there, and you might fall in love with how well you hit them on demo day. But when you get on the course and face funny lies and try to hit shots, like a high draw or a low fade, you might find they’re completely different.

03 Listen to your shots.
In the winters when I was a kid, my dad had me practice in the basement of our house. I’d hit balls for hours into a canvas tarp tacked to the ceiling. Because I couldn’t see the ball flight, I relied on two kinds of feedback: how the shots felt and how they sounded. Thin shots, balls struck on the toe, and shots hit a shade fat have distinctive sounds. You’re always looking for that crisp thwack at impact. Even from the TV booth, I can usually tell immediately if an iron shot is mis-hit and if it will come up short or not have enough spin to hold. Sound can definitely give you clues as to how well you hit the shot.

04 Distance trumps direction.
If you’ve ever wondered what magic threshold you must cross to become a first-rate player, it’s simple: You must control distance with your irons. I’ve always been obsessed with distance control. When I felt my iron game was at its peak, I’d sometimes ask my caddie for the distance to half a yard. You control distance by hitting the ball solidly and varying the length and speed of your swing. If you do that well, you become more precise, which rubs off on your direction, too. The week I won the 1974 Tucson Open, I hit hole or the flagstick 10 times.

05 Get down on it at impact.
I’m a swing-sequence junkie. I love poring over sequence photos of the best players. The feature all great iron players have in common is that their heads are lower at impact than when they were standing tall at address. They really go down after the ball, not by bending at the hips or dropping their head but by increasing the flex in their knees. They sag their knees down and toward the target at the same time, moving on a downward diagonal line. Now, you’d think this would make you hit the ball fat. But if you lean the club forward, toward the target, so that the shaft is angled ahead of the left arm, you’ll absolutely pure it. Which leads to the next rule.

06 Keep the angle in your right wrist.
Through impact, the hands lead a trailing clubhead. That delofts the clubface and makes it possible to hit down on the ball and squash it against the face. If you’ve ever wondered how good iron players make their shots bore through the air, this is it. Every effective iron player maintains the semi-cocked position in the right wrist through impact, the right palm facing down. Every bad ball-striker has the palm up. As I said only half-jokingly on a telecast last summer, if you want to be a terrible iron player and avoid getting to single digits, just flip that right wrist so the clubhead scoops and passes your hands.

07 Don’t sweat every detail.
Because iron play is all about precision, there’s a tendency to focus on details that are irrelevant or uncontrollable. For instance, a slightly wet clubface won’t affect distance. And you can’t predict how a small glob of mud on your ball will influence ball flight, so don’t stress about it. A light breeze won’t affect distance much if you hit the ball solidly. Concentrate on things that matter: alignment, rhythm and solid contact. Perform those well, and the small things won’t really come into play.

08 “Photograph” impact.
During one of my nice streaks in the mid- 1970s, Jack Nicklaus stopped me on the range one day and asked what I was working on. I told him I was concentrating on impact, trying to “freeze frame” that fraction of a second. “You can actually see that?” asked Jack. When I told him I could after months of training my eyes to take a “photograph” of impact, Jack said, “You’re crazy; the club is moving too fast.” But, as I said to him, it’s not only possible, it’s one of my secrets for hitting great iron shots. When I took the picture, so to speak, I checked that the clubface was square and delofted slightly, and that I was making crisp contact. Satisfy those impact conditions, and you’ll start chasing flags.

09 Identify the sweet spot on your irons.
I’ll bet that if you asked the typical 15-handicapper to point to the sweet spot, he’d point to a spot too high on the face. Remember, all perimeter-weighted irons have the majority of their mass around the sole of the club, to help you get the ball in the air. That means the sweet spot is below the center of the face. This really comes into play on par 3s, where you’re allowed to tee up. Your objective should be to tee the ball so your “lie” is slightly better than a perfect fairway lie. And even with perimeter weighting, because of the design of the clubhead, the sweet spot is going to be slightly closer to the hosel than the toe.

10 Speed kills.
I can see wanting 10 more yards with the driver, but squeezing extra distance out of your irons is the kiss of death. In my prime, my standard distance for the 9-iron was 125 yards. I hit my 6-iron 160, and my 4-iron 185. I didn’t want to be long with my irons, only smooth. Reining in my swing speed was key to distance control and accuracy. If you can resist the tendency to swing more than 75 percent, you’ll have better balance and rhythm. Your mechanics will be better, and you’ll find the sweet spot more often. You don’t need a crazy swing speed to spin the ball, either: Pure backspin comes from good contact more than anything else.

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: My top 5 practice tips

Published

2 weeks ago

Sep 22, 2023

Terry Koehler

While there are many golfers who barely know where the practice (I don’t like calling it a “driving”) range is located, there are many who find it a place of adventure, discovery and fun. I’m in the latter group, which could be accented by the fact that I make my living in this industry. But then, I’ve always been a “ball beater,” since I was a kid, but now I approach my practice sessions with more purpose and excitement. There’s no question that practice is the key to improvement in anything, so today’s topic is on making practice as much fun as playing.

As long as I can remember, I’ve loved the range, and always embrace the challenge of learning new ways to make a golf ball do what I would like it to do. So, today I’m sharing my “top 5” tips for making practice fun and productive.

Have a mission/goal/objective. Whether it is a practice range session or practice time on the course, make sure you have a clearly defined objective…how else will you know how you’re doing? It might be to work on iron trajectory, or finding out why you’ve developed a push with your driver. Could be to learn how to hit a little softer lob shot or a knockdown pitch. But practice with a purpose …always.
Don’t just “do”…observe. There are two elements of learning something new. The first is to figure out what it is you need to change. Then you work toward that solution. If your practice session is to address that push with the driver, hit a few shots to start out, and rather than try to fix it, make those first few your “lab rats”. Focus on what your swing is doing. Do you feel anything different? Check your alignment carefully, and your ball position. After each shot, step away and process what you think you felt during the swing.
Make it real. To just rake ball after ball in front of you and pound away is marginally valuable at best. To make practice productive, step away from your hitting station after each shot, rake another ball to the hitting area, then approach the shot as if it was a real one on the course. Pick a target line from behind the ball, meticulously step into your set-up position, take your grip, process your one swing thought and hit it. Then evaluate how you did, based on the shot result and how it felt.
Challenge yourself. One of my favorite on-course practice games is to spend a few minutes around each green after I’ve played the hole, tossing three balls into various positions in an area off the green. I don’t let myself go to the next tee until I put all three within three feet of the hole. If I don’t, I toss them to another area and do it again. You can do the same thing on the range. Define a challenge and a limited number of shots to achieve it.
Don’t get in a groove. I was privileged enough to watch Harvey Penick give Tom Kite a golf lesson one day, and was struck by the fact that he would not let Tom hit more than five to six shots in a row with the same club. Tom would hit a few 5-irons, and Mr. Penick would say, “hit the 8”, then “hit the driver.” He changed it up so that Tom would not just find a groove. That paved the way for real learning, Mr. Penick told me.

My “bonus” tip addresses the difference between practicing on the course and keeping a real score. Don’t do both. A practice session is just that. On-course practice is hugely beneficial, and it’s best done by yourself, and at a casual pace. Playing three or four holes in an hour or so, taking time to hit real shots into and around the greens, will do more for your scoring skills than the same amount of range time.

So there you have my five practice tips. I’m sure I could come up with more, but then we always have more time, right?

The Wedge Guy: Anyone can be a better wedge player by doing these simple things

Published

4 weeks ago

Sep 8, 2023

Terry Koehler

As someone who has observed rank-and-file recreational golfers for most of my life – over 50 years of it, anyway – I have always been baffled by why so many mid- to high-handicap golfers throw away so many strokes in prime scoring range.

For this purpose, let’s define “prime scoring range” as the distance when you have something less than a full-swing wedge shot ahead of you. Depending on your strength profile, that could be as far as 70 to 80 yards or as close as 30 to 40 yards. But regardless of whether you are trying to break par or 100, your ability to get the ball on the green and close enough to the hole for a one-putt at least some of the time will likely be one of the biggest factors in determining your score for the day.

All too often, I observe golfers hit two or even three wedge shots from prime scoring range before they are on the green — and all too often I see short-range pitch shots leave the golfer with little to no chance of making the putt.

This makes no sense, as attaining a level of reasonable proficiency from short range is not a matter of strength profile at all. But it does take a commitment to learning how to make a repeating and reliable half-swing and doing that repeatedly and consistently absolutely requires you to learn the basic fundamentals of how the body has to move the club back and through the impact zone.

So, let’s get down to the basics to see if I can shed some light on these ultra-important scoring shots.

Your grip has to be correct. For the club to move back and through correctly, your grip on the club simply must be fundamentally sound. The club is held primarily in the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. Period. The lower hand has to be “passive” to the upper hand, or the mini-swing will become a quick jab at the ball. For any shot, but particularly these short ones, that sound grip is essential for the club to move through impact properly and repeatedly.
Your posture has to be correct. This means your body is open to the target, feet closer together than even a three-quarter swing, and the ball positioned slightly back of center.
Your weight should be distributed about 70 percent on your lead foot and stay there through the mini-swing.
Your hands should be “low” in that your lead arm is hanging naturally from your shoulder, not extended out toward the ball and not too close to the body to allow a smooth turn away and through. Gripping down on the club is helpful, as it gets you “closer to your work.
This shot is hit with a good rotation of the body, not a “flip” or “jab” with the hands. Controlling these shots with your body core rotation and leading the swing with your body core and lead side will almost ensure proper contact. To hit crisp pitch shots, the hands have to lead the clubhead through impact.
A great drill for this is to grip your wedge with an alignment rod next to the grip and extending up past your torso. With this in place, you simply have to rotate your body core through the shot, as the rod will hit your lead side and prevent you from flipping the clubhead at the ball. It doesn’t take but a few practice swings with this drill to give you an “ah ha” moment about how wedge shots are played.
And finally, understand that YOU CANNOT HIT UP ON A GOLF BALL. The ball is sitting on the ground so the clubhead has to be moving down and through impact. I think one of the best ways to think of this is to remember this club is “a wedge.” So, your simple objective is to wedge the club between the ball and the ground. The loft of the wedge WILL make the ball go up, and the bounce of the sole of the wedge will prevent the club from digging.

So, why is mastering the simple pitch shot so important? Because my bet is that if you count up the strokes in your last round of golf, you’ll likely see that you left several shots out there by…

Either hitting another wedge shot or chip after having one of these mid-range pitch shots, or
You did not get the mid-range shot close enough to even have a chance at a makeable putt.

If you will spend even an hour on the range or course with that alignment rod and follow these tips, your scoring average will improve a ton, and getting better with these pitch shots will improve your overall ball striking as well.

Clement: Don’t overlook this if you want to find the center of the face

Published

1 month ago

Aug 30, 2023

Shawn Clement

ALIGNMENT MADNESS!!

It is just crazy how golfers are literally beside themselves when they are placed in a properly aligned set up! They feel they can’t swing or function! We take a dive into why this is and it has to do with how the eyes are set up in the human skull!

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