Necessary? There is a famous quote from the movie Dodgeball about necessary. I’ll let you look that up.
What is golf? At its essence it’s about having a lower score than your opponent. How does one accomplish such feats? One strikes the golf ball better (overall) than ones opponent. If that is the case could we say that in order to win, our opponent needs to play like a wounded goat with cataracts or we need to play better. That is to say we hit our driver in play more often. We hit our irons the right distance. We control our wedge shots and, we hole more putts. Seems like while recent golf on TV has become about hitting the golf ball as far as humanly possible, the game is still about controlling the silly thing.
Take yourself to the course. 162 metres from the flag, slightly uphill. There’s no wind and the fairway is tight. The sun paints a glaze of orange on the grass. There is a bunker short right. There is a swale on the left. You’re all square with this approach to the 18th. You pull the six iron because that’s your six distance. You have just bought new bats. Beautifully strong-lofted, mega brutes that send the ball sailing into the stratosphere and stopping like butter on the kitchen floor. A nervous practice swing is soon replaced by a more purposeful swish.
The club – the beautiful new six iron – is placed behind the ball. Eyes fixed on the flag just 162 metres away. The stance, the grip, the waggle – it’s all lined up. You know you’re ready. The slightest kink in the wrists ignites your backswing. Smoothly going back and into transition the club falls back to the ball. The club head strikes the golf ball with a combination of ‘thump’ and ‘crack’. The little white sucker gets higher. As it gets higher it gets smaller. The golf ball appears to be hunting the flag. This could go in.
Perhaps it didn’t occur to think about but there are some nasty bushes and trees over the green. The new six iron has blistered the ball into the trees, long. Fark. The euphoria turns to despair.
Just as it is great to hit it long it is probably more important to hit the ball a consistent distance. Is it necessary to have irons that go 400 miles? Well, yeah, cool – so long as you know that’s what they do. Four irons today are yesterday’s two irons. A pitching wedge used to have 48 to 50 degrees of loft. Now it’s more like 44 degrees. That’s fine. Just know how far they go for you. New clubs are just as great as they were many years ago but please get fitted for them. During the fitting get a bag map done to see how far on average they carry. You can then hit the seven instead of the six!
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