Mid-iron Misery to Progress

My current iron makeup exclusive of wedges consists of 9-iron through 5-iron. For all the years that I played with arm/shoulder swing I found that I hit the 5-iron, 6-iron, and 7-iron consistently the same distance – between 120 and 135 yards. Very occasionally I would miraculously smack one further, but I couldn’t count on it. My original set of clubs were a full set of Wilsons Pro Staff OS with 3-iron down to PW and D, 3-W, & 5-W. I almost always topped the 3-iron and 4-iron so they sat in the bag unused for a long time. Eventually I replaced them with hybrids which I hit well.

In 2017, after reading several books and articles about the benefits of getting fit for clubs I bit the bullet and set up an appointment with “Club Champion” to get fitted for a new set of irons. It was at this time that I was also learning the sequenced momentum swing and was actually getting separation between my 7-iron and 6-iron. As I went through the fitting we found my best dispersion and distance results occurred with Ping G irons stacked on Vista Pro 70i shafts in regular flex. I seem to recall I have D2 weighting but I’m not sure about that. What I do know is my 6-iron went from 125-135 yards with the Wilson to 135-145 with the Ping G4. I got the same 10 yard improvement with all the Ping irons.

Mysterious Big Bombs!

When I watch video blogs of round play, especially Mark Crossfield’s youtube games, I notice these low handicap players hit the 6-iron in the 190 yard range. When I play with my buddies, they hit their 6-iron in the 170 yard range. According to Game Golf, my average 6-iron is 142 yards. I have resigned myself to the fact that I may never hit as long as my fellow golfers, but as long as I can keep the ball in play I can score well even as a shorter length player. Because of my length limitations I always play from the whites.

However, sometime in the last 7-8 months I started noticing when reviewing my rounds that I on occasion really smacked my 6 or 7-iron. And when I say smacked, I mean hitting my regular 125-130 yard 7-iron 150-plus yards, and the 6-iron I’ve hit distances ranging from 150 to 197 yards. As I reviewed the shots I pulled up the memories of them and they all had a familiar set of circumstances and feeling. Although some were tee shots, the majority of the bombs were struck from fairway lies. In each case, I was only laying up because the green was out of reach for my 142 yard 6-iron. Since there was no stress and tension in trying to reach the green I was very relaxed. The consistent swing feeling I had on every one of the bombs was that of having quasi-punched the ball. As you may know a normal punch shot setup is to place the ball back in the stance and strive to hit the ball with the hands ahead of the clubface at impact with a short, low follow-through. I keep my 5-iron specifically to hit low punch shots out of trouble. But on these bomb shots I align the ball in the center of stance but still have the feeling I’m punching the ball, but instead of the low follow-through I finish with a normal hands-high follow-through. The flight is lower and hotter than my regular shot and the swing feels compact and effortless.

Hmmm, how often do I bomb one?

As I was thinking about writing this blog, I wondered how often I hit these awesome bombs. I decided to look through my Game Golf data specifically for all 6-iron shots for all 22 games of 18 holes played in 2018. I gathered full swing shot data for my 6-irons that excluded punch-out of trouble or bump & run situations. I recorded three distance/quality categories – poor shots below 130 yards including penalties and bad trouble, acceptable shots between 130 and 149 yards (my average range), and acceptable shots 150 yards and up. Then I crunched the numbers and observed over the 22 18 hole rounds played in 2018 that:

In one round I chose to play with irons only so I hit the 6-iron off the tee and deck 21 times. Interestingly, in that round I recorded 43% shots greater that 150 yards and 71% acceptable shots. In only one round of the 22 did I have no long shots but in that round I only hit 4 6-iron shots. I also observed that in 63% of the rounds I had two or more bombed 6-irons.

While digging around my 6-iron stats I additionally examined my performance off the tee divided into three groups, woods, hybrids, and irons. Because I am working to develop a go-to club, I so seldom hit 3-woods that it was just noise in the stats. I found I hit my hybrids (3 and 4-hybrid) off the tee acceptably 53% of the time. I hit acceptable iron tee shots, which includes short iron shots for Par 3’s 58% on average. However, when I created a 5 game simple moving average my iron tee shots have improved from 38.9% to 69.9% acceptable shots. My hybrid tee performance has bounced around a lot from round to round without the visible improvement seen in the irons.

Can I Regularly Replicate the Big Bombs?

When I get tense and tight I don’t hit the big bombs. And apparently I get tense and tight on 80% of my shots! However, the data shows, baring a bad round or two, that the number of bombs is going up over time. I believe part of it is that the more I hit that shot, the more I can pull up the feel of that shot before I step up to the ball. It is very difficult to describe and the memory of the feeling is very wispy. But, like any memory activity, the more I encounter that punchy feeling the more solidly it will lodge in my memory. Interestingly, I very seldom bomb my 6-iron to those distances on the driving range – where I should be relaxed enough to readily replicate the shot. My goal is to work on replicating the relaxed state swing with that quasi-punch feeling on the range so I can find it more on the course.

Finally, I have hit those bombs with all my clubs of late so I hope my swing changes may be leading to an increase to my length. An interesting example was on the final hole of an AGA Tournament at Plum Creek Golf Course. The 18th hole is 399 yards and I pulled my 3-hybrid off the tee 217 yards into light wispy rough. A group of trees stood between my ball and the green so I chose to hit a high 120 yard 8-iron to clear the trees and get safely back into the fairway. I visualized my bucket target and swung as usual, but hit the ball very crisply, with that punchy feeling such that it flew low enough to nick a leaf on the way over the trees. That 8-iron shot ended up traveling 154 yards stopping just short of bunkers in front of the green. I say, it sure would be nice to figure out how to harness this shot feeling to add 20+ yards to my clubs!