Opinion & Analysis

Growing Up Golf Part 7: The Right Club

Published

11 years ago

Jan 19, 2013

Let’s journey back to my daughter’s third birthday. If you recall in Growing Up Golf Part 2, my wife and I ran into a minor problem with our daughter’s first set of real clubs.

“The day of her third birthday arrived and she opened the clubs and smiled that big smile that all parents love. She pulled the 8 iron out, stood up and attempted her first swing with a real club. The problem is she swung this club like it was a sledge hammer. Now our daughter is far from being a frail little girl. She can pull herself up on monkey bars and hold her own weight on a climbing rope. I was shocked to see that the club was just too heavy. She insisted that she wanted to use it and she’s a “big girl” and wants to use real clubs like Mommy and Daddy. Ok, no worries. I said, “Come on sweet heart, let’s go to the store and pick out one that feels better to you.” But the problem was that the next smaller club was too short for her — one was too short and the other one that fit her perfectly was too heavy. Now what? Well, we kept the club that was the correct length as I saw no benefit to having her use a club that was too short. The putter fit her perfect and wasn’t an issue at all.”

So how do we find the right club for our little golfer? Golf equipment designed for kids has come a long way. Long gone are the days when young golfers had to use adult clubs that had been cut down to size. Most manufacturers create clubs for specific age ranges–typically, 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 11–as a general guideline. The age ranges are for different club lengths, and the clubs get longer as the age ranges increase. However, height is more important than age, as we discovered with our daughter. With all the different types of clubs to choose from, there are a few things to remember when buying them.

Length

Length is the first consideration. Find a set of clubs that is the right length for your child, but also a set that they can grow with. It is OK for them to choke down or grip down on the club. You just don’t want them to move their hands down the grip too much. The basic rule is this: Choking down more than 1.5 to 2 inches too much. Choking down more than two inches can change children’s whole swing, requiring them to manipulate the swing to get the club around their body. A set of clubs whose length requires them to grip down only one inch allows them to make a normal swing. There will probably be enough length to get a second year out of the set.

Shaft Flex

The main problem with cut-down clubs of yesteryear is the stiffness of the shafts. When you cut 4 to 5 inches of length off a golf club, it becomes very stiff. Using flex that is too stiff can promote a very low ball flight. Manufacturers are now making shafts that are the right flex for kids’ swing speeds by using light-weight steel and graphite. The shafts on these kid-friendly clubs are so flexible, you can bend them with your hands. So check to make sure that your child’s set of clubs has a nice, flexible shaft.

Weight

If the club is too heavy, the child will struggle to take the club to the top of the backswing. When this happens, it causes a manipulation of the swing that results in inconsistency. A lighter club will help the child get the club in the correct position at the top of the swing, and lead to an easily repeatable swing. Companies are now making clubs with lighter heads and shafts. Weight was the main issue that we ran into with our daughter and her new clubs.

Following those simple guidelines will increase your chances on picking the correct club for your child. With this all said, I have found a very simple solution to acquiring clubs that will fit your child. You need not look any further than equipment made by U.S. Kids Golf — a company with a fitting system that is based on a color-coded chart that is adjusted every three inches. When you grow out of one color, you move up to the next.

You simply measure your child and choose the appropriate club in the correct color. All the specifications of the clubs are listed in each color zone. If you desire to purchase your clubs elsewhere, this measuring system can be utilized when deciding the correct club length for your son or daughter. As I stated earlier, there are many equipment companies that specialize in kid and junior golf clubs. I am referencing U.S. Kids Golf due to their simplistic club fitting system.

U.S. Kids Golf believes that having properly-fitted clubs is vital to young players’ development, so they created the U.S. Kids Golf Trade Up Program. When you’re ready to move up to the next system, simply trade in your out-grown clubs at your participating retailer and receive a discount on your new ones. If you should decide to purchase your clubs form another manufacturer, check to see if they have a “trade up” program. Another benefit to using U.S. Kids Golf is they have developed the “6th Club Free” program to reward their frequent customers:

– Once you have purchased 5 clubs, you have the opportunity to receive a sixth club free.
– The program applies to clubs purchased as a set or individually.
– Free club can be an iron or putter. Other clubs may be available for an additional fee.
– Be sure to keep your UPC code from your packaging along with your purchase receipt.
– This program is open to residents of the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

We have made some changes to my daughter’s set of clubs. She no longer uses the heavier club (If you recall, I allowed her to use it because she was only chipping with it at that stage of her development) and what I have found to be a prefect fit is the U.S. Kids Golf Ultralite series. We were able to give her in longer club without extra added weight and the shaft flex is designed for younger players swing speeds. My daughter’s set includes a 7 iron a pitching wedge and a putter. There is no need to run out and purchase 14 clubs at this time. Your child can play with no more than a few clubs for a good part of the early years. As your child gets older, you can add a club or two. You may decide to graduate them into the five, seven or nine pitching wedge set, sometimes referred to as the odd irons. Most of the golfers I know learned to play using just the odd numbered irons in the set. This is very common and a good way to start. Having fewer clubs in the bag makes decisions a lot easier.

Now that we fit our youngsters, what about our juniors? I can not stress what I am about to say enough. If your child has decided to take golf to a more serious level and is approaching high school probably even earlier…

TAKE THEM TO A PROFESSIONAL PGA CERTIFIED CLUB FITTER!!!!

The benefits of a properly custom-fit set will make a difference at this level. Now I am in no way saying you need to run out and purchase the most expensive equipment set out there. There are plenty of manufactures that make clubs for all price ranges. Choose a budget and work from there. Even if you don’t buy new clubs, there are great deals on used clubs. But no matter what you decide on…

HAVE THEM FITTED BY A PROFESSIONAL PGA CERTIFIEDCLUB FITTER!!!!

I would like to share some observations that I have made while working with my children. My son turned 2 on Jan. 10, and when your family knows that you and your wife are golf fans and are passing that passion on to your children, your kids are bound to receive a few golf toys growing up. One of the gifts he received was a putting game called Gator Golf. You may have seen this game before, it comes with two putters, two balls and a little alligator that you putt the ball through his mouth and it comes out by his tail and is popped back to you like a little catapult. Both my son and daughter love it. And if you have been following my articles than you know I am all about “Golf Association” and this is a great one.

The putters and golf balls are made of plastic. Here lies the problem. My kids have transitioned to using “real” golf clubs even my son now putts with a “real” putter. When they tried to play Gator Golf, we soon realized that the plastic clubs and balls were too light. After using a heavier metal golf club, the plastic ones really threw their swings out of rhythm. My wife and I replaced the plastic balls with the foam indoor balls they have been practicing with and we gave them their regular putters. Needless to say all, is well in the Gator Golf front. The foam balls were light enough to be popped back and the game works just fine.

So if your children have transitioned to real clubs, there will be no need for any of the plastic toy ones that we all started them out with when they took those first steps towards growing up golf.

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

2 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

2 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

6 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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