Green Grass Golf Shop

Today we’re going to change it up a little bit. Typically each week I’ll take one question I hear often from the many asked of me as a golf professional to elaborate on. Today, though, what I wanted to do is take some of the questions I get often that I don’t feel warrant a full article. This will likely be something I do a lot in the future, but over the next few paragraphs here I hope to shed some light on some frequently pondered questions throughout the golf community. So without further ado let’s just dive right in!

1.) I’m a beginner, do I need a 60 degree wedge? In short, probably not, not unless you play a course with 18 massively elevated greens and undulating greens, and even then you can probably get away with a 56 or 54 being your highest lofted wedge. My brother the contractor plays with an old Callaway 52 degree (that I think is actually bent to 54-55 or so) as his highest lofted wedge and can hit a flop shot just fine with it if he really needs to. When you add those extra 4-6 degrees using a 60 degree wedge, and have a tendency to scoop and decelerate like a lot of amateur players do with their shorter swings, that club becomes much, much harder to judge for distance and hit with consistent contact. On top of that, you can very easily turn a 56 into a more forgiving 60 degree, but turning a 60 into a 56 takes away all of the forgiveness in the bounce of the club. Adding loft is incredibly easy to do, taking it away is much more challenging and makes the game much harder than it needs to be.

2.) When should I think about switching from steel to graphite shafts? Truth be told these days, steel and graphite are getting more and more similar to one another. There are a ton of lightweight steel shafts that launch higher than a lot of graphite iron shafts, plenty of heavy graphite shafts that feel stockier and heavier than half of the stock lightweight steel shafts on the shelves. You have manufacturers making graphite iron shafts that are played by some of the best in the world that launch and spin lower than any steel shaft they’ve ever played in their outrageously fast swing speeds. In even stranger news, and I’ll admit even I don’t truly understand the mechanics behind this one, most of the longest World Long Drive players hit their longest 500 yard drives with Ladies and Senior flex driver shafts. You need to work with a fitting professional, you need to test out as many different shafts as you can in your unique swing motion to find the shaft right for your very unique swing mechanics. There is no rule of thumb that should be followed these days for the switch from steel to graphite shafts, no matter your swing speed you can find an option in each material that works very well for you.

3.) I’m taking lessons looking to get better, what clubs should I be looking to grow into? Forgiveness is your friend no matter who you are or what your handicap is. The reason this idea exists is the very outdated idea that less forgiveness equals more workability and control of your irons. In the year of our lord Joel Dahmen, 2024, you generally don’t sacrifice a ton of workability in the game improvement or “player’s distance” irons. In addition, you can shoot incredible scores without being able to work the ball left or right on command, or change your ball’s trajectory. In my professional opinion, your practice time is much more useful to you to perfect a more stock shot if you can’t consistently break 70 or 80. If you can’t shoot under par, or you’re not trying to take your handicap from scratch to plus numbers, you can save a lot more strokes perfecting your stock swing, practicing your short game and your driver control than you can from trying to practice unnecessary shots that you don’t need to play better golf. The only reason these days I recommend clubs with less forgiveness or higher lofts are swing speed related. If you hit your driver 300+ yards with consistency, having a game improvement set starting with a 40 degree PW are going to go much too far for you to control with consistency. I promise as much as you want to hit 200+ yard 7 irons, when you have that distance in your irons you generally have much wider gaps you have to hit with those clubs. If your PW goes longer than 150-55, say it’s your 165 club, your 9 iron is going to go 180, 8 iron would probably get close to 200, 7 iron 210-220 and so on. You can see those gaps that you need to hit with any one iron is massive, you have to hit so many more shots, change your swing so much more to hit the variety of distances you need to hit. In short, the only reason you need less forgiving clubs or irons with weaker lofts is that you’re starting to hit your game improvement irons too far. If you aren’t taking lessons exclusively to increase your swing speed and hit your clubs as far as your body will allow, there is no such thing as “growing” into a set of irons just with forgiveness or workability alone!