Re: ShopTalk: Is it possible to hate a club?

[Ed Reeder]

Alan, I think one of the keys is "the favorite club" that you mentioned.  Confidence is an incredible thing. I play with an 18 handicap whose favorite full club around the green is a 65 degree wedge.  He'll be 40 to 50 yards away, take a full "windup" and an all out swing and drop the ball right by the pin.  He does this time and time again. FWIW - I've gone the Stan Utley route for the past year: 48*, 53*, 58* and really, really like it.  The 58* is a bent 56* with 14* bounce.  For my course conditions it is perfect.  Utley has a good technique for flop shots, but it is still a somewhat risky maneuver for me. /Ed Alan Brooks wrote: We talk a lot about what we can do with this club or that club, but at some point we have to start throwing in a "makes it easier to learn" factor.  I fool around with hitting lobs with my sand wedge and my gap wedge, and occasionally my pitching wedge, but you've really got to open up a PW to hit a decent flop shot, and I'm pretty inconsistent.  I hit my lob wedge (60* bent to 62*) fairly regularly, it's my 70-yard club.  It's a lot more consistently that distance than I can get with an opened SW, which is my 85-yard club.  I have to be careful with soft lies because it has a fairly sharp leading edge with about 8* (bent) bounce and digs trenches easily (I may have to do something about that).  I don't chip with it for that reason also, although I've been watching Mickelson's video and I may have to try it with his technique. One of the current and a past club that I belong to have "three clubs and a putter" tournaments every year and you know what?  The scoring average doesn't change.  I play with a bunch of old guys and we don't hit the ball as far as most of us remember that we used to and most par fours are two strokes and a chip and a number of these old guys are single digit indexes.  They chip up a storm, using different strokes, different clubs, whatever they learned to chip with that now works for them.  And some of them use lob wedges.  Would using a different club, and/or different technique make them better chippers?  Maybe, but certainly not in the short term.  They've been practicing what they use for DECADES. None of us in this newsgroup are beginning golfers.  So adding something like a lob wedge to our bag and trying it a few times, or using it occasionally, is meaningless.  We're comparing it to clubs we've used to make these shots for, well, decades for most of us.  Dave Pelz' made a second career out of analyzing golfer statistics and then teaching those, statistically, "best" techniques.  There is a lot to be said for that but, again, he's analyzing experienced golfers, both pro's and amateurs.  Learning something new means unlearning something old.  And that's tough to do.  A seven iron is a "favorite" club for a lot of golfers and the further you get away from that 7-iron the more difficult shots become.  A lob wedge is further from a 7-iron than a sand wedge, and I don't think the increase in difficulty is a linear function. You have to learn to hit a lob wedge, and this probably takes regular use for several years.  I've had a lob wedge in my bag for years and I've pretty well learned what lies and distances I can hit it reliably in and when I can't.  I'd love to get one of Mickelson's lob wedges with a wider sole.  Tom, maybe you could make one for me?  I thought not.  Being left handed does have some disavantages, for those of you who know where to get one of these right handed.  So I learn to use what I can get.  As do most of us.   And learning takes time. Alan <snip> -- Shoptalk ** Sponsored by the new Aldila Voodoo. Learn more at http://aldilavoodoo.com/