Golf Talk

OK, golf fans, I want to sound off and get your opinion on this one.

We’ve set up a new feature at TheWedgeGuy.com, and now have a survey tool so that you can share your feelings and thoughts about the golf industry with all our other thousands of readers.

Today’s topic is the Wyndham Championship, which I think should be accurately re-named, “ The Massacre at Forest Oaks ”.

Here’s my reason why.

Not to slight the talent pool on the PGA Tour at all – like the ads say, “ These guys are good ” – but come on. Is this really golf ? This field that was totally lacking most of the top names in the professional game made a mockery of what I have to believe is not that bad a golf course. It’s this kind of pussycat setup that is causing the USGA to consider changing the equipment for the rest of us.

Mr. Snedeker and his buddies ran roughshod over the golf course. The top five players totaled 101 under par ! The top ten players were 187 under par ! And the entire field that made the cut was 929 under par !

Can you relate to this ? I sure can’t. I played this weekend on my home course, which is a little 6,950 yard track in a town of 60,000 people. But we have deep Bermuda rough, fairways that average 25-30 yards wide (with many narrower), very firm greens that average about 10-11 in speed.

Based on the scores the Tight Lies Tour players shoot here each spring, I don’t think there’s any way Snedeker and Company can shoot these kinds of scores on my course. So, here I am watching the best players in the world beat up on a golf course that’s easier than the one I play every week. Where’s the fun of that ?

I much prefer to see these guys have to work for their pars and birdies, like they do at the majors and some of the more elite tournaments. How about you ?

Please visit this link to our survey site and let your feelings be known. And if you have something more to say on the subject . . . well, that’s what this site is all about. We’d all love to hear from you. I promise I’ll send our feedback to the PGA Tour, OK ?

Click here to take the survey

The good folks at WorldGolf.com alerted me to the fact that one of their lucky readers who takes a survey will win a set of Pings for their effort.

Click thru and take the survey and good luck to you.

While you’re there at WorldGolf.com, subscribe to everything they have !

We’d like to welcome to the new readers from Peter Kesslers Morning Live Show interview on the PGA Tour Network, as well as new readers from other places as well.

For all of you who haven’t seen it before, we have an Ask Terry button in the right-hand sidebar.

By clicking on it, you’ll be able to ask Terry Koehler a question and he’ll answer it here on The Wedge Guy or privately if you request it to be so.

There’s also a button over there that will allow you to subscribe to Terry’s newsletter and you can subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed if you’d like.

Thanks for stopping by, come back soon, please interact and leave comments on some of the posts and bookmark this blog’s address and come back every day !

Well, this was one that I was looking forward to, and good old Oakmont sure didn’t disappoint.  The high scores were indicative of a course that was set up tough but still very playable – if you hit the golf shots.

These are PGA Tour professionals, right ?  The 150 very best players in the world, supposedly. So, I would hope that they would contest a championship over a course that demanded the highest level of shotmaking performance, mental sharpness, a good game plan and the ability to keep your cool.

On my home course, I play fairways that are 25-35 yards wide for the most part, and rough that demands that I hit it in the short grass if I am to score well. I would think that Tiger and friends could ply their craft on fairways much narrower and rough that is proportionately tougher on them as mine is on me. And so Oakmont was set up that way.

What is little known is that Oakmont’s members play those greens every day at a pace that is faster than what it was this past week.

As we watched Angel Cabrera win, realize that he posted 25% of the total under par rounds this week !!!! And he drilled a drive right down the heart of the 18th fairway on Sunday when he absolutely had to make par.

In contrast, Jim Furyk made a decision to hit driver on 17 and it cost him a bogey – and the U.S. Open probably. This hole is 305 yards for Pete’s sake. He needed only two pars to ensure a playoff, so why hit driver there ?

He could hit a 5- or 6-iron off the tee to 100 yards and have smooth full SW into the flag, which he will hit within 10 feet most of the time from the fairway. Just dumb if you ask me.

And Tiger needed a birdie and par on the last two holes to get into a playoff. But he tries to drive 17, hits a poor bunker shot from a very clean lie (which the pros almost always get), and leaves himself having to birdie 18. And then he misses the fairway, all but removing any possibility of hitting a crisp, on-target approach.

The simple fact is that Cabrera executed shots when he had to, and those guys didn’t.

What I think really showed in the U.S. Open is that these guys are hitting their irons so far now, they don’t have precision distance control in between clubs and at shorter ranges like professionals used to.

When you hit a 7-iron 180-190, how do you know exactly how to hit a shot 125, or 109, or 131 ?

You don’t have any clubs left down there, and you have to throttle back your swing speed so much that it is dang near impossible to gauge distance to the yard when in scoring range.

We’re all out of questions for the coming week, so if you’ve got a short game, wedge, golf or equipment question you’d like to get answered, use the Ask Terry button over in the right-hand sidebar.

Rob used the Ask Terry button and asked this question:

Q: I carry three wedges - 48/06, 54/09 and 58/10. I also have a 60/03, which is great for delicate chips from tight lies. I would like to put the 60 in the bag because my home course is very dry and hard.

The 58/10 is great out of the sand, but I can’t seem to get any height on bunker shots with my 60. Is this because it digs too much ?

A: Rob, your 60 degree wedge simply doesn’t have enough bounce to be a functional bunker club. It’s that simple.

If your course is that hard, I also suspect your 54 and 58 are marginally functional from tight fairway lies, as those bounce angles are rather high.

At the risk of sounding commercial, your dilemma is exactly and precisely what led us to the development of our patented V-Sole technology.

Building two distinct bounce angles into the sole of each of our wedges, with specific angles on both, allows them to be as functional from tight lies as they are from fluffy ones.

No other wedge can do that … again, it’s just that simple.

The solution I can suggest is that you scrap all these and buy ours, but that would sound very “salesy”. But the only other option is to carry two 60’s, adding one with more bounce for your bunker shots.

Sorry, but the other manufacturers just don’t offer you an alternative.

Here’s a question sent in by Jack, using the Ask Terry button.

Q: What impact do you anticipate for the competitive amateur who wants to play the same equipment the Pro’s do should the USGA’s proposed new groove rule take effect ?

Are we going to see that great a decline in short game control ?

Are you going to change your grooves ?

A: Jack, let me answer your last question first. If the USGA changes the rules on grooves, EIDOLON will change ours to comply, as we respect the USGA and the R&A as the “guardians of the game“. But the way the rule change is proposed at this time, it makes it a little confusing.

First of all, the date that new grooves would have to be incorporated into new wedges would be 1/1/08. And the rules proposes that all prior conforming wedges be grandfathered for 10 years. The really interesting thing about this rule proposal is that the USGA is actually recommending that the “Director of Competition” for all events not for “expert players” waive the rule for his/her tournament.

In other words, it would seem that the USGA would likely apply the rule to their championships and probably the PGA Tour and the NCAA/NAIA would also.

But it’s really up to the Director of Competition for each event, from the club Member-Guest to the various Championships.

But from the way I read the proposal, the PGA Tour could elect to waive the rule, if they wanted, which would completely negate the whole thing.

As for playing the same equipment the Pro’s play, you don’t do that anyway, unless you avail yourself to to the highest level of clubfitting to precisely get fit with the right loft, lie, shaft, clubhead design, ball type, etc., the way the Pro’s do at the test centers of the major companies.

The clubs you purchase in the store are not even close to that kind of precision and you choose your golf ball based on anything but scientific testing on a sophisticated launch monitor that reads launch angle, spin rate, carry distance, roll, etc.

As for the decline in short game control, there’s no question that the revised groove dimensions will reduce spin, particularly from the rough, which is the whole point of the rule change anyway.

If I might summarize my thoughts on this, I think it’s high time we quit pretending that the Pro’s play the same equipment we do, and that they should play by different rules that we do.

I favor a rolled back golf ball for them, though it will probably never happen (and I think college and high-school baseball should go back to wooden bats too !).

Mainly I think the PGA Tour should quit watering the greens to make iron play like throwing darts.

In my opinion, a well-built and maintained green should not allow much of a pitch mark and the golfer should have to calculate the roll out of the ball after impact and plan his shot creatively as a result.

I hope that answers your questions and if it doesn’t, please ask again, OK ?

Here’s a quick administrative update for the readers here at The Wedge Guy.

Over in the right-hand sidebar, there’s 2 new buttons.

The Ask Terry button takes you to a page that allows you to ask Terry Koehler any question you want about wedges, the short game, scoring well from 125 yards and in, etc.

The Join Newsletter button takes you to a sign-up page to receive Terry’s newsletter that he publishes.

We’d be very appreciative if you’d try them both out.

Terry needs to know what you’d like to talk about and he loves new subscribers, so let’s give him a good dose of both.

You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time with one click, because Terry uses SafeUnsubscribe which guarantees your removal, if you choose.

The Ask Terry button will take you to a separate page that allows you to ask the President of a golf club manufacturing company any question you’d like.

I don’t see the President of any other golf equipment company doing that.

Head over and click on the Ask Terry button right now and ask Terry your question.

Then join the newsletter and you’ll soon receive more great content from the President of EIDOLON Golf.

Thanks for coming by and for your support of The Wedge Guy.

Let’s start with a hearty congratulations to young Zach Johnson for a gutsy win yesterday.  The Masters !  Tiger Woods breathing down your neck !  And he held up like a champion.  Kudos to you, young man.

But isn’t Augusta supposed to have been Tiger-proofed, stretched to almost 7,500 yards ?  Wasn’t it supposed to eliminate all but the longest hitters in the game ?

More than one golf scribe has written that the lengthening of Augusta National had eliminated from the chance for victory all but a dozen or so of the longest, strongest in the game. 

So how is it that Zach Johnson, ranked 157th in driving distance for the year so far, who hits it all of 276.3 off the tee (that’s almost 25 yards out of the top ten !), was treated to a fitting of the famed jacket yesterday evening ? 

Well, I’ve got two insights into that for you.

First of all - no question - it was his week.  That’s the way golf is, right ? 

And when the golf gods smiled upon him with a grand week, he had the composure and ability to keep his wits and play “in peace.” 

He gave credit to his Lord Jesus in his remarks, which I found humbling and inspirational. 

But Zach Johnson did his part, too.  He came into this place knowing he couldn’t overpower Augusta National, so he played it “his way.” 

And his way is to capitalize on the fact that he is 11th on the tour in driving accuracy, putting his tee shot in the fairway over 71 percent of the time.  Anyone who has watched the Masters for long knows that there is little rough,  but that this course has to be played from the correct spot in the fairway.  Zack Johnson found those spots more often than not.

But what really impressed me is when Mr. Johnson said he came here with the game plan of never going for a par 5 in two shots. 

What ?  No eagle heroics on 13 and 15 all week ?  Who would dare play Augusta like that ? 

Well, he decided he would.  And you know what ?  He played the par 5’s better than anyone in the field for the week.  Twelve par 5’s in four rounds.  Zack Johnson’s strategy produced eleven birdies and no bogies - the best in the field !!

What do you bet he put a lot of extra practice into his wedge play in the weeks leading up to this ? 

He knew he could count on them, and he did.  And it paid off. 

So, maybe there’s a lesson in that for all of us.  After all, we’re not going to beat the golf courses we play with our drivers, but we can play them “Zach’s way“, with our wedges. 

Next time you’re on the driving range, pounding away with your driver, think about diverting a good portion of that time to hitting wedges. 

Zach Johnson will tell you that’s the way to beat a golf course…any golf course….even Augusta National.