GSM217: Your 9 iron is a short iron, so why is it designed like a long iron? Terry Koehler, a regular on Golf Smarter and creative genius behind the V-Sole wedge design introduces his newest line of wedges that provides a level of forgiveness and confidence in your bag that can immediately impact your scores. The loft in your irons progresses in 4 degree increments, but from your pitch to lob wedge, there's a 12 degree jump which is the same jump as your 5 iron to Driver! When you're inside of 150 yards, you need to be able to attack a very small target. Originally published as Golf Smarter #307 on November 15, 2011
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(00:00):
Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, yoursecond chance to gain insight and advice from
the best instructors featured on the GolfSmarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets
old. Our interview library features hundredsof hours of game improvement conversations like this
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that are no longer available in anypodcast app. The industry, R and
D guys will go design a sixiron, and they'll test it, and
they'll tweak it. They'll test itand they'll tweak it. When they have
that six iron really doing what they'reafter. The conventional wisdom is the match
set of irons all has to lookjust al well. The difference between a
six iron at twenty seven or twentyeight, twenty nine degrees and a pitching
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wedge or what I call a peakclub in today's set, which is a
forty four to fourty five six degreegolf club, this is seventeen sixteen,
fifteen degrees difference. That's the differencebetween a six iron and a driver.
Nobody would ask for their three aren'teven to look like their six iron.
Why would your pitching wedge and nineiron look like a six iron. They're
totally different golf clubs. They're useda totally different way, and so we
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broke out of this idea of said, you know, realistically, rather than
my pitching wedge and nine iron matchmy six iron't they really ought to match
my wedges? These are scoring clubs, dude. With another interview from the
archives of Golf Smarter, here's yourhost, Fred Green. Welcome back to
Golf Smarter. Terry Gosh, it'sbeen a long time. How are you.
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I'm doing just fine. We've beenbusy as week and me totally reinventing
the short end of the set.But it's it's a pretty exciting adventure that
we're on here. Oh well,tell me more about it. So let's
let's establish you know, it's beena long time since you were on.
We spent a lot of time onGolf Smarter tips together, but let's talk
about you know what you know,which is really originally idolon. Golf now
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has evolved and it's all about theshort game. And that's why I've had
so much fun talking to you,because you've improved my short game so much.
Let's give a little history for well, we started Idle on golf in
two thousand and four, building aline of wedges around our patented V Soul,
and the V Soul is a designI came up with that combines a
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high bounce and a low bounce intoeach wedge specific to each loft, so
that you can handle tight lives,you can handle fluffy lives, you can
handle firm turf, soft turf,any kind of swing. And it really
departed from the industry norm that youhave to match the bounce to the type
of turf for the type of swing. And my challenge with that, my
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problem with that logic has always been, I don't know what kind of turf
my next wedgehot's going to be hitfrom. So how do I buy a
wedge with the right bounce? That'salways baffled be in Like people say,
oh, I know, I bringdifferent clubs with me depending on where I'm
playing. It's like, how wouldyou know in advance? Well, and
every golf course has every kind ofturf out there. It's gonna have tight
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lives, it's gonna have fluffy lives, it's gonna have soft spots, it's
gonna have firm spots. You know, if you're over by the cart path,
I don't care where you're playing.That's gonna be a tight Why it's
gonna be firm people walking there,if you're on the opposite side of the
green, it really doesn't matter whereyou're playing. That's probably gonna be a
little fluffy and a little softer.And if it rained last night, the
whole firm golf course isn't firm anymore, and that always challenged me. The
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other thing that was really the impetusbehind this design is the guidance that the
rest of the wedge industry gives thatand they talk about sweepers and sliders and
diggers, and essentially, if youhave a shallow swing path, you need
a low bounce. If you havea steep swing path, you need a
high bounce. Well, my challengethere is on the good player end of
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the spectrum, I vary my swingpath based on the kind of shot I'm
trying to hit. Am I tryingto knock it down? Am I trying
to flop it? What am Idoing with this shot? I'm going to
vary my swing path intentionally to beable to hit the shot that I want
to hit. On the other endof the spectrum, I'm a sixteen handicapper
and I really don't have a cluewhat my swing path is going to be
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from shot to shot. And that'swhy I'm an M sixteen, So you
know, I don't have any consistency. How do I fit that right?
That's my challenge. So that's wherewe came from. With the V Soul.
We developed our own shafts, wedeveloped a custom fitting option, and
in the Idol online gathered a realloyal following. People that played our golflows
small brand, niche brand, butpeople that played our wedges just raved about
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them. And that's evidenced by thefact that, well I sold them with
ane hundred percent money back guarantee andour historic return rate from two thousand and
four through this year was under onepercent, but I repeat customer rate was
eighty percent, So that tells youyou're doing the right thing. That's that's
where we came from. That's ourlegacy. They explained to me V Soul,
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Well, V Soul is what wedo is in each club, we
build a very low bouncing goal threeto five seven degrees into the main part
of the soul, so this clubwill perform off of a tight lie.
You know, can hit it offa hard pin, you can hit it
anywhere you'd want to hit a lowbounce wedge. But in a departure from
the industry and our patented technology isthen in the first quarter inch from the
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leading edge back, we put avery aggressive bounce in that quarter inch eighteen
degrees, twenty five degrees, thirtydegrees, very aggressive angle so that you
can never dig that leading edge inif the turf gets a little softer,
and that the combination of these twolet that club act like a high bounce
wedge when you need one. Imean, it's not something you have to
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think about, it's not something youhave to really practice a lot with.
It's just when you walk up yourwedge shot. This soul will not get
in the way of your talent,but it will provide a measure of forgiveness
off of any kind of lie thatno other wedge can provide. And forgiveness
as a word, you don't heara lot in the wedge business, but
we use it because that's what ourcustomers talked about all the time. All
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right, And I'm going to backyou up just to touch because you even
said it that you know a lotof people don't have of a lot of
golfers the higher handicap golfers don't understandthe different flight path. They don't understand
the different you know, swings thatthey need to have for each club.
And I'm going to take that astep further. I'm going to assume even
people who've played for a long time, just based on conversations that I've had,
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that most people have no idea whatyou're talking about when you talk about
these minute details of and this industrytalk that you're doing about the angles and
the pitch and the bounce. You'regonna have to I'm gonna almost make you
describe this again, but now explainit in layman's terms, so we know
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what you're talking about, all right, the bounce. Sorry, we're doing
that to you, no problem,because this is we get questions about this
every day and we're always happy totalk about it. The concept or the
part of a golf club that wecall bounce. The function of bounce is
if you hold your wedge up infront of you and look right down the
soul kind of a worm's eye ofview, you're going to see a downward
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angle from the leading edge back tothe trailing edge of that wedge, and
that downward angle is what causes theclub to reject itself out of the earth.
I mean, the club is comingdownward and much like an airplane wing
provides lift, that downward angle providesa rejecting force to help get that club
back out of the out of theturf. So added just became refined.
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Then we found that if the turfis very firm and it's going to reject
at a higher level, you wanta lower bounced golf club. You don't
want a real severe angle. Youdon't want one of these old, big
rounded sol wedges. But by thesame token, if you're in soft sand
or if the turf is real soft, a lot of the Midwest and Northeastern
courses, I mean the courses arevery soft as a rule compared to what
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we play in California, where youare in Texas and you need a club
with less bounce on it. Sothe dilemma for the golfer is to go
into a wedge display and here's youknow, a fifty six twelve and a
fifty six eight and all these combinations, and it's mind boggling for the golfer,
and he selects wrong at least halfthe time because he doesn't know what
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the next shot is going to present. So you're standing in the store wondering
if you should get a high bounceor a low bounce wedge and for some
shot you hadn't even played yet.And that's where the v Soul it was
really a breakthrough because it works everywhere. And that's a big claim, but
it does. It works off atide lot as, it works off a
fluffy lies, it works off asoft turf, firm turf. You're just
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not going to find a shot.This Soul doesn't handle okay, and it's
and that makes it forgiving. Andthat's what we're looking for. Whether you're
a two handicapper or twenty two,you're looking for a club that will will
help you perform better, and thisclub does. I recently had a bunker
shot that I said, oh,shoot you, I didn't mean to be
in the bunker. I'd hit mysixty degree and so I was still holding
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my sixty degree club and I said, oh, I don't have my sand
wedge, and my playing partner said, oh, well, I always hit
with my sixty degree out of outof the bunker. And I said,
oh, do you have a lotof bounce on your club and he's like,
hey, yeah, we hear itall the time. And you know,
bounce and sand is another thing.I mean, if you look at
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the tour, they have standards forhow firm that sand has to be.
I mean, you never see thetour guys get a plugged alive because the
sand is always firm. They actuallywater the bunkers down, sprinkle them down
every morning to pack that sand downa little bit because the audiences want to
see these guys hit fabulous bunker shots. But the rest of us who play
on you know, all kinds ofcourses, we typically don't have the same
sand from bunker to bunker, muchless from week to week and from hole
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to hole. So you know,you need a wedge that if you walk
into that bunker and it's a littlesoft, the work okay if you if
it's a little firm, you knowthat relief is going to reject the golf
lub a little differently. But youknow, I keep coming back to the
concept of versatility. You need awedge that will not get in the way
of what you're lealing with right there, but that will give you the assistance
you need to deal with it.So talk to me now about. You've
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got a whole new approach that you'vetaken here, which you call score golf.
It's not idoline product. The scoregolf was a concept that started about
three years ago and the USCA passeddown it's it's ruling on grooves that they
were changing the geometry that we hadto build grooves. So like every other
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wedge designer out there, by Buki, the Cleveland people, everybody out there,
we started putting these new grooves onour wedge heads to see kind of
what performance we would get. Andthis was a series of epiphanies, if
I can use that term, aseries of just outside the box thinking.
And the first thing that we noticedis with these new grooves, the ball
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would slide up the face a littlemore because they don't have to square edges
that the old grooves had. Sowhat we did is we got into welding
around and moving weight around on thegolf club, and we found if we
could move the ball off the facea little lower and a look where we
actually got more spin off of thesame loft golf club. So that was
like, wait a minute, Thatmade me stop to think about conventional wedges,
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and I put eyeline in that samesame category, we made a wedge
design and we applied it to alllofts from forty eight to sixty degrees,
and it dawned on me, whichapparently never dawned on anybody else. You
know, the difference between a fortyeight and a sixty degree wedge is twelve
degrees. And what I never stoppedto think about, probably nobody else either,
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is that twelve degrees is the samedifference between a five iron and a
driver loft and the forty eight tosixty and your iron and your wedges is
the equivalent of having what what whatand what well? I mean, a
pitch gap, sand and lob.So you have four wedges, let's say
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that all look exactly alike, buttheir twelve degrees difference in the loft.
So, if you think about theway we build to golf clubs, a
driver's design to produce a certain performanceoff of those kind of conditions that sitting
on at the e and it's goingto be deep face, and then you
have a three and a four orfive wood that have different side of heads
to match up with the loft.Then you have these new things called hybrids
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that we found in that nineteen totwenty five degree range, and some people
even up into twenty six or sevendegrees. This hybrid clubhead delivers a blot
better performance than an iron design.And so which kind of led to the
second epiphany and outside the box ahamoment is in our set of irons and
the way this industry designs irons isthe industry R and D guys will they'll
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design a six iron, and they'lltest it and they'll tweak it. They'll
test it and they'll tweak it.When they have that six iron really doing
what they're after, then the conventionalwisdom is the match set of irons all
has to look just alike. Well, the difference between a six iron at
twenty seven or twenty eight, twentynine degrees and a pitching wedge or what
I call a peak club in today'sset, which is a forty four to
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forty five six degree golf club.You know, this is seventeen sixteen,
fifteen degrees difference. That's the differencebetween a six iron and a driver.
So nobody would ask for their threeiron even to look like their six iron.
Why would your pitching wedge and nineiron look like a sixthirn. They're
totally different, you know, golfclubs, they're used a totally different way.
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And so we broke out of thisidea said, you know, realistically,
rather than my pitching wedge and nineiron match my six iron, they
really ought to match my wedges.These are scoring clubs too, you know,
these are high loft golf club Sowe've did a lot of testing and
we came up with this idea andresults driven idea that clubs over forty degrees
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are a different animal, and youdon't need a real low center gravity,
and you don't want a thin facebecause that leads to inconsistent distance control.
Most golfers hit their short irons waytoo high because of this kind of weighting.
That's six iron weighting applied to apitching wedge or a nine iron.
And we stepped away and said,you know, realistically, every club in
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the set ought to have kind ofwithin reason, ought to have its own
unique design to optimize ball flight.And as short iron and wedge performance is
all about ball flight control, trajectorycontrolled distance control, you typically don't miss
greens right and left with short ironshots, and wedge shots you miss them
along and short it's true, andso you don't need as much hell until
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waiting in these high loft golf leftbecause of that. But what you do
need is the thick face. Youneed a precisely positioned center of gravity to
give you the launch angle you wantfor that particular loft. So in this
new product called Score forty one sixtyone, we created twenty one head heads
from forty one to sixty one degreesof loft, and across that range of
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twenty one head or seven distinctly differenthead designs, that's a kind of a
graduated what we call SGC three shortgame control times three waiting and let you
control trajectory, it, lets youcontrol spend, it, lets you control
your directional accuracy. And the reviewson this have been astounding. If you
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go on YouTube, there's some guysthat we did some testing that posted videos
all over the place. Everybody that'stried it, from developmental tour players,
former champions Tour players to twenty twohandicappers are raving about this golf club because
its first time that we have donetrajectory control through the head design so that
we can deliver those nice, tight, boring trajectories for average players, and
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it is an absolute breakthrough to providethis kind of waiting. And you know
in twenty one loss, which willcome back to when you obviously ask me
about that, why did you dothat? Yeah, I'm going to the
progressive waiting is all about trajectory control, which is the key to distance control.
Interesting. Interesting, I just lovethe concept that you what you said
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is that really, if you're gonnamiss with your short irons, you're gonna
miss is shorter long, You're notgoing to miss right or left. And
day boy, realizing that it isso true, Well, what happens when
we apply cavity back waiting to shortclubs clubs over forty degrees aloft? We
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get these high, ballooning trajectories.And every one of your listeners, I
bet can think of a time whenthey were going to kind of get on
a nine a little bit, orthey were going to get on that pitch
wedge a little bit, and itwent higher but shorter, and the harder
you swing, the higher it goes, the more spin it has, the
more at mercy of the wind itis. And it didn't necessarily go further,
and that's because that head design wasdesigned to hit high soft five and
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six irons, and I'll go back. I'm gonna be sixty next March.
So I grew up with blade golfclubs and nobody had anything else, and
we all just lived to get insideeight iron range, which back then was
about what a nine or pitches noweven because those were easy to hit,
I mean, you could score thegolf hoarse, but those four or five
and six irons they were tough.Well. When we began to apply perimeter
waiting and cavity backs and thin facesand all this technology to the middle irons
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to make them easier. At thesame time, what we did is we
is we messed up the short ironsbecause we put these thin faces in low
cyenter gravity and they didn't need that. They were fine. I mean they
may need it a little tweaking,but they were fine. They did what
they were supposed to do. So, um, you know, it's it's
really a matter of saying, youknow, you don't. You don't sit
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down and design a six iron andsay, I bet a driver would would
work good with this design. Imean, we a foreign doesn't even work
good with that design. We're allplaying hybrids now, even the tour players.
I mean, so we get eightor ten degrees stronger than a six
iron, and we go to acompletely different club called a hybrid. Well,
likewise, when you get more thaneight or ten degrees you know,
higher lofting a six iron, itrequires a different golf club to optimize performance.
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And you know, and most golfersare reasonably a depth with their middle
irons. I'm gonna and so youknow, but it's their short irons where
they don't score the golf. Imean, when you look at if you're
playing a right set of t s, you're gonna hit greenshots with something over
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forty degrees aloft. And that's theclubs that most golfers have given very little
attention to their wedge selection, theblend of their wedges to their irons.
This nine and pitch that that,you know, looks like a it looks
like a six iron. It's justnot optimum. I the idea that the
nine iron and the pitching wedge aremore of a wedge than an iron um
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makes total sense. Uh. AndI just think about all the times that
I'm standing over my nine iron andI have to take a step back,
which I call a mental mulligan.I'm just I'm ready to hit the ball
and I have to take my mentalmulligan step back and look at the look
at the heel of the club tosee make sure that I am holding a
nine iron and not as six ironum. But the fact that you're seeing
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it more as a wedge makes totalsense to me because that is the spot
that I want to treat it likea wedge. I'm you know, in
that distance for me nine iron isone hundred and twenty five yards, but
I have so much confidence with thatclub. But that is that same concept,
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well exactly, I mean, theseare your money clubs. You're going
to score the golf for us withthese short golf clubs. And you know,
if you go back and look atjust a little history, I've got
to set a nineteen to sixty sixso peer against my wall and the pitching
wedge, the equalizer as they callit, was fifty one degree golf level.
That's what a gap wedge is now. And we steadily strengthen lofts and
this kind of gets to where,you know, the other big part of
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the score forty one sixty one conceptis that we make twenty one golf clubs.
We make a forty one degree,at forty two, at forty three
to forty four all the way tosixty one degree. And the reason we
do that is because we're trying tohelp golfers manage their distance gaps. And
you know we have pitching wedges onthe market today from forty eight to forty
two degrees. Well, if thatif a peak club can be anything in
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that range, how do you knowwhat your gap wedge ought to be or
your sandwiger. You know, you'vegot to have consistent gaps in your golf
club. So we have a processcalled score fit where you plug in on
our website score golf dot com withoutan escoor golf dot com. Do you
plug in what making model of ironsyou hit, and it goes to our
database and it says, okay,well that particular making model has a thirty
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one degree eight iron and or I'ma thirty seven degree eight iron, and
it will then say, so youroptimum mix from a nine through your highest
wedge would be four degree increments,So you'd have a forty one, forty
five, forty nine, fifty three, fifty seven that would give you optimum.
That's a starting point to get youroptimum distance gaps. But your buddy
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over here, he's playing a differentiron, and he's got a thirty nine
degree eight iron, Well, hisoptimum mix is probably gonna be something like
forty three, forty seven, fiftyone, fifty five, fifty nine.
So what happens is is that youhave, you know, you have the
ability to get exactly the right prescriptionfor your set, to blend your irons
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to give you consistent false winning distancegaps. If you're making twenty one different
head designs, how do I knowwhich is the right one for me?
So you have a way of kindof custom fitting that. But it's right,
But it's based on what I'm playingwith now. And if I was
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so happy with what I'm playing withnow, why am I replacing them?
I mean, why are we basingit on what I'm currently playing with?
Well, the reason we're basing iton that because that's I got to start
somewhere. Chances are, chances areI mean, you know, all your
listeners, they've spent money on drivers, they spent money on and and really
the only purchase they've probably made inthe last few years it made a big
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difference is Hybridge Because they work andyour your listener, and if they will
be honest with themselves, they're five, six, seven eight iron play is
probably okay. If it's not,they need a lesson. It's not the
off clove. That's kind of cold, but it's not. And because all
of these clubs are good now,they may have the wrong golf club.
I tend to think people should beplaying more of a blade type golf club
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with a little perimeter waiting than thesebig shovels with the big white souls and
all that. I don't think anybodyis so bad they need one of those,
but the industry seems to think so. But you know, you're probably
okay with your middle irons. Theseare just to get you somewhere around the
green, and you probably do thatokay. But where you're not scoring the
golf course is with your short clubs. You have the wrong selection of wedges.
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You've got a nine and a pitchthat don't give you optimum ball flight
in consistent distance. And if youwill focus an investment on the short end
of your set and you will blendthem to that, your scores will come
down way down. And then ifyou want to go back later and replace
your middle irons. You know youcan do that, but that's really not
where you're going to beat the golfcourse. I mean, I don't care
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whether you're a tour player. Theseguys are not beating up these courses with
five, six and seven hours.You know where they shoot these twenty and
twenty five under scars is when theyget into the desert where it's you know,
driver nine iron, driver wedge,driver wedge, hit the parthison two.
That's when they're beating up the golfcourses. And by the same token,
if you're a nineties shooter, youknow your key to get in the
mid eighties is a better short game. It's not better driving, it's not
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better metal arm blats, better shortgame absolute. Um. Well, one
of the uh things that I've alwaysnoticed, it found interesting is that even
if somebody's playing with a graphite shaft, the their wedges are going to have
metal shafts. Right. Um whatabout you said you commented something about your
your breakthrough chafts. What do youdo differently with your chafts? We created
(23:37):
a and thank you for asking thatbecause I think that's a huge part of
the formula. Because the short gameis all about feel and feel is a
function of the shaft. It's theright material, the right flex, the
right weight, and nobody gives attentionto this. Nine nine point nine percent
of wedges are purchased off of aretail rack, and every wedge in an
air has a heavy, stiff steelshaft. One size fits all. It's
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called a edge flex. Well,that's an absurd concept that you know,
the tour player, the young guythat hits nine iron one and sixty needs
the same wedge shaft that the seniorguy who is carrying graphite shafted irons and
hits a nine iron one oh five. So what we did is we created
a family of shafts we brand namedGenius, and there's three shafts in the
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line. The Genus twelve is ourstandard weight steel shaft. It's a nice
blend for any golfers that are playingdynamic gold or rifles or any of the
standard weight steel shaft The weight isgoing to blend with those. But this
shaft was engineered with Kim Brayley ofKBS to be a little firmer in the
tip and a little softer overall,so it's got some movement in it to
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give you the fuel on the lessthan full shots, and we make that
shaft in a regular and a firmand a firm plus flex, so we
can fit anybody that plays standard weightsteal. From there, we come down
and we've tested a lot of lightweightsteel. We didn't find the fuel qualities,
so we work with us team Amia, a wonderful graphic company. Out
of four work and we develop twographite shafts. A Genius seven, which
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is a mid seventies gram graphite.It's a great blend to all the graphite
shafted irons out there. It givesyou within a few grams of the same
weight of your middle irons, butagain it's built with a little firmer tip
and a little softer midsection so thatit will give you the feel. And
then in between those we have theGenius nine, which is a heavier weight
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graphite. Weighs about the same asthe lightweight steel shafts on the market,
but graphite just has such a wonderfulfeel to it. We've just found it
bed and shoulders to outperform lightweight steelin wedges. And then so that's three
shaft options where we can match theweight and blend what I call a seamless
transition to your irons. So youleave your eight iron and you go to
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the scores, or you leave yournine iron and go to the scores,
you're going to have a seamless weighttransition, so the feel is going to
be the same. But then withinyour set of score forty one sixty one,
wedges and short irons, all ofthese shafts are going to be frequency
matched to be the same. Soyour nine iron feels like your gap wedge,
and when you take a little offthat nine, it's the same feeling
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of taking a little off that sandwichor off that gap wedge shot. So
that's something nobody's ever done. Theindustry has always made shafts progressively stiffer from
the middle irons on through the shortirons and wedges. And our philosophy,
and which is borne out by everybody'splaying them, is that if you make
all those money clubs, which Icall them the clubs over forty degrees we
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make, or the money club,you made them all feel the same and
swing the same and balance the same, then your short game feel is consistent
in your performances will improve immediately.What a great invitation I would have to
imagine that most golfers, like theysay, hey, bring me my sandwich,
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right, you know, like they'rein the cart and they forgot to
you know, they didn't go planto go in the sand, and now
they are. And you say,well, which loft club is that?
It would look at you with ablank stare you know, bring my pitching
wedge? Which loft club is that? They wouldn't they know the p They
know the s They know maybe thethe g N, probably the L and
maybe on the sixty. But yourclubs are not marked as sand wedge,
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pitching wedge gap right, No,no, they're not. And in fact,
though if you look at the wedgemark at the last eight or ten
or twelve years, Novogis, theClevelands and Mazzuonos, all of them are
all sold with numbers instead of sandgap blob pitch. So, you know,
golfers, you know, if youif you're staying up with what's going
on the equipment industry, which isthe fun, part of the fun of
being a golfer. The it's alwaysknew stuff to experiments most of it,
(27:40):
most of it, and I meanthis is kind of cynical, maybe,
but I think most of the technologyis more for marketing purposes, but um,
you know, because it's hard tomake any improvements on a driver.
And I would tell anybody unless you'vebeen ten or fifteen years since you bought
a driver, there's probably not adriver out there. It's gonna be a
lot longer for you. Um.You know. Hybrid's wonderful piece of technology
makes the game easier to play.You know, we're seeing a surge in
(28:03):
the belly putter, the long putternow this last few months, you know,
And if that helps you get itin the whole better, I'm all
for it. I'm a traditionalist.I probably won't go but you know,
a few more miss three footers andI might think about it twice. But
we could also talk about the legalityof the belly putter, but that's a
whole other conversation, right, Butif you focus on the money end of
your set, you focus on whathelps you get it in the whole inside
(28:23):
eight hund nine ine range, youknow, one twenty one thirty one forty
yards on an end. If youlook at your round of golf, and
I would, you know, challengeall of your listeners look at your last
few rounds of golf, and lookat how many times you were inside one
twenty or one thirty or one fortywhatever is nine nine range. You should
not take more than three shots toget up and down from that range.
(28:44):
That ball should be on the green, preferably close to the hole. That's
your chance to score. Whether you'rea twenty or whether you're a two handicap.
When you have an inside nine ninerange, you gotta edge in your
hand. You got a short ronein your hand. This is your chance
to score. And I've got totake advantage of those holes by having the
best equipment possible. And you probablyhaven't given the thought to that in your
set that you've given to your driversand average at fairwey oh, I wouldn't
(29:07):
doubt that one that. Um actuallyI've even uh, I'm on the mindset
that once I'm in one hundred andten yards, my whole thing is how
do I turn three shots into two? Right? I mean that is where
the scoring is when I'm in onehundred and ten, even one hundred and
twenty five yards, is how canI take that that club and get it
so close to it so I geta tap in. I want to be
(29:27):
up and down from here right,mean, you're a good player, but
I'm I think that's a sixteen ora twenty. And this is where he's
going to keep from a six offthe card and get no worse than a
five and a chance to make afour and maybe even that occasional birdie which
really makes this this game fun.Um. But it's about balkanl and what
(29:48):
I continuously preached through my blog,the wedge guide dot com, which I
think there's six hundred articles out therenow written over the last five Um.
But but what I continue to preach, this is where body strength is all
negated. You know, you canhit a fifty yard pitch shot as good
as Luke Donald. It's not aboutbody strength anymore. It's about technique and
you can learn that regardless of youknow, whether you'll ever be able to
(30:11):
hit you know, high towering fiveirons two hundred yards like those guys.
Dude, you don't have to dothat, but you can hit great short
arms and wedges from one hundred tenhundred twenty on end, and man,
that will peel shots off your scoresso fast. Yeah, god, it's
it's it's amazing how people got thisbackwards. They really do think drive farther,
farther, farther, and it's it'sagain. One of the things that
(30:32):
I frequently repeat is it's not howfar, it's how close. We have
a little with some ads that we'reworking on getting ready to go out online,
and one of our ad concepts isten feet closer beach, ten yards
longer every time, A good line, that's a good line. When you
and I first started talking a coupleof years ago, you sent me out
some ide line wedges that I'll neverforget. The first day I went out
(30:56):
and played with one, I tookum. I was probably about fifteen yards
off the green with the pin onthe opposite side of the green, plus
it was a huge right to leftbreak, and I pulled out the club
going Okay, I haven't really hada lot of chance to practice with this,
but I'm just gonna go for itanyway. And I chipped it in,
(31:17):
so I was like, Okay,I love this golf club club my
new favorite club forever. So I'mvery excited to get online. I'm going
to score goolf dot dot com,which is sco r golf dot com and
get myself fitted because I want totry these out and see what kind of
uh I want to see the shafts. I want to see the grips that
(31:37):
I have on these and what comesout with what set gets created for me
going back and listening to some ofthe shows we did with Terry Um and
he has some of the more amazingtips for your short game that we've ever
had as well. And I'll neverforget my favorite one and I still used
(32:00):
to this day Terry is when you'resetting up to address the ball with your
short irons, look at the frontheart of the ball. It's been one
of our more popular one and Ihelped so many players with that because it's
just so simple and it makes asyou found, it makes your contact so
much crisper. It adds it willspend to your short shots. It's really
(32:21):
an easy tip that you don't haveto think about. And to me,
once I got that concept of aimingto the front of the ball, all
of a sudden, for the firsttime in my golfing career, I was
getting divots that we're making sense divotsfrom from after hitting the ball, not
from before hitting the ball. Bythe way, that's also a very good
tip in putting. Oh oh,it helps you finished through the put if
(32:44):
you'll focus on that front edge theball, the side towards the hole and
you stroke that. But it letsyou keep your head down just I mean,
all of us have a problem standdown on our butt. But if
you try to see the face ofthat club hit that forward edge of that
ball, then the ball's gone andoff the putter before it does that,
and it helps you stay down fractionof a second longer. That can make
a big difference. Wow, itreminds me stand Utley on the show not
(33:07):
long ago said that most golfers whenthey topped the ball that you know,
and then then just kind of rollsfor a little while, and they're they're
very frustrated, and he says,they're doing exactly what they were aiming at.
They were aiming at the top ofthe ball, not below the ball.
It's like, exactly what a concept. Exactly amazing. Well, thank
you again for coming on visiting onceagain. Best of luck, will score
(33:30):
Golf And I guess you got theupcoming the PGA Tour show coming up in
January of twelve. Are you guysgonna be making a big splash there,
Well, we'll be there exhibiting andshowing are we have a wonderful fitting system
for PGA professionals and we have We'rejust now getting out there and we've got
retail stores and international people all showinga lot of interest, and this is
(33:52):
going to be one of the bigstories and equipment in twenty twelve. I
mean, you know that we're atthe tail end of the season. This
is all kind of preparation time,and this is really a twenty twelve product.
But all the golf ryers and everybody, and you can see on our
media page on the we're getting alot of reviews on this golf club and
they're all just overwhelmingly positive. Thisis a game changer. This is a
different kind of product, much likeHybrids was a very different kind of product
(34:15):
that really works regardless of your skilllevel. Well, you know, our
relationship is long enough to know thatI can honestly say I think of you
as a heretic, and this ismore proof of that true. And that's
on many different topics, but thisone, this one is definitely true.
And you probably have lost a lotof friends in the golf industry because you're
going to have an impact on them. Well, I had I had a
(34:37):
golf Ryer asked me, you say, well, okay, Kerry, this
most logical thing we've ever heard.Why has nobody else ever done this?
And I said, because to dothis, I mean, we're discontinuing the
idal on mine because they're antiquated.And you had to be willing to say,
I just developed a product that antiquateseverything I've ever done. Wow,
and we had the gumption to dothat. I don't see the big company.
(35:00):
They got a lot to lose.And you can't steal seck up with
your foot on first, as theysay. And we know this is the
most most developed advanced scoring club technologyever introduced. It's a complete package.
Everybody's ever done this much to yourmoney clubs. And you know that's why
we guarantee them. You buy theseclubs, you try them, you don't
lock them. We give you underpertend of your money back. Maybe you
have to get a set back.Well there you go, Terry, great
(35:22):
to talk to you, Thanks somuch for coming back. Well thanks a
lot, fred I always enjoy it.
Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, yoursecond chance to gain insight and advice from
the best instructors featured on the GolfSmarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets
old. Our interview library features hundredsof hours of game improvement conversations like this
(00:20):
that are no longer available in anypodcast app. The industry, R and
D guys will go design a sixiron, and they'll test it, and
they'll tweak it. They'll test itand they'll tweak it. When they have
that six iron really doing what they'reafter. The conventional wisdom is the match
set of irons all has to lookjust al well. The difference between a
six iron at twenty seven or twentyeight, twenty nine degrees and a pitching
(00:42):
wedge or what I call a peakclub in today's set, which is a
forty four to fourty five six degreegolf club, this is seventeen sixteen,
fifteen degrees difference. That's the differencebetween a six iron and a driver.
Nobody would ask for their three aren'teven to look like their six iron.
Why would your pitching wedge and nineiron look like a six iron. They're
totally different golf clubs. They're useda totally different way, and so we
(01:04):
broke out of this idea of said, you know, realistically, rather than
my pitching wedge and nine iron matchmy six iron't they really ought to match
my wedges? These are scoring clubs, dude. With another interview from the
archives of Golf Smarter, here's yourhost, Fred Green. Welcome back to
Golf Smarter. Terry Gosh, it'sbeen a long time. How are you.
(01:26):
I'm doing just fine. We've beenbusy as week and me totally reinventing
the short end of the set.But it's it's a pretty exciting adventure that
we're on here. Oh well,tell me more about it. So let's
let's establish you know, it's beena long time since you were on.
We spent a lot of time onGolf Smarter tips together, but let's talk
about you know what you know,which is really originally idolon. Golf now
(01:49):
has evolved and it's all about theshort game. And that's why I've had
so much fun talking to you,because you've improved my short game so much.
Let's give a little history for well, we started Idle on golf in
two thousand and four, building aline of wedges around our patented V Soul,
and the V Soul is a designI came up with that combines a
(02:14):
high bounce and a low bounce intoeach wedge specific to each loft, so
that you can handle tight lives,you can handle fluffy lives, you can
handle firm turf, soft turf,any kind of swing. And it really
departed from the industry norm that youhave to match the bounce to the type
of turf for the type of swing. And my challenge with that, my
(02:36):
problem with that logic has always been, I don't know what kind of turf
my next wedgehot's going to be hitfrom. So how do I buy a
wedge with the right bounce? That'salways baffled be in Like people say,
oh, I know, I bringdifferent clubs with me depending on where I'm
playing. It's like, how wouldyou know in advance? Well, and
every golf course has every kind ofturf out there. It's gonna have tight
(02:58):
lives, it's gonna have fluffy lives, it's gonna have soft spots, it's
gonna have firm spots. You know, if you're over by the cart path,
I don't care where you're playing.That's gonna be a tight Why it's
gonna be firm people walking there,if you're on the opposite side of the
green, it really doesn't matter whereyou're playing. That's probably gonna be a
little fluffy and a little softer.And if it rained last night, the
whole firm golf course isn't firm anymore, and that always challenged me. The
(03:19):
other thing that was really the impetusbehind this design is the guidance that the
rest of the wedge industry gives thatand they talk about sweepers and sliders and
diggers, and essentially, if youhave a shallow swing path, you need
a low bounce. If you havea steep swing path, you need a
high bounce. Well, my challengethere is on the good player end of
(03:40):
the spectrum, I vary my swingpath based on the kind of shot I'm
trying to hit. Am I tryingto knock it down? Am I trying
to flop it? What am Idoing with this shot? I'm going to
vary my swing path intentionally to beable to hit the shot that I want
to hit. On the other endof the spectrum, I'm a sixteen handicapper
and I really don't have a cluewhat my swing path is going to be
(04:00):
from shot to shot. And that'swhy I'm an M sixteen, So you
know, I don't have any consistency. How do I fit that right?
That's my challenge. So that's wherewe came from. With the V Soul.
We developed our own shafts, wedeveloped a custom fitting option, and
in the Idol online gathered a realloyal following. People that played our golflows
small brand, niche brand, butpeople that played our wedges just raved about
(04:25):
them. And that's evidenced by thefact that, well I sold them with
ane hundred percent money back guarantee andour historic return rate from two thousand and
four through this year was under onepercent, but I repeat customer rate was
eighty percent, So that tells youyou're doing the right thing. That's that's
where we came from. That's ourlegacy. They explained to me V Soul,
(04:46):
Well, V Soul is what wedo is in each club, we
build a very low bouncing goal threeto five seven degrees into the main part
of the soul, so this clubwill perform off of a tight lie.
You know, can hit it offa hard pin, you can hit it
anywhere you'd want to hit a lowbounce wedge. But in a departure from
the industry and our patented technology isthen in the first quarter inch from the
(05:09):
leading edge back, we put avery aggressive bounce in that quarter inch eighteen
degrees, twenty five degrees, thirtydegrees, very aggressive angle so that you
can never dig that leading edge inif the turf gets a little softer,
and that the combination of these twolet that club act like a high bounce
wedge when you need one. Imean, it's not something you have to
(05:30):
think about, it's not something youhave to really practice a lot with.
It's just when you walk up yourwedge shot. This soul will not get
in the way of your talent,but it will provide a measure of forgiveness
off of any kind of lie thatno other wedge can provide. And forgiveness
as a word, you don't heara lot in the wedge business, but
we use it because that's what ourcustomers talked about all the time. All
(05:53):
right, And I'm going to backyou up just to touch because you even
said it that you know a lotof people don't have of a lot of
golfers the higher handicap golfers don't understandthe different flight path. They don't understand
the different you know, swings thatthey need to have for each club.
And I'm going to take that astep further. I'm going to assume even
people who've played for a long time, just based on conversations that I've had,
(06:16):
that most people have no idea whatyou're talking about when you talk about
these minute details of and this industrytalk that you're doing about the angles and
the pitch and the bounce. You'regonna have to I'm gonna almost make you
describe this again, but now explainit in layman's terms, so we know
(06:36):
what you're talking about, all right, the bounce. Sorry, we're doing
that to you, no problem,because this is we get questions about this
every day and we're always happy totalk about it. The concept or the
part of a golf club that wecall bounce. The function of bounce is
if you hold your wedge up infront of you and look right down the
soul kind of a worm's eye ofview, you're going to see a downward
(06:58):
angle from the leading edge back tothe trailing edge of that wedge, and
that downward angle is what causes theclub to reject itself out of the earth.
I mean, the club is comingdownward and much like an airplane wing
provides lift, that downward angle providesa rejecting force to help get that club
back out of the out of theturf. So added just became refined.
(07:23):
Then we found that if the turfis very firm and it's going to reject
at a higher level, you wanta lower bounced golf club. You don't
want a real severe angle. Youdon't want one of these old, big
rounded sol wedges. But by thesame token, if you're in soft sand
or if the turf is real soft, a lot of the Midwest and Northeastern
courses, I mean the courses arevery soft as a rule compared to what
(07:45):
we play in California, where youare in Texas and you need a club
with less bounce on it. Sothe dilemma for the golfer is to go
into a wedge display and here's youknow, a fifty six twelve and a
fifty six eight and all these combinations, and it's mind boggling for the golfer,
and he selects wrong at least halfthe time because he doesn't know what
(08:05):
the next shot is going to present. So you're standing in the store wondering
if you should get a high bounceor a low bounce wedge and for some
shot you hadn't even played yet.And that's where the v Soul it was
really a breakthrough because it works everywhere. And that's a big claim, but
it does. It works off atide lot as, it works off a
fluffy lies, it works off asoft turf, firm turf. You're just
(08:28):
not going to find a shot.This Soul doesn't handle okay, and it's
and that makes it forgiving. Andthat's what we're looking for. Whether you're
a two handicapper or twenty two,you're looking for a club that will will
help you perform better, and thisclub does. I recently had a bunker
shot that I said, oh,shoot you, I didn't mean to be
in the bunker. I'd hit mysixty degree and so I was still holding
(08:52):
my sixty degree club and I said, oh, I don't have my sand
wedge, and my playing partner said, oh, well, I always hit
with my sixty degree out of outof the bunker. And I said,
oh, do you have a lotof bounce on your club and he's like,
hey, yeah, we hear itall the time. And you know,
bounce and sand is another thing.I mean, if you look at
(09:13):
the tour, they have standards forhow firm that sand has to be.
I mean, you never see thetour guys get a plugged alive because the
sand is always firm. They actuallywater the bunkers down, sprinkle them down
every morning to pack that sand downa little bit because the audiences want to
see these guys hit fabulous bunker shots. But the rest of us who play
on you know, all kinds ofcourses, we typically don't have the same
sand from bunker to bunker, muchless from week to week and from hole
(09:39):
to hole. So you know,you need a wedge that if you walk
into that bunker and it's a littlesoft, the work okay if you if
it's a little firm, you knowthat relief is going to reject the golf
lub a little differently. But youknow, I keep coming back to the
concept of versatility. You need awedge that will not get in the way
of what you're lealing with right there, but that will give you the assistance
you need to deal with it.So talk to me now about. You've
(10:01):
got a whole new approach that you'vetaken here, which you call score golf.
It's not idoline product. The scoregolf was a concept that started about
three years ago and the USCA passeddown it's it's ruling on grooves that they
were changing the geometry that we hadto build grooves. So like every other
(10:22):
wedge designer out there, by Buki, the Cleveland people, everybody out there,
we started putting these new grooves onour wedge heads to see kind of
what performance we would get. Andthis was a series of epiphanies, if
I can use that term, aseries of just outside the box thinking.
And the first thing that we noticedis with these new grooves, the ball
(10:45):
would slide up the face a littlemore because they don't have to square edges
that the old grooves had. Sowhat we did is we got into welding
around and moving weight around on thegolf club, and we found if we
could move the ball off the facea little lower and a look where we
actually got more spin off of thesame loft golf club. So that was
like, wait a minute, Thatmade me stop to think about conventional wedges,
(11:09):
and I put eyeline in that samesame category, we made a wedge
design and we applied it to alllofts from forty eight to sixty degrees,
and it dawned on me, whichapparently never dawned on anybody else. You
know, the difference between a fortyeight and a sixty degree wedge is twelve
degrees. And what I never stoppedto think about, probably nobody else either,
(11:30):
is that twelve degrees is the samedifference between a five iron and a
driver loft and the forty eight tosixty and your iron and your wedges is
the equivalent of having what what whatand what well? I mean, a
pitch gap, sand and lob.So you have four wedges, let's say
(11:52):
that all look exactly alike, buttheir twelve degrees difference in the loft.
So, if you think about theway we build to golf clubs, a
driver's design to produce a certain performanceoff of those kind of conditions that sitting
on at the e and it's goingto be deep face, and then you
have a three and a four orfive wood that have different side of heads
to match up with the loft.Then you have these new things called hybrids
(12:16):
that we found in that nineteen totwenty five degree range, and some people
even up into twenty six or sevendegrees. This hybrid clubhead delivers a blot
better performance than an iron design.And so which kind of led to the
second epiphany and outside the box ahamoment is in our set of irons and
the way this industry designs irons isthe industry R and D guys will they'll
(12:41):
design a six iron, and they'lltest it and they'll tweak it. They'll
test it and they'll tweak it.When they have that six iron really doing
what they're after, then the conventionalwisdom is the match set of irons all
has to look just alike. Well, the difference between a six iron at
twenty seven or twenty eight, twentynine degrees and a pitching wedge or what
I call a peak club in today'sset, which is a forty four to
(13:01):
forty five six degree golf club.You know, this is seventeen sixteen,
fifteen degrees difference. That's the differencebetween a six iron and a driver.
So nobody would ask for their threeiron even to look like their six iron.
Why would your pitching wedge and nineiron look like a sixthirn. They're
totally different, you know, golfclubs, they're used a totally different way.
(13:22):
And so we broke out of thisidea said, you know, realistically,
rather than my pitching wedge and nineiron match my six iron, they
really ought to match my wedges.These are scoring clubs too, you know,
these are high loft golf club Sowe've did a lot of testing and
we came up with this idea andresults driven idea that clubs over forty degrees
(13:43):
are a different animal, and youdon't need a real low center gravity,
and you don't want a thin facebecause that leads to inconsistent distance control.
Most golfers hit their short irons waytoo high because of this kind of weighting.
That's six iron weighting applied to apitching wedge or a nine iron.
And we stepped away and said,you know, realistically, every club in
(14:03):
the set ought to have kind ofwithin reason, ought to have its own
unique design to optimize ball flight.And as short iron and wedge performance is
all about ball flight control, trajectorycontrolled distance control, you typically don't miss
greens right and left with short ironshots, and wedge shots you miss them
along and short it's true, andso you don't need as much hell until
(14:24):
waiting in these high loft golf leftbecause of that. But what you do
need is the thick face. Youneed a precisely positioned center of gravity to
give you the launch angle you wantfor that particular loft. So in this
new product called Score forty one sixtyone, we created twenty one head heads
from forty one to sixty one degreesof loft, and across that range of
(14:46):
twenty one head or seven distinctly differenthead designs, that's a kind of a
graduated what we call SGC three shortgame control times three waiting and let you
control trajectory, it, lets youcontrol spend, it, lets you control
your directional accuracy. And the reviewson this have been astounding. If you
(15:09):
go on YouTube, there's some guysthat we did some testing that posted videos
all over the place. Everybody that'stried it, from developmental tour players,
former champions Tour players to twenty twohandicappers are raving about this golf club because
its first time that we have donetrajectory control through the head design so that
we can deliver those nice, tight, boring trajectories for average players, and
(15:31):
it is an absolute breakthrough to providethis kind of waiting. And you know
in twenty one loss, which willcome back to when you obviously ask me
about that, why did you dothat? Yeah, I'm going to the
progressive waiting is all about trajectory control, which is the key to distance control.
Interesting. Interesting, I just lovethe concept that you what you said
(15:54):
is that really, if you're gonnamiss with your short irons, you're gonna
miss is shorter long, You're notgoing to miss right or left. And
day boy, realizing that it isso true, Well, what happens when
we apply cavity back waiting to shortclubs clubs over forty degrees aloft? We
(16:15):
get these high, ballooning trajectories.And every one of your listeners, I
bet can think of a time whenthey were going to kind of get on
a nine a little bit, orthey were going to get on that pitch
wedge a little bit, and itwent higher but shorter, and the harder
you swing, the higher it goes, the more spin it has, the
more at mercy of the wind itis. And it didn't necessarily go further,
and that's because that head design wasdesigned to hit high soft five and
(16:36):
six irons, and I'll go back. I'm gonna be sixty next March.
So I grew up with blade golfclubs and nobody had anything else, and
we all just lived to get insideeight iron range, which back then was
about what a nine or pitches noweven because those were easy to hit,
I mean, you could score thegolf hoarse, but those four or five
and six irons they were tough.Well. When we began to apply perimeter
waiting and cavity backs and thin facesand all this technology to the middle irons
(17:00):
to make them easier. At thesame time, what we did is we
is we messed up the short ironsbecause we put these thin faces in low
cyenter gravity and they didn't need that. They were fine. I mean they
may need it a little tweaking,but they were fine. They did what
they were supposed to do. So, um, you know, it's it's
really a matter of saying, youknow, you don't. You don't sit
(17:22):
down and design a six iron andsay, I bet a driver would would
work good with this design. Imean, we a foreign doesn't even work
good with that design. We're allplaying hybrids now, even the tour players.
I mean, so we get eightor ten degrees stronger than a six
iron, and we go to acompletely different club called a hybrid. Well,
likewise, when you get more thaneight or ten degrees you know,
higher lofting a six iron, itrequires a different golf club to optimize performance.
(17:45):
And you know, and most golfersare reasonably a depth with their middle
irons. I'm gonna and so youknow, but it's their short irons where
they don't score the golf. Imean, when you look at if you're
playing a right set of t s, you're gonna hit greenshots with something over
(18:07):
forty degrees aloft. And that's theclubs that most golfers have given very little
attention to their wedge selection, theblend of their wedges to their irons.
This nine and pitch that that,you know, looks like a it looks
like a six iron. It's justnot optimum. I the idea that the
nine iron and the pitching wedge aremore of a wedge than an iron um
(18:32):
makes total sense. Uh. AndI just think about all the times that
I'm standing over my nine iron andI have to take a step back,
which I call a mental mulligan.I'm just I'm ready to hit the ball
and I have to take my mentalmulligan step back and look at the look
at the heel of the club tosee make sure that I am holding a
nine iron and not as six ironum. But the fact that you're seeing
(18:53):
it more as a wedge makes totalsense to me because that is the spot
that I want to treat it likea wedge. I'm you know, in
that distance for me nine iron isone hundred and twenty five yards, but
I have so much confidence with thatclub. But that is that same concept,
(19:14):
well exactly, I mean, theseare your money clubs. You're going
to score the golf for us withthese short golf clubs. And you know,
if you go back and look atjust a little history, I've got
to set a nineteen to sixty sixso peer against my wall and the pitching
wedge, the equalizer as they callit, was fifty one degree golf level.
That's what a gap wedge is now. And we steadily strengthen lofts and
this kind of gets to where,you know, the other big part of
(19:36):
the score forty one sixty one conceptis that we make twenty one golf clubs.
We make a forty one degree,at forty two, at forty three
to forty four all the way tosixty one degree. And the reason we
do that is because we're trying tohelp golfers manage their distance gaps. And
you know we have pitching wedges onthe market today from forty eight to forty
two degrees. Well, if thatif a peak club can be anything in
(20:00):
that range, how do you knowwhat your gap wedge ought to be or
your sandwiger. You know, you'vegot to have consistent gaps in your golf
club. So we have a processcalled score fit where you plug in on
our website score golf dot com withoutan escoor golf dot com. Do you
plug in what making model of ironsyou hit, and it goes to our
database and it says, okay,well that particular making model has a thirty
(20:23):
one degree eight iron and or I'ma thirty seven degree eight iron, and
it will then say, so youroptimum mix from a nine through your highest
wedge would be four degree increments,So you'd have a forty one, forty
five, forty nine, fifty three, fifty seven that would give you optimum.
That's a starting point to get youroptimum distance gaps. But your buddy
(20:44):
over here, he's playing a differentiron, and he's got a thirty nine
degree eight iron, Well, hisoptimum mix is probably gonna be something like
forty three, forty seven, fiftyone, fifty five, fifty nine.
So what happens is is that youhave, you know, you have the
ability to get exactly the right prescriptionfor your set, to blend your irons
(21:06):
to give you consistent false winning distancegaps. If you're making twenty one different
head designs, how do I knowwhich is the right one for me?
So you have a way of kindof custom fitting that. But it's right,
But it's based on what I'm playingwith now. And if I was
(21:26):
so happy with what I'm playing withnow, why am I replacing them?
I mean, why are we basingit on what I'm currently playing with?
Well, the reason we're basing iton that because that's I got to start
somewhere. Chances are, chances areI mean, you know, all your
listeners, they've spent money on drivers, they spent money on and and really
the only purchase they've probably made inthe last few years it made a big
(21:48):
difference is Hybridge Because they work andyour your listener, and if they will
be honest with themselves, they're five, six, seven eight iron play is
probably okay. If it's not,they need a lesson. It's not the
off clove. That's kind of cold, but it's not. And because all
of these clubs are good now,they may have the wrong golf club.
I tend to think people should beplaying more of a blade type golf club
(22:08):
with a little perimeter waiting than thesebig shovels with the big white souls and
all that. I don't think anybodyis so bad they need one of those,
but the industry seems to think so. But you know, you're probably
okay with your middle irons. Theseare just to get you somewhere around the
green, and you probably do thatokay. But where you're not scoring the
golf course is with your short clubs. You have the wrong selection of wedges.
(22:29):
You've got a nine and a pitchthat don't give you optimum ball flight
in consistent distance. And if youwill focus an investment on the short end
of your set and you will blendthem to that, your scores will come
down way down. And then ifyou want to go back later and replace
your middle irons. You know youcan do that, but that's really not
where you're going to beat the golfcourse. I mean, I don't care
(22:52):
whether you're a tour player. Theseguys are not beating up these courses with
five, six and seven hours.You know where they shoot these twenty and
twenty five under scars is when theyget into the desert where it's you know,
driver nine iron, driver wedge,driver wedge, hit the parthison two.
That's when they're beating up the golfcourses. And by the same token,
if you're a nineties shooter, youknow your key to get in the
mid eighties is a better short game. It's not better driving, it's not
(23:14):
better metal arm blats, better shortgame absolute. Um. Well, one
of the uh things that I've alwaysnoticed, it found interesting is that even
if somebody's playing with a graphite shaft, the their wedges are going to have
metal shafts. Right. Um whatabout you said you commented something about your
your breakthrough chafts. What do youdo differently with your chafts? We created
(23:37):
a and thank you for asking thatbecause I think that's a huge part of
the formula. Because the short gameis all about feel and feel is a
function of the shaft. It's theright material, the right flex, the
right weight, and nobody gives attentionto this. Nine nine point nine percent
of wedges are purchased off of aretail rack, and every wedge in an
air has a heavy, stiff steelshaft. One size fits all. It's
(23:59):
called a edge flex. Well,that's an absurd concept that you know,
the tour player, the young guythat hits nine iron one and sixty needs
the same wedge shaft that the seniorguy who is carrying graphite shafted irons and
hits a nine iron one oh five. So what we did is we created
a family of shafts we brand namedGenius, and there's three shafts in the
(24:19):
line. The Genus twelve is ourstandard weight steel shaft. It's a nice
blend for any golfers that are playingdynamic gold or rifles or any of the
standard weight steel shaft The weight isgoing to blend with those. But this
shaft was engineered with Kim Brayley ofKBS to be a little firmer in the
tip and a little softer overall,so it's got some movement in it to
(24:42):
give you the fuel on the lessthan full shots, and we make that
shaft in a regular and a firmand a firm plus flex, so we
can fit anybody that plays standard weightsteal. From there, we come down
and we've tested a lot of lightweightsteel. We didn't find the fuel qualities,
so we work with us team Amia, a wonderful graphic company. Out
of four work and we develop twographite shafts. A Genius seven, which
(25:06):
is a mid seventies gram graphite.It's a great blend to all the graphite
shafted irons out there. It givesyou within a few grams of the same
weight of your middle irons, butagain it's built with a little firmer tip
and a little softer midsection so thatit will give you the feel. And
then in between those we have theGenius nine, which is a heavier weight
(25:27):
graphite. Weighs about the same asthe lightweight steel shafts on the market,
but graphite just has such a wonderfulfeel to it. We've just found it
bed and shoulders to outperform lightweight steelin wedges. And then so that's three
shaft options where we can match theweight and blend what I call a seamless
transition to your irons. So youleave your eight iron and you go to
(25:48):
the scores, or you leave yournine iron and go to the scores,
you're going to have a seamless weighttransition, so the feel is going to
be the same. But then withinyour set of score forty one sixty one,
wedges and short irons, all ofthese shafts are going to be frequency
matched to be the same. Soyour nine iron feels like your gap wedge,
and when you take a little offthat nine, it's the same feeling
(26:10):
of taking a little off that sandwichor off that gap wedge shot. So
that's something nobody's ever done. Theindustry has always made shafts progressively stiffer from
the middle irons on through the shortirons and wedges. And our philosophy,
and which is borne out by everybody'splaying them, is that if you make
all those money clubs, which Icall them the clubs over forty degrees we
(26:30):
make, or the money club,you made them all feel the same and
swing the same and balance the same, then your short game feel is consistent
in your performances will improve immediately.What a great invitation I would have to
imagine that most golfers, like theysay, hey, bring me my sandwich,
(26:51):
right, you know, like they'rein the cart and they forgot to
you know, they didn't go planto go in the sand, and now
they are. And you say,well, which loft club is that?
It would look at you with ablank stare you know, bring my pitching
wedge? Which loft club is that? They wouldn't they know the p They
know the s They know maybe thethe g N, probably the L and
maybe on the sixty. But yourclubs are not marked as sand wedge,
(27:15):
pitching wedge gap right, No,no, they're not. And in fact,
though if you look at the wedgemark at the last eight or ten
or twelve years, Novogis, theClevelands and Mazzuonos, all of them are
all sold with numbers instead of sandgap blob pitch. So, you know,
golfers, you know, if youif you're staying up with what's going
on the equipment industry, which isthe fun, part of the fun of
being a golfer. The it's alwaysknew stuff to experiments most of it,
(27:40):
most of it, and I meanthis is kind of cynical, maybe,
but I think most of the technologyis more for marketing purposes, but um,
you know, because it's hard tomake any improvements on a driver.
And I would tell anybody unless you'vebeen ten or fifteen years since you bought
a driver, there's probably not adriver out there. It's gonna be a
lot longer for you. Um.You know. Hybrid's wonderful piece of technology
makes the game easier to play.You know, we're seeing a surge in
(28:03):
the belly putter, the long putternow this last few months, you know,
And if that helps you get itin the whole better, I'm all
for it. I'm a traditionalist.I probably won't go but you know,
a few more miss three footers andI might think about it twice. But
we could also talk about the legalityof the belly putter, but that's a
whole other conversation, right, Butif you focus on the money end of
your set, you focus on whathelps you get it in the whole inside
(28:23):
eight hund nine ine range, youknow, one twenty one thirty one forty
yards on an end. If youlook at your round of golf, and
I would, you know, challengeall of your listeners look at your last
few rounds of golf, and lookat how many times you were inside one
twenty or one thirty or one fortywhatever is nine nine range. You should
not take more than three shots toget up and down from that range.
(28:44):
That ball should be on the green, preferably close to the hole. That's
your chance to score. Whether you'rea twenty or whether you're a two handicap.
When you have an inside nine ninerange, you gotta edge in your
hand. You got a short ronein your hand. This is your chance
to score. And I've got totake advantage of those holes by having the
best equipment possible. And you probablyhaven't given the thought to that in your
set that you've given to your driversand average at fairwey oh, I wouldn't
(29:07):
doubt that one that. Um actuallyI've even uh, I'm on the mindset
that once I'm in one hundred andten yards, my whole thing is how
do I turn three shots into two? Right? I mean that is where
the scoring is when I'm in onehundred and ten, even one hundred and
twenty five yards, is how canI take that that club and get it
so close to it so I geta tap in. I want to be
(29:27):
up and down from here right,mean, you're a good player, but
I'm I think that's a sixteen ora twenty. And this is where he's
going to keep from a six offthe card and get no worse than a
five and a chance to make afour and maybe even that occasional birdie which
really makes this this game fun.Um. But it's about balkanl and what
(29:48):
I continuously preached through my blog,the wedge guide dot com, which I
think there's six hundred articles out therenow written over the last five Um.
But but what I continue to preach, this is where body strength is all
negated. You know, you canhit a fifty yard pitch shot as good
as Luke Donald. It's not aboutbody strength anymore. It's about technique and
you can learn that regardless of youknow, whether you'll ever be able to
(30:11):
hit you know, high towering fiveirons two hundred yards like those guys.
Dude, you don't have to dothat, but you can hit great short
arms and wedges from one hundred tenhundred twenty on end, and man,
that will peel shots off your scoresso fast. Yeah, god, it's
it's it's amazing how people got thisbackwards. They really do think drive farther,
farther, farther, and it's it'sagain. One of the things that
(30:32):
I frequently repeat is it's not howfar, it's how close. We have
a little with some ads that we'reworking on getting ready to go out online,
and one of our ad concepts isten feet closer beach, ten yards
longer every time, A good line, that's a good line. When you
and I first started talking a coupleof years ago, you sent me out
some ide line wedges that I'll neverforget. The first day I went out
(30:56):
and played with one, I tookum. I was probably about fifteen yards
off the green with the pin onthe opposite side of the green, plus
it was a huge right to leftbreak, and I pulled out the club
going Okay, I haven't really hada lot of chance to practice with this,
but I'm just gonna go for itanyway. And I chipped it in,
(31:17):
so I was like, Okay,I love this golf club club my
new favorite club forever. So I'mvery excited to get online. I'm going
to score goolf dot dot com,which is sco r golf dot com and
get myself fitted because I want totry these out and see what kind of
uh I want to see the shafts. I want to see the grips that
(31:37):
I have on these and what comesout with what set gets created for me
going back and listening to some ofthe shows we did with Terry Um and
he has some of the more amazingtips for your short game that we've ever
had as well. And I'll neverforget my favorite one and I still used
(32:00):
to this day Terry is when you'resetting up to address the ball with your
short irons, look at the frontheart of the ball. It's been one
of our more popular one and Ihelped so many players with that because it's
just so simple and it makes asyou found, it makes your contact so
much crisper. It adds it willspend to your short shots. It's really
(32:21):
an easy tip that you don't haveto think about. And to me,
once I got that concept of aimingto the front of the ball, all
of a sudden, for the firsttime in my golfing career, I was
getting divots that we're making sense divotsfrom from after hitting the ball, not
from before hitting the ball. Bythe way, that's also a very good
tip in putting. Oh oh,it helps you finished through the put if
(32:44):
you'll focus on that front edge theball, the side towards the hole and
you stroke that. But it letsyou keep your head down just I mean,
all of us have a problem standdown on our butt. But if
you try to see the face ofthat club hit that forward edge of that
ball, then the ball's gone andoff the putter before it does that,
and it helps you stay down fractionof a second longer. That can make
a big difference. Wow, itreminds me stand Utley on the show not
(33:07):
long ago said that most golfers whenthey topped the ball that you know,
and then then just kind of rollsfor a little while, and they're they're
very frustrated, and he says,they're doing exactly what they were aiming at.
They were aiming at the top ofthe ball, not below the ball.
It's like, exactly what a concept. Exactly amazing. Well, thank
you again for coming on visiting onceagain. Best of luck, will score
(33:30):
Golf And I guess you got theupcoming the PGA Tour show coming up in
January of twelve. Are you guysgonna be making a big splash there,
Well, we'll be there exhibiting andshowing are we have a wonderful fitting system
for PGA professionals and we have We'rejust now getting out there and we've got
retail stores and international people all showinga lot of interest, and this is
(33:52):
going to be one of the bigstories and equipment in twenty twelve. I
mean, you know that we're atthe tail end of the season. This
is all kind of preparation time,and this is really a twenty twelve product.
But all the golf ryers and everybody, and you can see on our
media page on the we're getting alot of reviews on this golf club and
they're all just overwhelmingly positive. Thisis a game changer. This is a
different kind of product, much likeHybrids was a very different kind of product
(34:15):
that really works regardless of your skilllevel. Well, you know, our
relationship is long enough to know thatI can honestly say I think of you
as a heretic, and this ismore proof of that true. And that's
on many different topics, but thisone, this one is definitely true.
And you probably have lost a lotof friends in the golf industry because you're
going to have an impact on them. Well, I had I had a
(34:37):
golf Ryer asked me, you say, well, okay, Kerry, this
most logical thing we've ever heard.Why has nobody else ever done this?
And I said, because to dothis, I mean, we're discontinuing the
idal on mine because they're antiquated.And you had to be willing to say,
I just developed a product that antiquateseverything I've ever done. Wow,
and we had the gumption to dothat. I don't see the big company.
(35:00):
They got a lot to lose.And you can't steal seck up with
your foot on first, as theysay. And we know this is the
most most developed advanced scoring club technologyever introduced. It's a complete package.
Everybody's ever done this much to yourmoney clubs. And you know that's why
we guarantee them. You buy theseclubs, you try them, you don't
lock them. We give you underpertend of your money back. Maybe you
have to get a set back.Well there you go, Terry, great
(35:22):
to talk to you, Thanks somuch for coming back. Well thanks a
lot, fred I always enjoy it.
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