VIDEO: Transcript

If you’re having an issue of coming up short with your irons on your approaches with your single length irons or your regular irons, we’ve got a few things to touch on here that can hopefully help eliminate that problem for you and you can be getting the ball all the way to the flag more often and saving yourself less bogeys and giving yourself more birdies and just shooting a lower score.


So, the first thing I would say or advise you of is to play for your average and not your best shot, So, with a pro who hits their eight-iron maybe 164 yards or something, something like that, it’s going to be a little bit more or less depending on the pro, but let’s say 165, they hit their eight-iron, now, pros are really good ball strikers in general. They’re not going to always hit the sweet spot, but they’re going to have a really tight ball striking dispersion right around the center of the clubface. It’s much more so than amateurs. So, 8/10 times, their irons, let’s say an eight-iron, for example, go in the 165 yards. If they strike a little bit better, maybe it’ll go 170, low 170s if they miss a little bit, maybe low 160s, high 150s. So, there’s going to be a dispersion there. Now, with the average amateur, let’s say, who hits an eight-iron on average 130 yards, maybe you can hit the eight-iron 135 or 140, but typically, amateur players are not as good ball strikers as pros which obviously makes sense, so when you miss the sweet spot like that or hit it a little bit more around the face, you’re going to lose ball speed and lose some distance. So, even though you can hit, maybe hit an eight-iron 135 or maybe 140, realistically, not all the strikes are going to be perfect. Sometimes, they’re going to go 125. Sometimes, they’re going to go 120, and then the average ends up being 130, so when you get a shot and you’re at 135, 140 yards, and like, oh, I can’t hit my eight-iron there, yes, you can, but on these type of shots, you want to play for the average, your average dispersion and not your best shot, so I think that’s the main thing to say there, is just aim your dispersion and understand that you’re hitting into an area, if you hit 10 balls, and aim that area, that dispersion, kind of like a shot gun where it’s not all going to be precisely in the same distance. There’s going to be a little spray, so aim your spray and adjust accordingly like that. So, that’s the first thing I would say.


The second thing, us as males in particular, we can have some issues with our ego. So, this kind of plays into the same thing again where you’re playing for your average and not your best. We may feel strong, we may feel athletic, we may feel capable, we may have had success in other sports; maybe you played some high-level sports and other sports, and yes, we may be able to hit that eight-iron 135, 140 yards, but if the average, again, is 130, it takes a little bit of an ego check to – it can take a little bit of an ego check. So, there’s a little bit of a mental component that you may have to deal with particularly as men, so just checking your ego and again, this plays back into playing for your average shotgun spray dispersion versus the best of what you absolutely can hit it, so you’re playing for averages here again. So, that’s the second thing is just you may have to battle your ego a little bit and say like – and suck it up a little bit and hit a little bit of extra club even though you can hit it there with that club, so that’s the next thing I would say.


And then, the last thing I wanted to comment on here is that on-course distances can be a little bit less than what you maybe measure on the range or on a launch monitor indoors, so say you go do your distances check on the trackman or flight scope, or foresight or just some kind of a launch monitor indoors or at the driving range, you get all your averages. Yes, that’s great, my average is, I know what they are, and then you go out on the course and you’re still coming up a little bit short, well, on the course, you’re not dealing with perfectly flat lies, no wind, hitting the same shot time after time, after time, like when you’re maybe doing distance testing on the range or indoors, or a launch monitor, so the conditions, the lab conditions aren’t the same; they’re a little bit more volatile than the real-life conditions. So, realistically, you’re probably on the course going to be averaging less than you will when you’re testing on a range in more perfect settings, and I first found out about this when I used a – or really became apparent when I started using those little GPS things that you can put on the buddy or club, and then it tracks by GPS into your smartphone how far the clubs went, and then I would get back and I get all my data after a few rounds, and be like, man, it’s like, my distances aren’t – it’s interesting; there’s a little bit of an ego thing again there, like man, I’m not hitting as far as I can, but when you put a little bit of logic into it and check your ego there, just know that the on-course conditions are just not going to be the same probably as real-life on-course conditions.


So, those are a few main keys I would just point out to check if you’re coming up short with your irons. Just to recap again, play for your average shotgun dispersion, aim your dispersion and play for your average shot. Don’t play for your best shot. Check your ego a little bit, and then even if you have your distances already set from the range or from indoors, or from a launch monitor, knock a few yards off that for the numbers that you use on the course, and then hopefully, that’ll help you a little bit with this issue of coming up short with your irons on the green, so give those things a try, put them into play, and hopefully, you’ll find yourself being [0:07:45] a little bit more consistent.