As I was thinking about some “gremlins” that have snuck into my own game the past few weeks, I recalled a visit I had with Dr. Bob Rotella some 10 years ago. That morning was one of the standout days of my 30-year golf industry career, getting to spend several hours with one of golf’s pre-eminent sports psychologists.

So, that brought me to my “Wedge Guy” archives to recall what I shared with my readers way back then, just to refresh my own memories and takeaways from that very interesting and enlightening session.

Dr. Rotella, as you probably know, has worked with dozens of tour professionals, and has authored numerous books on the subject of performance psychology, most notably “Golf Is Not A Game of Perfect.” If you haven’t read any of his works, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, we spent two hours talking about the performance challenges all of us golfers face, which led into a deep dive into the technologies I had built into the SCOR4161 precision scoring clubs (the forerunners of my work on Ben Hogan wedges and now the Edison Forged line). What I want to share with you today are some of the real “pearls of wisdom” that I gleaned from that very enjoyable visit:

Scoring is all about short range performance.

Dr. Rotella first enlightened me to the fact that tour players hit “10 and a half to 12 and a half” approach shots a round with an 8-iron or less (now even more than that!). For the modern tour players, that accounts for almost all the par fours and threes, because the par fives are two-shot holes. He went on to express his advice that you just try to not hurt yourself when you have a seven-iron or longer into the green, and you fire at flags with the short irons and wedges. In his words, “if you don’t feel like you can knock flags down with those scoring clubs this week, you might as well stay home.” I think we can all apply that wisdom by spending the vast majority of our range time working to improve our work with those high-lofted scoring clubs.

The tight fairways scare the pros, too

Over the past few decades, the mower heights on fairways have been moved closer and closer, so that the pros play tighter and tighter lies all the time. Back then I had just read where the fairway height at Merion, for example, was at one inch when David Graham won the U.S. Open there in 1981 but was increased from one quarter to on half inch for the 2013 U.S. Open. That’s a huge difference. Because the ball is sitting tighter, shots are hit lower on the clubface, which robotic testing reveals, produces lower and hotter flight with more spin. And it makes short range pitch and chip shots scary even for the pros. That’s because they play low bounce wedges to deal with the bunkers on tour. (Which I’m getting to in just a moment.) Watch TV and you’ll see tour pros putting from off the green more often than you used to, and now we know why. There’s a tip in there for all of us.

Those tour bunkers.

Did you know the PGA Tour had a standard for bunker sand. They like them firm and moist, so the players can hit those miraculous bunker shots with lots of spin, and they very rarely get a “down” or plugged lie. As I’ve written before, the PGA Tour appreciates that their “customer” is the television viewer – over 50% of which don’t even play golf – and they like to see these things. But I have a problem with the best players in the world enjoying bunkers that are not nearly as tough as the ones we all play every week. For most all of us, any bunker shot that gets out and leaves a putt of even 20 to 30 feet is not bad.

There’s a lot more I took away, but not enough room here. I strongly suggest that you add a few of Dr. Rotella’s books to your golf reading list.