Opinion & Analysis
The Wedge Guy: Ball striking vs. Shot making
We often hear these two terms used to describe a given golfer’s particular skills, and sometimes they are used interchangeably. Today, I would like to discuss the difference and then pose a question to all of you to weigh in on, if you would please.
To get this conversation started, here’s how I would define each and explain the difference:
“Ball striking” refers to a golfer’s ability to make extremely solid contact with the ball shot after shot, club to club, with remarkable consistency. It is the core essence of the game, actually, because until you get reasonably consistent in making solid contact in the center of the face of the club, you really don’t know
what the ball is going to do.
“Shot making” on the other hand, is the golfer’s ability to make the ball do what he or she wants. Shaping shots to move the ball around – fades and draws, high and low, take a little off of it, amp it up a bit, etc. – these are the skills that define the highly accomplished player.
In discussions of “ball striking”, the same names come up time and again for the “legend” tour professionals–Hogan, Nelson, Tommy Bolt, Lee Trevino are maybe the most noted. One of the more common is also the legendary Moe Norman. It was said by those who had the opportunity to see him that he almost never mishit a shot, and every one took off on the same trajectory and flight. It was said that Mr. Norman never achieved financial fame on the golf course, and I have read it was because of his nerves and quirky nature. Nevertheless, he is the subject of countless legends.
In the modern game, I think nearly all the top professionals are great ball strikers, and maybe the LPGA Tour even takes that consistently solid contact to the next level. They simply have to, as they don’t have the physical strength to play their courses with too many unsolid hits.
Moving on to “shot making”, again we see many of the same names from the history books, but I would put Tiger Woods on a completely different level from most of his peers. For over two decades, he has shown us some remarkable imagination and execution of shots most wouldn’t even have the ability to see.
It was said about Ben Hogan that he was one of the very few that combined both skills. Ben Hogan was noted for this insightful piece of advice about how to approach a pin location:
”You work the ball toward the flag. If it is on the right side of the green, you hit a fade, and hit a draw to any left flag location. Pins in the front require a high shot with spin, and those toward the back of the green require a lower shot with less spin. You always work the ball flight from the center of the green toward the edges.”
Now that’s serious insight into how the game can be played…at least if you have complete control over the ball flight. Or at least want to. And that brings me to my question today; I would like for as many of you as possible to chime with your answer to this:
Do you ever try to hit various shots–draws, fades, high, low, “carve it”, etc.– and how often? Only when necessary, frequently, often. Please also indicate your handicap with your answer, OK?
Let’s have some fun with this.
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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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ChipNRun
Apr 7, 2020 at 8:48 am
I’m now about 20 HDCP (as per initial report under new system).
For a long time I tried to hit “whatever shot shape was needed,” but a few years back I settled into the draw as my stock shot. I had problems with a recurring overswing + Over The Top move, and the in-to-out of the draw helped prevent this.
For tee shots, I vary tee height (for the day) based upon turf conditions. It it’s drier, I’ll tee it down so I have a flatter descent angle and can pick up more rollout. If it’s wet, I tee it higher to maximize carry.
That said, on tee shots I can produce a decent fade when needed. I mean, the tee surface is flat and the ball is on a wooden peg which you can adjust the height of. Anyone who understands the basics of ball flight should be able to hit a basic fade or draw under these conditions.
And, if I’m in the right first cut (typical miss for draw), I can hit a low slap slice to get the ball up toward the green. (A skill I picked up playing blades in the previous century…)
For partial wedges, I use a square or ever-so-slightly open set up. With a midspin ball (i.e. Callaway Superhot, TopFlite Gamer Tour), I can generally drop a partial wedge on the green with maybe three yards of rollout.
For really shaggy shots around the green, I get better control with SW than with a LW.
Roejye
Mar 27, 2020 at 12:27 am
I don’t have an official handicap as I didn’t really keep score, and when I did there were quite a few mulligans thrown in. Going by the calculation of score over par, I was about a 13 with my scoring so I’ll say minimum 18. I play a course where there isn’t much reason to shape my shots, and my ability level isn’t there yet, so I focus on ball striking. Closest thing to shot shaping is using a more lofted club to get over a bunker or mound to a tight pin.
Jim
Mar 25, 2020 at 11:36 am
Current index 8.8. I consider myself a pretty good ballstriker but not much of a shot maker. My natural ball flight is a draw and I can hook and slice it at will but I find a fade very difficult to hit. High and low shots are a bit easier to hit. Lucky for me, I’m a lefty and most of the courses I play (local green fee courses) have far more dogleg rights than dogleg lefts to accommodate slicing right handlers. When I do have to make a “shot” and pull it off, it’s very satisfying—and surprising!
Tim M.
Mar 24, 2020 at 2:06 pm
My index is 3.3. As I’ve gotten older, and the balls spin less than the old balata balls I grew up with, I’ve been more confident in hitting draws/fades. My stock shot is a very slight fade…and I agree with the idea that many times, it’s better to hit the stock shot to middle of green rather than trying hit something I’m not as comfortable with. I pay a lot of attention to my warmup, and how the ball is moving. Some days, I can see that my short irons are being drawn a bit…so I work with that. I think it’s fun to hit shots with various curves, and I always think about on the course. I just try to make good decisions about when to try a shot, and when to “settle” for safe, middle of green shot.
Mark M
Mar 24, 2020 at 1:20 pm
One of the main reasons I love golf is exactly what you’re talking about Terry … SHOTMAKING!
I’m definitely in your OFTEN + category – what’s more than often? When I’m on the course, I look at all the available ways to get the ball to go where I want. Sometimes it’s a stock shot but most of the time I’m trying to create a shot that fits the situation as I see it. Sometimes that can be up to 4 or 5 different shot options. Friends have told me that I might lower my scores more if I limited my options to one or two main shots, but what’s the fun in that?!
2waymiss
Mar 24, 2020 at 12:14 pm
Handicap- Hacker! If the toe was the center of the face then I’d be the best ball striker on the planet. I’d love to be able to execute 1 of each shape in the 9 ball flights w/ predictable control. Heck, I’d settle just for a draw (no gear effect) w/ my driver! Lol
Dill Pickelson
Mar 27, 2020 at 11:59 pm
I tweeted Adam Young and asked him how to not toe it and he had me put the ball inside of the rubber tee and hit both. The body adjusted and I could sense the difference. I immediately went from a 6 to a 2 and have been there for about 3 years now. Crazy simple solution for a life long problem.
Brian Terry
Mar 24, 2020 at 12:05 pm
I play to an 8 and only work the ball when I need to. However, I PRACTICE those shots regularly so that I have the confidence to pull them off when needed. I use trajectory manipulation far more than curvature. I like to work the trajectory and spin to control the rollout for front and back pins depending on the firmness of the greens. I usually only use draws and fades if a pin is tucked and I can depend on the release of the shot to get it back to the pin after landing. I plan the ball to land 10-15′ from the pin and roll to it as opposed to landing right on the pin. Nothing is worse than hitting a shot to curve the ball perfectly to the pin, only to have it hop off the edge of the green leaving me short-sided.
BT
William Terry
Mar 24, 2020 at 10:25 am
I’ve gone multiple routes over this in 20 years of playing golf fairly seriously… I’ve ranged from a 12-4 over that time, and currently sit at a 5.5. I’m now 38 and have less time to play and practice… I’ve also decided this season to spend more time on chipping and putting and less time on the range hitting full shots.
Tiger talks about 9 “windows” High, Low, Middle, Straight, Fade, Draw… and can hit all 9 of them. I can hit about 5 different shots with varying degrees of success… High, Low, Draw, Fade, “straight”. I default to a fade and have tried to eliminate a left miss from my game… This allows me to aim left and worry less about hazards.
I can hit a draw, but it lacks control… I’ve stopped “going for it” and forcing a draw and it has helped eliminate mistakes from my game… I will rarely flight the ball on a regular shot into a green. I will use trajectory to get around obstacles, including a higher shot to get over a bunker into a tight pin. That’s about as close to shot making as I get right now.
If I ever succeed in getting my short game to “good”, I will probably spend more time working on a dependable draw, just to add a shot to my bag. It would be nice to have confidence in different shots, but right now I play what I know… Honestly, I don’t think this will shave a significant amount of strokes off my game (other than working on shot making will improve my ball striking). I can’t see how mastering a “second” type of shot would shave more than a half stroke off my cap.
Brian
Mar 24, 2020 at 10:23 am
I play to a 6 and my stock shot – and really only shot – is a draw; I can’t hit a [decent] fade to save my life. Trust me, I’ve tried, but it ends poorly. Luckily, I can repeat a pretty similar [draw] ball flight shot after shot, so what I’ll change up is the height based on the conditions: windy – keep it low, wet – keep it high, etc.
Bart
Mar 24, 2020 at 9:48 am
I try to put a bit of “english” on every single shot outside of 100 yards. It makes the game more interesting to me and also makes the winds influence more predictable. Also if you know the slope of the green it gives you a better chance of getting it closer since you have an idea of the roll after it lands. 9.9 out of 10 shots will have some sort of bend so might as well have control over it.
Wasnt it Hogan that said “straight hitters NEVER hit it straight”?