March 2008

I’m amazed that the Titleist Pro V1 is the most played ball in golf. Not that it is on the PGA Tour, but that it garners almost 25% of the ball business in the marketplace.

The reason I’m amazed is that only 3% of amateur golfers play to a low, single digit handicap, and the average handicap is over 18 !

So why are golfers shooting 90+ with a ball designed for tour players’ skill levels ? You can do better.

I’m not picking on it, but the Titleist Pro V1 was engineered to perform for the 200-300 best players in the world, who develop tremendous clubhead speed and strike a golf ball almost perfectly, almost all the time.

They hit it differently that you and I, even if we’re pretty good players. They don’t lose very many, and they don’t have to pay for them !

The fact is, there are dozens, if not hundreds of very good golf balls out there, and for most golfers, you’ll get more distance with a ball that costs half as much as a Pro V1.

I went through some pretty intense testing myself, and discovered that the best ball for me was the Bridgestone B330-S. It’s plenty long, and spins as good as the Pro V for me.

The greens at my club are very firm and fast, so that was a consideration. Oh, and it’s about $10-12 less per dozen than the Titleist.

I also found the Precept Lady to be just behind it in performance, and it costs half that much !

My point is that you should try different golf balls to see which is the optimum for you to play. Give those bargain balls a chance and you might be surprised.

What’s wrong with lowering the cost of golf and enhancing your performance at the same time ?

I ask golfers all the time, “What kind of handicap do you have ?”. I get the same answer way too often – “I’m not very good.” Then they’ll tell me they play to an 18, or a 15, or even a 10 ! Some will act ashamed by their answer. Huh !?

Do you realize how damn hard this game is ? We have this little white ball that is less than 2” in diameter, and weighs less than two ounces, and our objective is to get it into a 4-1/4” diameter hole in the ground that is somewhere around a quarter of a mile away – in only four or five strokes !

And in between us and that hole are trees, long grass, water, bunkers . . . .seems to me that we are attempting the darned near impossible !

But we think we are “not any good” for several reasons.

First, we see the pros on TV do miraculous things with a golf ball. Well, we’re not nuclear scientists, brain surgeons, computer designers, etc., etc. either.

Those few hundred guys on tour have dedicated their lives to striking a golf ball – that’s all they do. They started with God-given athletic talent, then supplemented that with thousands of hours of practice, continual professional instruction, mental coaching . . . you get it. ?

How can you compare your recreational endeavor to a trained, committed professional ?

They’re good at golf, but not one of them could carry your briefcase or tool box or whatever for a day and even come close to what you do for a living either.

But to me, maybe even more influential on our self-worth as it applies to our golf games is the constant stream of drivel from the major golf companies telling us that we’re not any good.

Their subliminal message is this: “You have no chance of hitting the ball anywhere near the center of the clubface, so we’re going to make it as big and forgiving as we possibly can.”

Well, I think you are a much better golfer than you give yourself credit for being. I think most of your misses are not bad swings, or lack of talent, but simply because you were not set up properly, or you had negative thoughts creep in, or you went “brain dead” for a moment.

Engineering in the golf clubhead cannot help that.

If you’ve ever hit a good shot, then you can do it most of the time. It doesn’t take hundreds of hours of practice, but it does take a mental commitment to get your best out of each shot.

I’ll be addressing this topic more – playing YOUR best most of the time – in the weeks ahead, but in the meantime, please use our “Ask Terry” button to tell me what you’d like to hear about most.

Let’s make 2008 your best golf year ever !

Last month I wrote about “the round club mindset”, suggesting that almost all golfers take on a slightly different attitude when we put an 8-, 9- or wedge in our hands. And we should. Those clubs are designed for scoring. 

If you’ll remember, I also attached a survey to that post asking you to tell me about your relationship with your “round clubs”, so I want to share those results with you.

Of our readers who responded, 8.1% play to a 5 handicap or less; 34.8% to a 6-12, 37.2% to a 13-18 and 19.7% to an 18 handicap or better.

This gives me, and all of us, a good feel for who is reading “The Wedge Guy” – we’ve got some good players here so all of us can learn from each other. GREAT !

The second question asked about your “comfortable distance” with an 8-iron. 10.4% of you said 150 yards or more; 47.6% said 135-150 yards; 31.3% 120-135 yards, and 10.4% less than 120 yards. I find that interesting, as anything over 135 yards is pounding an 8-iron pretty hard.

In my experience, almost all golfers try to hit their irons too far.

Hogan was “my guy” back when I was learning, and he always said he had 20 yards “in reserve” with every club in his bag – now how many amateurs do you know that hit their irons 20 yards shorter than they really could ?

There’s something to learn here – throttle back your power settings on your short irons and watch your accuracy improve dramatically.

The 3rd and 4th questions asked about your objective when you have an 8-iron or less to the green. Over 70% of you said you expected to have a putt of 25 feet or less, with 40% of you saying it should be 15’ or less.

But, only 35% of you said that you achieve that objective an acceptable percentage of the time.

And finally, 98% of you said that you would consider learning to hit your round clubs shorter to achieve your objectives – SO LET’S DO IT !

It’s not that hard to learn to hit the ball with more control – just do what you do, but s-l- o-w-e-r.

Go to the range, or your back yard, and practice making swings at a slower pace than you normally do. Grip the club lighter, take it back slower, feel the end of the backswing, make the transition to the downswing slower and go through the ball to a full follow-through – all done s-l-o-w-e-r.

Then take it to the course and pull one club more than you think you normally would on all your approach shots, and swing s-l-0-w-e-r.

You’ll be amazed at the improved accuracy.

If any of you used the ASK TERRY button to ask a question on Monday, please try again, as a technical malfunction ate all the responses.

Please use the ASK TERRY button again and it will take you to a new site we built for you to be able to ask Terry anything you want to know or have him write about.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

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To all my TheWedgeGuy.com readers,

I need your help.

For almost a year now, I’ve written about things that I think you would like to know, but I’ll bet I’m not hitting a fraction of what’s on your mind. So, I’d like to kick our “Ask Terry” interaction into high gear. This blog is really for you, not me, so it’s your questions and suggestions that I’d like to address for a while.

Oh sure, I have some other topics I’ll be addressing in the weeks ahead, but as we get into the golf season, what are your most burning questions or topics you’d like to see me discuss, and put out there for input from our readers ?

This can be your best golf year ever, and I’d like to do everything I can to help. Just let me know what you want me to write about, and I’ll give you all I can.

So let me know by using the big blue ASK TERRY button in the right-hand sidebar and I’ll do my best to answer you questions and help you play better golf.