September 26, 2025 • 37 mins
GS#441 June 17, 2014. The Wedge Guy, Terry Koehler responds to Golf Smarter listener questions about short game improvement and how to select the right wedge for your game. This was orginally a Members Only episode that has never been shared publically before.
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This episode is brought to you by BreakfastBalls.Golf. Visit BreakfastBalls.Golf for the best quality and pricing on premium used golf balls. Find your favorite brand at half the price of new balls! Use GOLFSMARTER at checkout for 20% off your order!
Check out "Invested in the Game", a new original podcast from Charles Schwab. This podcast is their way of sharing the incredible stories behind the game. Listen now at schwab.com/TheGame or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode is sponsored by Indeed. Please visit indeed.com/GOLFSMARTER and get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT. Terms and conditions apply.
This episode is sponsored by HIMS. Start your free online visit today HIMS.com/golfsmarter and received personalized ED treatment options.
This episode is also brought to you by Policygenius. Secure your family’s future with Policygenius. Head to policygenius.com to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save.
If you have a question about whether or not Fred is using any of the methods, equipment or apps we’ve discussed, or if you’d like to share a comment about what you’ve heard in this or any other episode, please write because Fred will get back to you. Either write to golfsmarterpodcast@gmail.com or click on the Hey Fred button, at golfsmarter.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty one from June seventeen,
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
When you look at golf club ads, go to the
website and look up every set of irons online, and
you always got a picture of a six iron, maybe
a seven. And these guys make every iron of a
set look like a six iron, because we've been schooled
for years that that's what a match set looks like.
But what we've learned over the last decade with the
advent of these things called hybrids, that when I get
down below the six and I get to a five
or four, I get into that mid twenties even high
(00:51):
twenties block range. This thing called a hybrid is a
hell a lot easier way to make a twenty two
degree gop club than to make it look like six iron.
So we replace those low we're loft at clubs with hybrids.
But we still have this nine and P that are
sixteen and seventeen degrees weaker than a six iron that
looked just like our six iron. Well, that's a very
different golf club. A six iron in today's world is
(01:13):
about twenty nine to thirty degrees in most cases. My
P is forty four, So that's fifteen sixteen seventeen degrees
between my P and my six. But if I go
fifteen sixteen degrees the other way, I've got a driver
or three wood.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Short game and wedge questions answered with Terry Kaylor.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only, Terry.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Oh, thank you, Fred, it's good to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
This question came from Matthew Edwards in Durham, North Carolina,
and he says, I'm interested in getting some score wedges
and interested in your thoughts on whether those of us
that play blades should replace our nine irons in pitching
wedges with score wedges. I understand the need if you
play cavity backs, but I play MP sixty eight's and
(02:04):
wonder if dropping the nine in pitching weg would be
a smart move. I really do not like the existing wedges,
and that is why I'm interested in score Goolf.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I dislike wedge. Are we wedge? We?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I don't know what he's saying here. He has it
in quotes, so I'm not sure we. I dislike it
so much that I bought an extra MP sixty eight PW.
I see his w wedge, I think is what he's saying,
or a sandwich and had it bent to a GW loft.
The vocy I have in the bag at fifty four
(02:39):
degrees feels like an alien compared to the blades.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I'm not going to comment on that last, but you know,
I here my thought, and we know that this scoff
club outperforms anything in the wedge category in the higher
laws forty eight. No, we know that it's er out
performs anything in the thin faced cavity back. And when
I say that, I'm talking about your distance. Dispersion patterns
(03:07):
are about ninety percent built into your god cleven ten
percent your fault. I mean people complain about I can't
control the distance my wedges. I've bought all the top brands.
You know, I'm pretty good with my seven six seven
eight iron, but I'm terrible with my nine and pitch
it must be me. Well, guys, I'm just going to
give you absolution. It's not you, it's the clubs you're playing.
(03:28):
They throw horribly broad dispersion patterns. Based on our experience
watching them on iron bron you move impact up and
down the face, you're going to get wildly different distance deliverables.
It's not your fault, and Score has a solution for that.
With regard to this listener and your Mizunos, I will
tell you you this. By the full set of scores
(03:51):
hit the nine equivalent and the p equivalent against your Mizunos,
and if they're not better, send them back and we'll
refund that part of your set. How's that.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That's an amazing offer and one that you've stood by forever.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, when you make a product like this, you can
back it up because we have had you know, less
than one percent of the golfers send these clubs back
and say, you know, they just don't work for me.
And on about two thirds of those, we've helped them
get the right shaft in their scores and send them
back and then they do work for them. Nobody talks
about shafts and scoring clubs, and people go will always
(04:26):
play steel shafted wedges. That's what I'm ordering. Don't order
your high loft clubs based on what you've always played
in your wedges. Order room based on the iron shafts
you have, because those of the shafts you're used to,
and we want to give you a seamless transition from
your six, seven, and eight right on the end of
your set of scores. And we do that by getting
the weight and the flex in your shaft match and
(04:47):
the material matched.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
There was a question that actually I saw that I
wanted to come back to because it kind of fit.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
What you were just saying.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Somebody here, Stephen Davis of Colorado Springs says, when I
was fitted for irons, they made a big deal about
getting the right flex. However, when I purchased wedges, it
seemed like they were all the same flex. Do you
think there's any need for different flexes in those wedges?
Speaker 3 (05:12):
My answer is unequivocably yes. And I was with a
very well known head golf professional, and I won't mention
him because he's on staff for a major brand. We
were doing a fitting with some of his members who
had requested it, and he made the comment, I had
no idea the shaft in the high loft clubs had
that much impact. Wow. And we watch people totally change
(05:34):
their launch conditions, their dispersion pattern and everything by getting
them in the right shaft. You know, we select the
shaft based on the weight match to our profile, our
strength profile, and a flex match to our strength profile.
But you know our clubs that we call wedges or
full smleen golf clubs, they are just an extension of
our iron set. Why would we not want that extension
(05:55):
to be as seamless and as smooth a transition as
we possibly could have.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
M M all right, let's talk about let's talk about
hitting the ball. We've talked about the equipment. Let's talk
a little bit about improving your scoring. Because this is
the place where everyone has an issue. From from low
handicap to high handicap golfers, they all seem to be
asking the same type of shot, you know, having the
(06:21):
same type of problems this one.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Let's see what he says.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Okay, So the different grit types of grips that should
be using on a chip versus a pitch shot, does
the length of the chip or the pitch shot, change
the grip.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
What about the grip pressure.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well, I'm a believer first of ball, and grit will
start the back end of that. The grip pressure, I
think is something that you want to keep as constant
as possible. But the closer the shot, the more delicate
the shot, you really want to hold the club wider
because that gives you more feel and more precision. So
you're going to grip the club lighter on a little
(07:01):
soft pitch over the collar, You're going to fly them
all eight or ten feet, let it run down to
the hole. You're obviously going to hold the club a
lot lighter on that shot than you would if you
were hitting a full eight hor or full five R.
But even then, I'm a big believer in a light grip.
And the vast majority offers hole the club too tightly,
and we grip down because of other pressure, and you know,
(07:22):
we're trying to make sure we don't hit it left
or this or that. But grip pressure being light is
one of the most fundamental things about God. Moving your
hands up and down the grip I think is a
very good idea. When you're the more delicate the shot,
the more precise your impact needs to be and the
(07:42):
club speed needs to be to get that exact carrying roll.
You're looking for work slower and get closer to your work.
And getting closer to your work means you move your
hands down on that grip. I'm not a big believer
in getting all the way down on the steel, but
close to it, and that lets you have you know less,
less error because you're, as I say, you're closer to
(08:04):
your work, reflect your knees a little more, you're down
a little more, and you're move in that club slower.
So we use a grip that Lambkin bills for us
that we really like because it's an inch longer than
the standard golf grip and it has less taper in it.
So from your normal hand position, you grip down an inch,
grip down another inch, even another inch, the club doesn't
(08:25):
dramatically change the feel in your fingertips, so it because
it's pretty much the same taper. And we really like
that grip because it facilitates scoring range control.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And that does I mean, obviously it affects the pressure
that you have in your hands. That's why so many
guys are putting the fact grips on their putters now
because just to loosen the grip, to loosen the pressure
on their hands.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
No, I agree, And you know, one of the trends
and I play one of those, and the smaller size,
but I think it works really well. I haven't gone
to the the real big ones. I just like that
the smaller size of these larger putter grips. But a
trend that we see a lot is people going to
bigger grips in their orange and woods, and I don't
(09:10):
think that's a very good idea because people like the
feeld of the larger grip because they're gripping the club
too much up in their palm. I'm kind of drifting
from that question. But the golf and go back and again,
I'll go back and direct you to mister Hogan's five
Lessons and there's a whole chapter on how to hold
a golf club. And there is one really correct way
to hold a golf club. And it doesn't matter whether
(09:32):
you overlap or interlock or even full finger. The golf
club has to be held in the fingers for the
hands to work properly through impact. And when you get
that big grip and get that club up in your palms.
It is costing you significant yardage because you're taking the
accelerator of your proper hand action. You've just removed it.
(09:53):
And a friend of mine once used the term he
holds it like a ham sandwich. And there's so many
bad grips out there, and this game is impossible to
play with a bad grip. You got on the PGA
to where you do not see bad grips out there.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And the other thing that I've noticed on the short
game shots the chipping and pitching, not only do you
see a lot of white knuckles. I mean you see
people really squeezing, squeezing the grip, and then you can
see it in their shoulders. You see the tension and
their neck and their mouth and their jaw. I mean,
there's clearly a lot there. But I've also noticed that
(10:31):
on the chipping and the pitching, when you're not taking
a full swing, it seems like people tend to try
to sweep the club more than descend on it and
come down on the ball and you know, you know,
get through the ball, and then they don't understand why
the ball releases all the way across the green well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
People have a missed perception of the two things. One
is this term accelerate through the ball, so you got
more of these jabby type techniques out there. And the
reality of it is it is almost impossible to decelerate
a golf club. You can change the rate of acceleration,
but if the club starts at zero at the top
(11:14):
of the backswing, you know, on a short shot, it's
pretty hard to move it fast and then slow it down.
What people do is they start the downswing too quickly.
And the best tip I ever had in my life,
one of the best short game practitioners in amateur golf
I ever saw back at my days at Faroks Ranch
in San Antonio, and Dave was just beautiful around the greens,
(11:36):
and we had this delicate surgeon's touch, and his simple
swing thought was take the club back slowly to the
end of where I think it needs to go, the
end of the backstrope, and then I feel like gravity
just lets my hands and my arms and the club
drop into the golf ball. He didn't think about accelerating
at all because he just thinks gravity. He said, right
(11:57):
before I take it back, I just think gravity, And
that is his tempo thought and it's really a if
anybody's having trouble with their short pitches and their chip shots,
it's a pretty good swing thought to mess around with.
And you know, we get this accelerate through the ball
so ingrained. Well, if I start at zero and I
get to the ball at two miles an hour, I
(12:19):
still accelerated.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The other thing I've come to my own personal realization is,
especially on the short game, is that when I'm taking
not a full swing, that if I keep my wrists,
my left wrist, my forward wrists, you know, from breaking
from and keeping the back of my hand towards the
(12:49):
target and not following through all the way and coming
up high, has a huge impact on the direction of
my chipping.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Absolutely, And the easiest way to think about chipping and
pitching is that as you start into your down swing,
the back of the left wrist passes the ball before
the clubhead gets to it. And if you always make
sure that happen. I don't like to think about hitting
down on the ball, but if you if you make
because I think that that's changing my hope for I
(13:23):
don't want to hit down on the ball. I want
to hit a golf shot, and I want to make
a swing. I don't want to hit the ball at all.
I don't want to hit anything. I want to take
this club back and through in an orientation that's going
to make the ball do what I want it to do.
And if you always just think about the back of
the left hand gets past the if there's a plane
of glass at the golf ball, that back of that
(13:43):
left hand breaks that paint of glass. That clubhead doesn't
break it. It's already broken when the clubhead gets there.
A little different, a little different pane of glass example
than the one used in five lessons that talk about
swing plane. And I'm talking about what gets to the ball.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
First, good thank you question from Matt in Brentwood. How
do we know which scoring club to use? From the sand?
A very frequent question. Are different types of sand a factor?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well, different types of sand are a factor in bunker play.
The tour pros don't have to deal with that because
they play tour qualities and every week, but the rest
of us do. And you know, I to me, when
you walk into bunker, I walk into the bunker typically
with two clubs in my hand, and it might be
my fifty five and fifty eight If it's a shorter
bunker shot, it might be my fifty one and fifty five.
If it's a longer bunker shot, I've hit bunker shots
(14:38):
with my forty seven, but all of the score soul
designs are designed to make them a good bunker club.
And I look at the bunker shot as how far
do I need to carry it? How far do I
want it to roll out? And I don't want to
have to take a big old cut in the sand,
and so I will typically if I've got a longer
bunker shot, which typically means you got a lot of
green to work with. On a longer bunker shot, I
(15:00):
very often will lay open a fifty one or you know,
or even a forty seven and make them just the
same bunker swing i'd make with a fifty eight. On
the shorter shot, it's going to come out lower, it's
going to roll out more, and you know, to me,
getting up and down out of bunkers is you know,
going to be a relative rarity for the average amateur player.
(15:22):
What you're trying to do is not make more than
three shots from that bunker, right, get it on the green,
give yourself a putt somewhere in the twenty foot or
less range. You're not going to hurt yourself. You hit
in the bunker, you know you you've already kind of
guns this hole a little bit and get it out
of the bunker. And unless you have a place where
you like to go practice bunker shots an hour or
two a day, you know getting up and down out
(15:42):
of the bunker is going to be the exception rather
than the rule. I mean, the best guys on tour
two thirds and they do this for a living.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So yeah, yeah, let let's let's get our expectations in
check here, because we are not tour players, and we
think that we have all those shots in our bag
because we saw somebody on TV do it.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Right, if you played, if I would tell your listeners
all of it, if you played tour bunkers, and we'd
all be ten times better bunker players if we got
to play the sand they play, they're watered down. Let
me tell you something I learned the other day. I
didn't know this has been several months ago. Watch the telecast,
and the caddies always go into the bunker on the
(16:25):
side of the bunker, away from the hole, and they
rake the bunker directly away from the flag. So the
bunker rake grooves go from that spot right toward the
flag because it's an easier bunker shot to hit it
with the grooves than across the grooves. And do they
do that out of courtesy? No, they do that because
they get fined if they rake it any other way. Oh,
(16:49):
I mean, these guys got a lot of advantages. There's
also a tour sand texture. Go watch the guys on
the tour walk in the bunkers. They don't really grind
their feet into the sand because the bunkers are so
firm they don't need to. They'll move them a little bit,
But you don't see those guys walk into these fluffy
bunkers and bury their feet like we have to sometime
and then figure out how to get out of this
(17:10):
dalkol powder stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Tell me why we burn our feet like that? Why
do we bury our feet like that in bunkers?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Just so that your feet won't move when you go
into your swings. They'll give you a stable platform.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Okay, Derek wants to know, all conditions being equal, what
do you think has more control for in between distant shots,
stepping up on a gap wedge or easing up on
the pitching.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Wedge neither one. First of all, your gaps are too big.
If you're playing conventional golf club, you have a twenty
five yard fifteen yard gap in there. Probably at the
very least, the easiest way to hit the end between
shots for recreational golfer particularly, but even for tour player
is take the longer club, grip down on a three
(17:56):
quartern inch into swing it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
That's it, really it.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, it'll cut your gap about in half. Ever, go
amp up a wedge or a short iron, because what
happens is you swing harder, the ball goes higher and
it goes shorter properly.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Phil mickelsoning a day about day lost to us opening
by doing that. Actually, now that you think about it, you.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Know it had a great conversation a couple episodes ago
with Dave Stockton.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
Really, oh really, you.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Got to go back and listen to that one. That
was absolutely amazing. That we spent well over an hour
together on the phone and it was not just unputting,
and it was definitely a lot of the mental game.
But course management in a way or not, I don't
want to say courseman strategy beyond course management, the mental
the mental side of strategy that I thought was so fascinating.
(18:48):
But yeah, and you know, he's just a wealth It was.
It was remarkable. One of the things that really stood
out to me that he said was, I have when
I step up to the ball game and I'm looking
at the shot, there is one of two shots that
I have, a low one or a high one.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Yeah, you want to respond to that.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
You're making down that simple, right, Yeah, he.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Says, I'm either going to make a low shot or
high shot. That's all I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Wow, I'd love to get a lot more accomplished than that.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And that's why he's the he's the one who's coaching
Rory McElroy and Phil Mickelson and not you have a
response to you have something you want to say about that.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But you know, I think that makes a lot of sense.
And then you know whether he's doing that with the
same club or not. But he's narrowing it down to
two techniques, or you could narrow it down to two clubs.
You know, you could go and say, you know what,
I have a really good chipping technique, a really good
you know chip pitch technique. And when I get to
a shot, you know, I'm a multi club guy. You know, uh,
you know standing guy was blinking on his last name.
(19:59):
But you know a lot of the teachers are you'll
really get good with your sum standently and and you know,
learn how to hit all the shots. I don't think
there's a wrong approach. My approach is I'm a recreational player.
I don't play as much as I want to. I don't.
I don't have that kind of command over my fifty
five or fifty one anymore. And I go up and
I look at it, it's like, you know what club
(20:19):
with my chipping stroke, my basic learned stroke is going
to get the flight and the rollout that this shot demand.
And if it's you know, use of fifty eight, I
hit a fifty eight. If it's use of you know,
forty three, I'm gonna chip with a forty three. And
on a lot of shots that I run to, it's
like you wide sided the green. You're four or five
(20:41):
feet off the fringe, but it's really not puttable and
the pen is sixty feet across the green. Well shot
that I learned when I was a little kid that
I still use a lot is I basically put it
with a foreign. I take my foreign, I take my
putting stands for my putting grip. I grip it lighter
because the foreign is lighter than the butter. And I
set the club up where it's more up on its toe,
and I just basically put it and it gets it
(21:03):
just enough loft flight over the edge of green. It
rolls out pretty much like a putt wood and you know,
get it within five six feet the whole or better.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, that works well when you have the uh your
chip has the flag all the way on the other
side of the green.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
You've got to so you're gonna want this ball to
roll you right.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You want the ball to be on the ground as
long as possible, but you got to get it onto
the green first.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I gotta get on the green because if I if
I hit that long, hard putt through the collar right,
and the collar isn't really smooth. Now, when you go
to the US Open next week at Pinehurst, I was
out there a couple of weeks ago. Fabulous plays. They'll
be putting from all over the place because they're only
gonna be two cuts at Pinehurst. They're gonna be a
green cut and a fairway cut. That's all it's gonna be.
There's no deep rough at Pinehurst. It's gonna be wonderful.
(21:46):
But you know, but if you have a good smooth surface,
your best, but your worst put's probably gonna be as
good as your best chip. But if you do have
to get it over some scruffy stuff or even a
sprinkler head or something like that, that that putt with
a foreign or even a four hybrid, it's a good shot.
You can go spend five minutes with it around your
putting grain and get a feel for it and put
it in your arsenal.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I actually recently that happened to me. The I was
on the fringe, but the ball was setting just up
against the taller grass right the rough there. So my
putter just couldn't cut through that, and so I pulled
out my four hybrid and hold it.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
I mean, well, that fabulous. And will say that's the
place you want to use that belly wedge. But let
me tell you, unless you practice that belly wedge, man's
and it's a wonderful shot. Don't get me wrong, man,
you need to practice that because the ball comes off
a lot hotter off the edge of the sandwidge than
it does off the face of a putter, a lot hotter.
And if you're hitting that little belly wedge shot and
(22:47):
you're playing for it to be really really hot, and
you swing a half an inch low, three quarter of
an inch low, you just hit your little wedge put
about four feet. Yeah, if it goes that far. Yeah, yeah,
and you might double hit it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Now explain, I'm not exactly sure what you mean my
belly wedge belly.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Where you set the way the ball's up against the collar, Yeah,
you can't get anything on it. So you take your
sand wedge and you just hit the ball right in
the equator with the with the leading edge.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Oh I see, I see, okay, okay, yeah, I could not.
I would not have the confidence to pull that one off. Yeah,
that has got to be you really got to practice that.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah you do. So.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Now let's take the scenario of your your ten feet
off off the green and yet the flag is only
a few feet You know, you don't have to go
all the way, you don't have to roll it forever,
but you definitely got to get the ball in the
air to get on the green because there's a sprinkler
head in your way or something.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
But you don't want the ball to roll far.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So why what is the difference in that shot versus
what you talked about your four iron?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Well, I think there you're go in the opposite. You
need high loft on the club, as Dave Stockton said,
and you like it to stop pretty quickly. The biggest
problem that people do with that shot. First of all,
short shining yourself is not the way to shoot its score.
So you want to keep those two a minimum. But
chances are that shot, you know, you might have it
where the green's going to kind of run away from
(24:21):
you possibly, but you know, six feet long of the
hole is just as good as six feet short of
the hole. So make sure you don't get so cute
with it as they say that you don't it and
have that shot over again. It doesn't have to stop
short of the hole. And so on that shot, you know,
typically you want to lay the face open a little bit,
(24:42):
and you want to pick the club up a little
quicker to get a little steeper angle of descent, and
look at the back edge of the ball right with
the ball and you know, right at the spot of
the ground right behind the ball and drop that club
again with gravity, drop that club down to that slot
and and you know, with a little bit of follow through,
it should pop up for you. But again, that's a
shot you need to practice. And what's really a good
(25:03):
little exercise late in the afternoon. Just take your you know,
a couple of wedges, your gap in your hand or whatever,
and go out around. You know, you don't have to
be on a green, go the driving range, get you
a bag of balls and nobody's over there, and just
chip around, hit little different shots, see what swings produce,
what ball flights, and chalk those up to memory. Learn
what your golf club will do. You know, you can
(25:23):
get a bag of balls and go out to the
range and the far end of the range, if it's
not crowded, chip around on the tee line, and then
go hit them all. Get you some practice in.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You gave me a tip years ago that I still repeat,
I still think is one of the great ones, and
that would be looking at the front of the ball,
aiming for the front of the ball.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, I'm a big believer in that with most of
your shots, you know, keeping kind of folks and not
just look at the ball. Look at the front edge
of the ball that decide toward the target, and it
makes your contact crisper. It helps me gets fine. It's
the old am small miss small thing. Let me look
at the front edge ball because i want ball first
contact the shot that I was just talking about, and
(26:03):
I'm going to shift my focus over to the back
of the ball on that one. If I'm in the bunker,
I'm going to shift my focus to a spot behind
the ball.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Love that tip. Love that tip.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
It really makes for crisper shots.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It really does, because so many times when you're in
that situation, you hit about four inches behind the ball
and then the club face bounces off the ground, hits
the top of the ball and it goes nowhere.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Either that or the club sticks in the dirt and
the ball didn't move it all. And that's really fun.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
That's really embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Oh my. So one of the things, I had a
four foot shot and I hit at zero inches.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
No, that's called a practice swing. Y.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
One of the things that people frequently ask about the
score score golf clubs is that you don't have a
sand wedge, right, you have the different lofts and again,
explain how the forty one sixty one one works. Score
Golf forty one sixty one works, and then let's talk
about what a sandwige is and why you don't have
(27:05):
a designated sandwich.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Well, first of all, Score forty one sixty one. The
name comes from the fact that we make every golf
club from forty one to sixty one degrees, make twenty
one different club heads because over on this set of irons,
your eight iron maybe thirty seven degrees, on this set
of irons of maybe thirty nine, on this set of
irons of maybe thirty eight. And what we want to
do is to be able to exactly gap the short
end of your set four degrees for a long hit,
(27:29):
or possibly even three for a shorter hit, or maybe
five degrees. We want to give you the exact gapping.
So if you have a thirty seven degree eight iron,
your prescription is probably forty one, forty five, forty nine,
fifty three, fifty seven. Well, nobody makes those. I don't
want to go bend around on a golf club. These
are my precision tools, so we do make them, and
(27:51):
it lets us have infinite control over your gaping to
get you down to these differentials. Between clubs that give
you what you want. And the reason we don't anything
sand wedge, gap wedgeor whatever, because they're all scoring clubs.
I mean, I talked a while ago about walking into
a bunker with a forty seven and a fifty one.
I got a long bunker shot. Those that's v sole
design that we have that's been proven for twenty five years.
(28:13):
It works regardless of a loft. I mean, we were
out messing around a day hitting flop shots with a
forty three. I mean, who thinks about hitting the flop
shot with a nineer? You know, but you can do that,
and it gives you another shot if you're willing to
go play around with it in experiment with it. But
you know, the idea is, if I have a real
close bunker shot, not much green to work with, not
(28:34):
much carey to do the fifty eight or nine sixty
sixty one, that's a great golf club for that because
it's going to pop up a little higher and stop
a little quicker. But if I left it down and
it rolled back maybe to the middle of the bunker
and the pins up in the middle of the green,
and I got a thirty or thirty five yard bunker shot.
I got to put a pretty big cut on it
with that fifty eight, and I don't want to make
(28:54):
that big a cut on it because if I catch
it a little thin, it's over the green and out
of bunds or whatever back there. So that shot, I
may take a fifty five or even a fifty one
and just make a more control swing, Let it come
out lower and run across some of that green instead
of trying to fly it all the way to the hole.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Explain to me again, you talked once about why. I
remember specifics of the conversations that we've had, but we've had.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
So many conversations. That's probably why.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
But the loft difference between what I think you explained
the driver to the five iron versus the scoring clubs different.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Well, yeah, exactly. You know when you look at golf
club ads out there, go to the website and look
up every set of irons online sold, and you always
got a picture of a six iron. Maybe a seven
used to be a five back in the old days
before loss for chain. But and these guys make every
iron of the set look like a six iron, because
we've been schooled for years that that's what a match
set looks like. But what we've learned over the last
(29:53):
decade with the advent of these things called hybridge, that
when I get down below the six and I get
to a five or four, I get into that mid twenties,
even high twenties prickarly low twenty loft range. This thing
called a hybrid is a hell a lot easier way
to make a twenty two degree golf club than to
make it look like six iron. You know, three irons
are really hard to hit. I'm sorry, They're really hard
(30:14):
to hit for anybody. And so we've replaced those lower
lofted clubs that are only six or eight degrees stronger
than a six iron. We replaced those with hybrids. But
we still have this nine and P that are sixteen
and seventeen degrees weaker than a six iron that looked
just like our six iron. Well, that's a very different
golf club. The illustration you referred to is a six
(30:36):
iron at today's world is about twenty nine to thirty
degrees in most cases. Okay, so my P is forty four,
so that's fifteen, sixteen seventeen degrees maybe between my P
and my six. But if I go fifteen, sixteen degrees.
The other way, I've got a driver or three wood,
so I've got on the six iron down, I've got
(30:58):
a driver, hit a three wood, hit a small dollar
head with a five wood on it. I got a hybrid,
maybe two hybrids, and then an iron and then my
six iron. But the other way, I've got four clubs
that look just like my six iron, the seven, eight
nine pitch, and then three or four clubs that just
looked just like a nineteen fifty nine wedge. I got
two head designs for everything from thirty to sixty degrees,
(31:18):
and I've got five head designs from thirty to twelve degrees.
There's no logic to that whatsoever. But you know, only
on a couple of occasions have companies said maybe a
match that of iron shouldn't match at all. But they
never were there with commitment. You know, if you believe that,
then don't make any that do. That's what score golf.
(31:39):
So in your score golf set, there's forty one to
sixty one degrees, there's twenty one degrees. There's seven different
head designs. The weighting changes every three degrees, aloft each
three degrees, there's another head design to take you down
the next three, so we optimize weight distribution for the
I got exact loft of that golf club so that
you at better trajectory control, which is distance control. And
(32:03):
you know the short end of the set, your misses
are long and short mostly and if your misses are
left and right the club, the club didn't have anything
do with that. That swing path and clubhead at face
ankle long and short, the club had a lot to
do with that. But we've all been taught it's our fault.
Score Golf, it's absolution. It's not your fault. You can't
control your distance.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well again, everything that you've you've offered your advice, it's
it's amazing how the insight that you have on the
game as but you come from the manufacturing side, from
the design side of clubs. I you know, I used
to uh have you know I played Mizuno clubs as
(32:45):
irons as well, But I've replaced that end of my
my uh set with the Score Golf, And I just
was amazed how you based on the the form that
I filled out on site, Uh, how you knew which
degree losts that I needed and how well it's worked
for me.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
I've made it work for me.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Well, there's a mathematical science to all this. And thank
you for the kudos about being a golf club designer,
but you know, I'm first and foremost for it. I'm
a golfer. You know, I want to hit it closer
to the whole, just like everybody else. And you know
what drove me to become a designer because I'm not
an engineer. I'm a golfer. And like mister Hogan was
not an engineer, he was a golfer, and his constant
(33:29):
pursuit of how to make the golf ball be more
controllable led him to, you know, zero in on the
golf club because that's what you're controlling it with. And
you know, I think that when I have a golf
club in my hand and I have a hard time
flighting the ball down, well I know how to flight
the ball down. That must be the golf club, you know,
because I know how to do that, So why should
(33:51):
I be able to And kind of what drove the
whole development of score forty one sixty one is with
my seven eight nine iron, I can very accurate lee
I've learned over the years, very accurately to change my
ball trajectory and distance to three and four yard increments
in between those clubs. But I never was able to
get there with the pitching wedge and the wedges, And
(34:13):
it finally dawned on me, maybe it's not me, Maybe
it's the golf club. So when we put conventional wedges
on our environ and took impact in a one inch
circle around the face, and we found that the ball
traveled forty five to fifty feet different between the bottom
of that one inch circle and the top of that
one inch circle. Well, hey, an inch isn't very far.
(34:34):
And then we put these thin faced cavity back irons
on the iron environing, and we found that that difference
distance differential went to seventy eighty ninety eight feet between
high and the face and low in the face with
the same swing from iron environment. That's the golf club.
We've isolated the golf club. It's not the golfer. Like say,
it's not your fault that you can't control your distance,
But Score Golf can fix that for you, and we
(34:57):
will make you as good as you are. How's that.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
They'll make you feel more confident and that is huge
exactly that is huge. So the Ben Hogan I'm want
to get back to Ben Hogan company for a second.
In fort Worth, you've always been in. Victoria is in Texas.
Is closer to Houston, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Victoria is down close to the coast, which is you know,
one of my loves beside golf is saltwater fishing, and
Victoria is close to the coast. But when we took
on the ben Hogan opportunity, there was no question in
my mind that Ben Hogan had to go back to
Fort Worth. That's where that company has always been. Just
like moving the packers out of Green Bay, It's just
(35:43):
not something you do, you know. And the ben Hogan
Company is rerooting in Fort Worth. By this time next year,
ben Hogan Irons will be earning a following all over
the golf marketplace.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
It's going to be exciting.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
They'll be right there in fort Worth, Texas.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
So how far is it between Victoria and Fort Worth?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Your driver or you fly.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I drive and get a lot of phone time in
and so I have second residence. I'm sitting up in
fort Worth and obviously a bunch of my time up
there It's a wonderful city, by the way, and you
know nicknamed cap Pound is the beginning of the West
and wonderful city. Really neat place.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. The best part of the Dallas Fort
Worth area is Fort Worth.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah. West fort Worth is just a really neat place.
A lot of great golf there, just great people there,
some of the best little restaurants you've ever found in
your life. And it's a really cool place.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Awesome, awesome, Well, congratulations again, Terry. Really happy for you
and eagerly anticipating what happens in twenty fifteen with Ben Hogan.
And when you guys are about to release something, I'm
going to drag you back in here and let everybody
know once again.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
So that would be great, rad We'll look forward to
that opportunity and to spending more time on the show.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, that would also be fun. It's always great to
talk to you, Terry. Congratulations, best of luck and thanks again.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Thank you, Fret. It's always a pleasure.
Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty one from June seventeen,
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
When you look at golf club ads, go to the
website and look up every set of irons online, and
you always got a picture of a six iron, maybe
a seven. And these guys make every iron of a
set look like a six iron, because we've been schooled
for years that that's what a match set looks like.
But what we've learned over the last decade with the
advent of these things called hybrids, that when I get
down below the six and I get to a five
or four, I get into that mid twenties even high
(00:51):
twenties block range. This thing called a hybrid is a
hell a lot easier way to make a twenty two
degree gop club than to make it look like six iron.
So we replace those low we're loft at clubs with hybrids.
But we still have this nine and P that are
sixteen and seventeen degrees weaker than a six iron that
looked just like our six iron. Well, that's a very
different golf club. A six iron in today's world is
(01:13):
about twenty nine to thirty degrees in most cases. My
P is forty four, So that's fifteen sixteen seventeen degrees
between my P and my six. But if I go
fifteen sixteen degrees the other way, I've got a driver
or three wood.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Short game and wedge questions answered with Terry Kaylor.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only, Terry.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Oh, thank you, Fred, it's good to be back.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
This question came from Matthew Edwards in Durham, North Carolina,
and he says, I'm interested in getting some score wedges
and interested in your thoughts on whether those of us
that play blades should replace our nine irons in pitching
wedges with score wedges. I understand the need if you
play cavity backs, but I play MP sixty eight's and
(02:04):
wonder if dropping the nine in pitching weg would be
a smart move. I really do not like the existing wedges,
and that is why I'm interested in score Goolf.
Speaker 4 (02:13):
I dislike wedge. Are we wedge? We?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I don't know what he's saying here. He has it
in quotes, so I'm not sure we. I dislike it
so much that I bought an extra MP sixty eight PW.
I see his w wedge, I think is what he's saying,
or a sandwich and had it bent to a GW loft.
The vocy I have in the bag at fifty four
(02:39):
degrees feels like an alien compared to the blades.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
I'm not going to comment on that last, but you know,
I here my thought, and we know that this scoff
club outperforms anything in the wedge category in the higher
laws forty eight. No, we know that it's er out
performs anything in the thin faced cavity back. And when
I say that, I'm talking about your distance. Dispersion patterns
(03:07):
are about ninety percent built into your god cleven ten
percent your fault. I mean people complain about I can't
control the distance my wedges. I've bought all the top brands.
You know, I'm pretty good with my seven six seven
eight iron, but I'm terrible with my nine and pitch
it must be me. Well, guys, I'm just going to
give you absolution. It's not you, it's the clubs you're playing.
(03:28):
They throw horribly broad dispersion patterns. Based on our experience
watching them on iron bron you move impact up and
down the face, you're going to get wildly different distance deliverables.
It's not your fault, and Score has a solution for that.
With regard to this listener and your Mizunos, I will
tell you you this. By the full set of scores
(03:51):
hit the nine equivalent and the p equivalent against your Mizunos,
and if they're not better, send them back and we'll
refund that part of your set. How's that.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
That's an amazing offer and one that you've stood by forever.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, when you make a product like this, you can
back it up because we have had you know, less
than one percent of the golfers send these clubs back
and say, you know, they just don't work for me.
And on about two thirds of those, we've helped them
get the right shaft in their scores and send them
back and then they do work for them. Nobody talks
about shafts and scoring clubs, and people go will always
(04:26):
play steel shafted wedges. That's what I'm ordering. Don't order
your high loft clubs based on what you've always played
in your wedges. Order room based on the iron shafts
you have, because those of the shafts you're used to,
and we want to give you a seamless transition from
your six, seven, and eight right on the end of
your set of scores. And we do that by getting
the weight and the flex in your shaft match and
(04:47):
the material matched.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
There was a question that actually I saw that I
wanted to come back to because it kind of fit.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
What you were just saying.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Somebody here, Stephen Davis of Colorado Springs says, when I
was fitted for irons, they made a big deal about
getting the right flex. However, when I purchased wedges, it
seemed like they were all the same flex. Do you
think there's any need for different flexes in those wedges?
Speaker 3 (05:12):
My answer is unequivocably yes. And I was with a
very well known head golf professional, and I won't mention
him because he's on staff for a major brand. We
were doing a fitting with some of his members who
had requested it, and he made the comment, I had
no idea the shaft in the high loft clubs had
that much impact. Wow. And we watch people totally change
(05:34):
their launch conditions, their dispersion pattern and everything by getting
them in the right shaft. You know, we select the
shaft based on the weight match to our profile, our
strength profile, and a flex match to our strength profile.
But you know our clubs that we call wedges or
full smleen golf clubs, they are just an extension of
our iron set. Why would we not want that extension
(05:55):
to be as seamless and as smooth a transition as
we possibly could have.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
M M all right, let's talk about let's talk about
hitting the ball. We've talked about the equipment. Let's talk
a little bit about improving your scoring. Because this is
the place where everyone has an issue. From from low
handicap to high handicap golfers, they all seem to be
asking the same type of shot, you know, having the
(06:21):
same type of problems this one.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Let's see what he says.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Okay, So the different grit types of grips that should
be using on a chip versus a pitch shot, does
the length of the chip or the pitch shot, change
the grip.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
What about the grip pressure.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Well, I'm a believer first of ball, and grit will
start the back end of that. The grip pressure, I
think is something that you want to keep as constant
as possible. But the closer the shot, the more delicate
the shot, you really want to hold the club wider
because that gives you more feel and more precision. So
you're going to grip the club lighter on a little
(07:01):
soft pitch over the collar, You're going to fly them
all eight or ten feet, let it run down to
the hole. You're obviously going to hold the club a
lot lighter on that shot than you would if you
were hitting a full eight hor or full five R.
But even then, I'm a big believer in a light grip.
And the vast majority offers hole the club too tightly,
and we grip down because of other pressure, and you know,
(07:22):
we're trying to make sure we don't hit it left
or this or that. But grip pressure being light is
one of the most fundamental things about God. Moving your
hands up and down the grip I think is a
very good idea. When you're the more delicate the shot,
the more precise your impact needs to be and the
(07:42):
club speed needs to be to get that exact carrying roll.
You're looking for work slower and get closer to your work.
And getting closer to your work means you move your
hands down on that grip. I'm not a big believer
in getting all the way down on the steel, but
close to it, and that lets you have you know less,
less error because you're, as I say, you're closer to
(08:04):
your work, reflect your knees a little more, you're down
a little more, and you're move in that club slower.
So we use a grip that Lambkin bills for us
that we really like because it's an inch longer than
the standard golf grip and it has less taper in it.
So from your normal hand position, you grip down an inch,
grip down another inch, even another inch, the club doesn't
(08:25):
dramatically change the feel in your fingertips, so it because
it's pretty much the same taper. And we really like
that grip because it facilitates scoring range control.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And that does I mean, obviously it affects the pressure
that you have in your hands. That's why so many
guys are putting the fact grips on their putters now
because just to loosen the grip, to loosen the pressure
on their hands.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
No, I agree, And you know, one of the trends
and I play one of those, and the smaller size,
but I think it works really well. I haven't gone
to the the real big ones. I just like that
the smaller size of these larger putter grips. But a
trend that we see a lot is people going to
bigger grips in their orange and woods, and I don't
(09:10):
think that's a very good idea because people like the
feeld of the larger grip because they're gripping the club
too much up in their palm. I'm kind of drifting
from that question. But the golf and go back and again,
I'll go back and direct you to mister Hogan's five
Lessons and there's a whole chapter on how to hold
a golf club. And there is one really correct way
to hold a golf club. And it doesn't matter whether
(09:32):
you overlap or interlock or even full finger. The golf
club has to be held in the fingers for the
hands to work properly through impact. And when you get
that big grip and get that club up in your palms.
It is costing you significant yardage because you're taking the
accelerator of your proper hand action. You've just removed it.
(09:53):
And a friend of mine once used the term he
holds it like a ham sandwich. And there's so many
bad grips out there, and this game is impossible to
play with a bad grip. You got on the PGA
to where you do not see bad grips out there.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And the other thing that I've noticed on the short
game shots the chipping and pitching, not only do you
see a lot of white knuckles. I mean you see
people really squeezing, squeezing the grip, and then you can
see it in their shoulders. You see the tension and
their neck and their mouth and their jaw. I mean,
there's clearly a lot there. But I've also noticed that
(10:31):
on the chipping and the pitching, when you're not taking
a full swing, it seems like people tend to try
to sweep the club more than descend on it and
come down on the ball and you know, you know,
get through the ball, and then they don't understand why
the ball releases all the way across the green well.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
People have a missed perception of the two things. One
is this term accelerate through the ball, so you got
more of these jabby type techniques out there. And the
reality of it is it is almost impossible to decelerate
a golf club. You can change the rate of acceleration,
but if the club starts at zero at the top
(11:14):
of the backswing, you know, on a short shot, it's
pretty hard to move it fast and then slow it down.
What people do is they start the downswing too quickly.
And the best tip I ever had in my life,
one of the best short game practitioners in amateur golf
I ever saw back at my days at Faroks Ranch
in San Antonio, and Dave was just beautiful around the greens,
(11:36):
and we had this delicate surgeon's touch, and his simple
swing thought was take the club back slowly to the
end of where I think it needs to go, the
end of the backstrope, and then I feel like gravity
just lets my hands and my arms and the club
drop into the golf ball. He didn't think about accelerating
at all because he just thinks gravity. He said, right
(11:57):
before I take it back, I just think gravity, And
that is his tempo thought and it's really a if
anybody's having trouble with their short pitches and their chip shots,
it's a pretty good swing thought to mess around with.
And you know, we get this accelerate through the ball
so ingrained. Well, if I start at zero and I
get to the ball at two miles an hour, I
(12:19):
still accelerated.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The other thing I've come to my own personal realization is,
especially on the short game, is that when I'm taking
not a full swing, that if I keep my wrists,
my left wrist, my forward wrists, you know, from breaking
from and keeping the back of my hand towards the
(12:49):
target and not following through all the way and coming
up high, has a huge impact on the direction of
my chipping.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Absolutely, And the easiest way to think about chipping and
pitching is that as you start into your down swing,
the back of the left wrist passes the ball before
the clubhead gets to it. And if you always make
sure that happen. I don't like to think about hitting
down on the ball, but if you if you make
because I think that that's changing my hope for I
(13:23):
don't want to hit down on the ball. I want
to hit a golf shot, and I want to make
a swing. I don't want to hit the ball at all.
I don't want to hit anything. I want to take
this club back and through in an orientation that's going
to make the ball do what I want it to do.
And if you always just think about the back of
the left hand gets past the if there's a plane
of glass at the golf ball, that back of that
(13:43):
left hand breaks that paint of glass. That clubhead doesn't
break it. It's already broken when the clubhead gets there.
A little different, a little different pane of glass example
than the one used in five lessons that talk about
swing plane. And I'm talking about what gets to the ball.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
First, good thank you question from Matt in Brentwood. How
do we know which scoring club to use? From the sand?
A very frequent question. Are different types of sand a factor?
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Well, different types of sand are a factor in bunker play.
The tour pros don't have to deal with that because
they play tour qualities and every week, but the rest
of us do. And you know, I to me, when
you walk into bunker, I walk into the bunker typically
with two clubs in my hand, and it might be
my fifty five and fifty eight If it's a shorter
bunker shot, it might be my fifty one and fifty five.
If it's a longer bunker shot, I've hit bunker shots
(14:38):
with my forty seven, but all of the score soul
designs are designed to make them a good bunker club.
And I look at the bunker shot as how far
do I need to carry it? How far do I
want it to roll out? And I don't want to
have to take a big old cut in the sand,
and so I will typically if I've got a longer
bunker shot, which typically means you got a lot of
green to work with. On a longer bunker shot, I
(15:00):
very often will lay open a fifty one or you know,
or even a forty seven and make them just the
same bunker swing i'd make with a fifty eight. On
the shorter shot, it's going to come out lower, it's
going to roll out more, and you know, to me,
getting up and down out of bunkers is you know,
going to be a relative rarity for the average amateur player.
(15:22):
What you're trying to do is not make more than
three shots from that bunker, right, get it on the green,
give yourself a putt somewhere in the twenty foot or
less range. You're not going to hurt yourself. You hit
in the bunker, you know you you've already kind of
guns this hole a little bit and get it out
of the bunker. And unless you have a place where
you like to go practice bunker shots an hour or
two a day, you know getting up and down out
(15:42):
of the bunker is going to be the exception rather
than the rule. I mean, the best guys on tour
two thirds and they do this for a living.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So yeah, yeah, let let's let's get our expectations in
check here, because we are not tour players, and we
think that we have all those shots in our bag
because we saw somebody on TV do it.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
Right, if you played, if I would tell your listeners
all of it, if you played tour bunkers, and we'd
all be ten times better bunker players if we got
to play the sand they play, they're watered down. Let
me tell you something I learned the other day. I
didn't know this has been several months ago. Watch the telecast,
and the caddies always go into the bunker on the
(16:25):
side of the bunker, away from the hole, and they
rake the bunker directly away from the flag. So the
bunker rake grooves go from that spot right toward the
flag because it's an easier bunker shot to hit it
with the grooves than across the grooves. And do they
do that out of courtesy? No, they do that because
they get fined if they rake it any other way. Oh,
(16:49):
I mean, these guys got a lot of advantages. There's
also a tour sand texture. Go watch the guys on
the tour walk in the bunkers. They don't really grind
their feet into the sand because the bunkers are so
firm they don't need to. They'll move them a little bit,
But you don't see those guys walk into these fluffy
bunkers and bury their feet like we have to sometime
and then figure out how to get out of this
(17:10):
dalkol powder stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Tell me why we burn our feet like that? Why
do we bury our feet like that in bunkers?
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Just so that your feet won't move when you go
into your swings. They'll give you a stable platform.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Okay, Derek wants to know, all conditions being equal, what
do you think has more control for in between distant shots,
stepping up on a gap wedge or easing up on
the pitching.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Wedge neither one. First of all, your gaps are too big.
If you're playing conventional golf club, you have a twenty
five yard fifteen yard gap in there. Probably at the
very least, the easiest way to hit the end between
shots for recreational golfer particularly, but even for tour player
is take the longer club, grip down on a three
(17:56):
quartern inch into swing it.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
That's it, really it.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, it'll cut your gap about in half. Ever, go
amp up a wedge or a short iron, because what
happens is you swing harder, the ball goes higher and
it goes shorter properly.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Phil mickelsoning a day about day lost to us opening
by doing that. Actually, now that you think about it, you.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Know it had a great conversation a couple episodes ago
with Dave Stockton.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
Really, oh really, you.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Got to go back and listen to that one. That
was absolutely amazing. That we spent well over an hour
together on the phone and it was not just unputting,
and it was definitely a lot of the mental game.
But course management in a way or not, I don't
want to say courseman strategy beyond course management, the mental
the mental side of strategy that I thought was so fascinating.
(18:48):
But yeah, and you know, he's just a wealth It was.
It was remarkable. One of the things that really stood
out to me that he said was, I have when
I step up to the ball game and I'm looking
at the shot, there is one of two shots that
I have, a low one or a high one.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Yeah, you want to respond to that.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
You're making down that simple, right, Yeah, he.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Says, I'm either going to make a low shot or
high shot. That's all I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Wow, I'd love to get a lot more accomplished than that.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And that's why he's the he's the one who's coaching
Rory McElroy and Phil Mickelson and not you have a
response to you have something you want to say about that.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But you know, I think that makes a lot of sense.
And then you know whether he's doing that with the
same club or not. But he's narrowing it down to
two techniques, or you could narrow it down to two clubs.
You know, you could go and say, you know what,
I have a really good chipping technique, a really good
you know chip pitch technique. And when I get to
a shot, you know, I'm a multi club guy. You know, uh,
you know standing guy was blinking on his last name.
(19:59):
But you know a lot of the teachers are you'll
really get good with your sum standently and and you know,
learn how to hit all the shots. I don't think
there's a wrong approach. My approach is I'm a recreational player.
I don't play as much as I want to. I don't.
I don't have that kind of command over my fifty
five or fifty one anymore. And I go up and
I look at it, it's like, you know what club
(20:19):
with my chipping stroke, my basic learned stroke is going
to get the flight and the rollout that this shot demand.
And if it's you know, use of fifty eight, I
hit a fifty eight. If it's use of you know,
forty three, I'm gonna chip with a forty three. And
on a lot of shots that I run to, it's
like you wide sided the green. You're four or five
(20:41):
feet off the fringe, but it's really not puttable and
the pen is sixty feet across the green. Well shot
that I learned when I was a little kid that
I still use a lot is I basically put it
with a foreign. I take my foreign, I take my
putting stands for my putting grip. I grip it lighter
because the foreign is lighter than the butter. And I
set the club up where it's more up on its toe,
and I just basically put it and it gets it
(21:03):
just enough loft flight over the edge of green. It
rolls out pretty much like a putt wood and you know,
get it within five six feet the whole or better.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, that works well when you have the uh your
chip has the flag all the way on the other
side of the green.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
You've got to so you're gonna want this ball to
roll you right.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
You want the ball to be on the ground as
long as possible, but you got to get it onto
the green first.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I gotta get on the green because if I if
I hit that long, hard putt through the collar right,
and the collar isn't really smooth. Now, when you go
to the US Open next week at Pinehurst, I was
out there a couple of weeks ago. Fabulous plays. They'll
be putting from all over the place because they're only
gonna be two cuts at Pinehurst. They're gonna be a
green cut and a fairway cut. That's all it's gonna be.
There's no deep rough at Pinehurst. It's gonna be wonderful.
(21:46):
But you know, but if you have a good smooth surface,
your best, but your worst put's probably gonna be as
good as your best chip. But if you do have
to get it over some scruffy stuff or even a
sprinkler head or something like that, that that putt with
a foreign or even a four hybrid, it's a good shot.
You can go spend five minutes with it around your
putting grain and get a feel for it and put
it in your arsenal.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
I actually recently that happened to me. The I was
on the fringe, but the ball was setting just up
against the taller grass right the rough there. So my
putter just couldn't cut through that, and so I pulled
out my four hybrid and hold it.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
I mean, well, that fabulous. And will say that's the
place you want to use that belly wedge. But let
me tell you, unless you practice that belly wedge, man's
and it's a wonderful shot. Don't get me wrong, man,
you need to practice that because the ball comes off
a lot hotter off the edge of the sandwidge than
it does off the face of a putter, a lot hotter.
And if you're hitting that little belly wedge shot and
(22:47):
you're playing for it to be really really hot, and
you swing a half an inch low, three quarter of
an inch low, you just hit your little wedge put
about four feet. Yeah, if it goes that far. Yeah, yeah,
and you might double hit it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Now explain, I'm not exactly sure what you mean my
belly wedge belly.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Where you set the way the ball's up against the collar, Yeah,
you can't get anything on it. So you take your
sand wedge and you just hit the ball right in
the equator with the with the leading edge.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Oh I see, I see, okay, okay, yeah, I could not.
I would not have the confidence to pull that one off. Yeah,
that has got to be you really got to practice that.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah you do. So.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Now let's take the scenario of your your ten feet
off off the green and yet the flag is only
a few feet You know, you don't have to go
all the way, you don't have to roll it forever,
but you definitely got to get the ball in the
air to get on the green because there's a sprinkler
head in your way or something.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
But you don't want the ball to roll far.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
So why what is the difference in that shot versus
what you talked about your four iron?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Well, I think there you're go in the opposite. You
need high loft on the club, as Dave Stockton said,
and you like it to stop pretty quickly. The biggest
problem that people do with that shot. First of all,
short shining yourself is not the way to shoot its score.
So you want to keep those two a minimum. But
chances are that shot, you know, you might have it
where the green's going to kind of run away from
(24:21):
you possibly, but you know, six feet long of the
hole is just as good as six feet short of
the hole. So make sure you don't get so cute
with it as they say that you don't it and
have that shot over again. It doesn't have to stop
short of the hole. And so on that shot, you know,
typically you want to lay the face open a little bit,
(24:42):
and you want to pick the club up a little
quicker to get a little steeper angle of descent, and
look at the back edge of the ball right with
the ball and you know, right at the spot of
the ground right behind the ball and drop that club
again with gravity, drop that club down to that slot
and and you know, with a little bit of follow through,
it should pop up for you. But again, that's a
shot you need to practice. And what's really a good
(25:03):
little exercise late in the afternoon. Just take your you know,
a couple of wedges, your gap in your hand or whatever,
and go out around. You know, you don't have to
be on a green, go the driving range, get you
a bag of balls and nobody's over there, and just
chip around, hit little different shots, see what swings produce,
what ball flights, and chalk those up to memory. Learn
what your golf club will do. You know, you can
(25:23):
get a bag of balls and go out to the
range and the far end of the range, if it's
not crowded, chip around on the tee line, and then
go hit them all. Get you some practice in.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You gave me a tip years ago that I still repeat,
I still think is one of the great ones, and
that would be looking at the front of the ball,
aiming for the front of the ball.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah, I'm a big believer in that with most of
your shots, you know, keeping kind of folks and not
just look at the ball. Look at the front edge
of the ball that decide toward the target, and it
makes your contact crisper. It helps me gets fine. It's
the old am small miss small thing. Let me look
at the front edge ball because i want ball first
contact the shot that I was just talking about, and
(26:03):
I'm going to shift my focus over to the back
of the ball on that one. If I'm in the bunker,
I'm going to shift my focus to a spot behind
the ball.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Love that tip. Love that tip.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
It really makes for crisper shots.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
It really does, because so many times when you're in
that situation, you hit about four inches behind the ball
and then the club face bounces off the ground, hits
the top of the ball and it goes nowhere.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Either that or the club sticks in the dirt and
the ball didn't move it all. And that's really fun.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
That's really embarrassing.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Oh my. So one of the things, I had a
four foot shot and I hit at zero inches.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
No, that's called a practice swing. Y.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
One of the things that people frequently ask about the
score score golf clubs is that you don't have a
sand wedge, right, you have the different lofts and again,
explain how the forty one sixty one one works. Score
Golf forty one sixty one works, and then let's talk
about what a sandwige is and why you don't have
(27:05):
a designated sandwich.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Well, first of all, Score forty one sixty one. The
name comes from the fact that we make every golf
club from forty one to sixty one degrees, make twenty
one different club heads because over on this set of irons,
your eight iron maybe thirty seven degrees, on this set
of irons of maybe thirty nine, on this set of
irons of maybe thirty eight. And what we want to
do is to be able to exactly gap the short
end of your set four degrees for a long hit,
(27:29):
or possibly even three for a shorter hit, or maybe
five degrees. We want to give you the exact gapping.
So if you have a thirty seven degree eight iron,
your prescription is probably forty one, forty five, forty nine,
fifty three, fifty seven. Well, nobody makes those. I don't
want to go bend around on a golf club. These
are my precision tools, so we do make them, and
(27:51):
it lets us have infinite control over your gaping to
get you down to these differentials. Between clubs that give
you what you want. And the reason we don't anything
sand wedge, gap wedgeor whatever, because they're all scoring clubs.
I mean, I talked a while ago about walking into
a bunker with a forty seven and a fifty one.
I got a long bunker shot. Those that's v sole
design that we have that's been proven for twenty five years.
(28:13):
It works regardless of a loft. I mean, we were
out messing around a day hitting flop shots with a
forty three. I mean, who thinks about hitting the flop
shot with a nineer? You know, but you can do that,
and it gives you another shot if you're willing to
go play around with it in experiment with it. But
you know, the idea is, if I have a real
close bunker shot, not much green to work with, not
(28:34):
much carey to do the fifty eight or nine sixty
sixty one, that's a great golf club for that because
it's going to pop up a little higher and stop
a little quicker. But if I left it down and
it rolled back maybe to the middle of the bunker
and the pins up in the middle of the green,
and I got a thirty or thirty five yard bunker shot.
I got to put a pretty big cut on it
with that fifty eight, and I don't want to make
(28:54):
that big a cut on it because if I catch
it a little thin, it's over the green and out
of bunds or whatever back there. So that shot, I
may take a fifty five or even a fifty one
and just make a more control swing, Let it come
out lower and run across some of that green instead
of trying to fly it all the way to the hole.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Explain to me again, you talked once about why. I
remember specifics of the conversations that we've had, but we've had.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
So many conversations. That's probably why.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
But the loft difference between what I think you explained
the driver to the five iron versus the scoring clubs different.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Well, yeah, exactly. You know when you look at golf
club ads out there, go to the website and look
up every set of irons online sold, and you always
got a picture of a six iron. Maybe a seven
used to be a five back in the old days
before loss for chain. But and these guys make every
iron of the set look like a six iron, because
we've been schooled for years that that's what a match
set looks like. But what we've learned over the last
(29:53):
decade with the advent of these things called hybridge, that
when I get down below the six and I get
to a five or four, I get into that mid twenties,
even high twenties prickarly low twenty loft range. This thing
called a hybrid is a hell a lot easier way
to make a twenty two degree golf club than to
make it look like six iron. You know, three irons
are really hard to hit. I'm sorry, They're really hard
(30:14):
to hit for anybody. And so we've replaced those lower
lofted clubs that are only six or eight degrees stronger
than a six iron. We replaced those with hybrids. But
we still have this nine and P that are sixteen
and seventeen degrees weaker than a six iron that looked
just like our six iron. Well, that's a very different
golf club. The illustration you referred to is a six
(30:36):
iron at today's world is about twenty nine to thirty
degrees in most cases. Okay, so my P is forty four,
so that's fifteen, sixteen seventeen degrees maybe between my P
and my six. But if I go fifteen, sixteen degrees.
The other way, I've got a driver or three wood,
so I've got on the six iron down, I've got
(30:58):
a driver, hit a three wood, hit a small dollar
head with a five wood on it. I got a hybrid,
maybe two hybrids, and then an iron and then my
six iron. But the other way, I've got four clubs
that look just like my six iron, the seven, eight
nine pitch, and then three or four clubs that just
looked just like a nineteen fifty nine wedge. I got
two head designs for everything from thirty to sixty degrees,
(31:18):
and I've got five head designs from thirty to twelve degrees.
There's no logic to that whatsoever. But you know, only
on a couple of occasions have companies said maybe a
match that of iron shouldn't match at all. But they
never were there with commitment. You know, if you believe that,
then don't make any that do. That's what score golf.
(31:39):
So in your score golf set, there's forty one to
sixty one degrees, there's twenty one degrees. There's seven different
head designs. The weighting changes every three degrees, aloft each
three degrees, there's another head design to take you down
the next three, so we optimize weight distribution for the
I got exact loft of that golf club so that
you at better trajectory control, which is distance control. And
(32:03):
you know the short end of the set, your misses
are long and short mostly and if your misses are
left and right the club, the club didn't have anything
do with that. That swing path and clubhead at face
ankle long and short, the club had a lot to
do with that. But we've all been taught it's our fault.
Score Golf, it's absolution. It's not your fault. You can't
control your distance.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well again, everything that you've you've offered your advice, it's
it's amazing how the insight that you have on the
game as but you come from the manufacturing side, from
the design side of clubs. I you know, I used
to uh have you know I played Mizuno clubs as
(32:45):
irons as well, But I've replaced that end of my
my uh set with the Score Golf, And I just
was amazed how you based on the the form that
I filled out on site, Uh, how you knew which
degree losts that I needed and how well it's worked
for me.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
I've made it work for me.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Well, there's a mathematical science to all this. And thank
you for the kudos about being a golf club designer,
but you know, I'm first and foremost for it. I'm
a golfer. You know, I want to hit it closer
to the whole, just like everybody else. And you know
what drove me to become a designer because I'm not
an engineer. I'm a golfer. And like mister Hogan was
not an engineer, he was a golfer, and his constant
(33:29):
pursuit of how to make the golf ball be more
controllable led him to, you know, zero in on the
golf club because that's what you're controlling it with. And
you know, I think that when I have a golf
club in my hand and I have a hard time
flighting the ball down, well I know how to flight
the ball down. That must be the golf club, you know,
because I know how to do that, So why should
(33:51):
I be able to And kind of what drove the
whole development of score forty one sixty one is with
my seven eight nine iron, I can very accurate lee
I've learned over the years, very accurately to change my
ball trajectory and distance to three and four yard increments
in between those clubs. But I never was able to
get there with the pitching wedge and the wedges, And
(34:13):
it finally dawned on me, maybe it's not me, Maybe
it's the golf club. So when we put conventional wedges
on our environ and took impact in a one inch
circle around the face, and we found that the ball
traveled forty five to fifty feet different between the bottom
of that one inch circle and the top of that
one inch circle. Well, hey, an inch isn't very far.
(34:34):
And then we put these thin faced cavity back irons
on the iron environing, and we found that that difference
distance differential went to seventy eighty ninety eight feet between
high and the face and low in the face with
the same swing from iron environment. That's the golf club.
We've isolated the golf club. It's not the golfer. Like say,
it's not your fault that you can't control your distance,
But Score Golf can fix that for you, and we
(34:57):
will make you as good as you are. How's that.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
They'll make you feel more confident and that is huge
exactly that is huge. So the Ben Hogan I'm want
to get back to Ben Hogan company for a second.
In fort Worth, you've always been in. Victoria is in Texas.
Is closer to Houston, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Victoria is down close to the coast, which is you know,
one of my loves beside golf is saltwater fishing, and
Victoria is close to the coast. But when we took
on the ben Hogan opportunity, there was no question in
my mind that Ben Hogan had to go back to
Fort Worth. That's where that company has always been. Just
like moving the packers out of Green Bay, It's just
(35:43):
not something you do, you know. And the ben Hogan
Company is rerooting in Fort Worth. By this time next year,
ben Hogan Irons will be earning a following all over
the golf marketplace.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
It's going to be exciting.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
I cannot wait.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
They'll be right there in fort Worth, Texas.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
So how far is it between Victoria and Fort Worth?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Your driver or you fly.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
I drive and get a lot of phone time in
and so I have second residence. I'm sitting up in
fort Worth and obviously a bunch of my time up
there It's a wonderful city, by the way, and you
know nicknamed cap Pound is the beginning of the West
and wonderful city. Really neat place.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. The best part of the Dallas Fort
Worth area is Fort Worth.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah. West fort Worth is just a really neat place.
A lot of great golf there, just great people there,
some of the best little restaurants you've ever found in
your life. And it's a really cool place.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Awesome, awesome, Well, congratulations again, Terry. Really happy for you
and eagerly anticipating what happens in twenty fifteen with Ben Hogan.
And when you guys are about to release something, I'm
going to drag you back in here and let everybody
know once again.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
So that would be great, rad We'll look forward to
that opportunity and to spending more time on the show.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Yeah, that would also be fun. It's always great to
talk to you, Terry. Congratulations, best of luck and thanks again.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Thank you, Fret. It's always a pleasure.
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It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.