Instruction

Hitting shots from the rough at TPC Scottsdale

Published

9 years ago

Jan 30, 2015

Before players arrived on site for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, I hit a few shots from the rough at TPC Scottsdale to see what the players have to deal with. With the help of Trackman, I recorded how different lies in the rough produce different numbers and ball flights. As you’ll see, certain lies in the rough greatly affect the outcome of the shot.

Let’s jump right in and have a look at the length of grass we’re going to be working with. As an instructor at TPC Scottsdale, I teach just off the right side of the No. 9 fairway, which will be in play for the tournament. The PGA Tour was targeting 3.5 inches of rough, and by the picture below, the grass was already at tournament height at the time of my experiment.

Now that we’ve got some solid rough to work with, let’s talk about how the grain of the grass considerably affects the outcome of the shot.

Grass can be mown or brushed to cause grain, and it can also naturally grow in different directions. Shiny grass lays away from you, dark grass lays toward you.

With the help of Trackman, let’s take a look at what happens with the different lies pictured above. The idea for my experiment was to make very similar swings, specifically in club speed, using a 7 iron from the various lies to see how much the grass can affect ball flight characteristics.

Fairway Lie

First, let’s look at a standard shot from the fairway. A good rule of thumb on spin with your irons is a 1000 rpm for each number. A seven iron should have roughly 7000 rpm, an 8 iron 8000 rpm, etc. In the photo above, you can see the numbers for my normal 7 iron.

Thick lie, slightly into the grain

Now that we know what a normal 7 iron looks like, let’s take a look at our first lie in the rough. This ball is down in some thick grass that is slightly into the grain. I added a pen to the photo for some scale.

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That’s surely some deep sticky grass, and as you can see from the Trackman numbers below, 87 mph of club speed produced a shot that carried only 87 yards and had just 1300 rpm of spin.

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This kind of lie is brutal to hit from. As the club gets into the grass, the hosel of the club has a tendency to contact the grass first and slow down the heel of the club down, causing the club face to close. The only thing you’ll be able to do is hit a low line drive with little spin that runs slightly more than a normal shot because of the greatly reduced spin.

Higher club head speed and strength make a huge difference here — more speed has almost a one-to-one ratio to carry. More carry doesn’t necessarily make the shot easier to stop on the green, but it gives you the ability to fly the ball a greater distance.

Catching a break, the down-grain lie

Let’s take a look at what happens when you get the ball to land in some down grain grass. You can see the lie below. A tire track matted the grass down in the direction I’m hitting the shot. This rye rough is so dense the ball doesn’t sink to the bottom of the grass. It rides high, giving the player a fighting chance. Check out how much difference a down-grain lie can make compared to the shot out of the thick stuff. It carried 80 yards farther!

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Digging into the numbers a little deeper, a couple things stick out to me.

First, even though the club speed is similar, the long, down-grain grass will take some speed off the ball. I got 115 mph of ball speed from the down-grain lie and 121 mph of ball speed from the fairway. My guess is that a couple of blades of grass got stuck between the face of the club and the ball. Like a baseball pitcher throwing a change up, shots hit from the rough move a little slower.

Even though the ball was traveling 6 mph hour slower, however, the low spin rate caused less friction in the air and, in turn, helped the ball fly the same distance as a shot from the fairway. With less than half the spin rate, however, it won’t stop nearly as quick as my stock 7 iron with 7200 rpm of spin. Plan accordingly.

When you’re watching the Waste Management Phoenix Open this week and you see someone play a shot out of the rough, you’ll have a much better idea of what is happening.

Things to remember when playing shots out of the rough

When you reduce spin on any shot, all things being equal, the ball will fly farther.
There is an art to reading how the ball is sitting in the grass. Take note of the grain of the grass and try to gauge how much grass is going to be caught between the face and ball at impact. More grass in between the ball and the club means less speed and less spin.
Don’t forget that a flier can be an advantage. A good example is trying to get the ball on a par 5 in two shots from some down-grain grass. Less spin can add carry and more roll once the ball hits the turf.

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

3 days ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

4 weeks ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?

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