If you play courses where you got heavy greenside rough and you are struggling to get those onto the green or get them as close as you like, I’ve got five things I want to go over here for you to help you play those shots a little bit better.
So, the first thing I want to cover is just understanding what’s the wedge does, and there’s a couple basic things, but with the sterling iron wedges and any wedges, really, there’s a couple keep things here: this part where the club face comes down and then goes under the club here, that sharp point is called the leading edge for the digger, this underneath part down here where there is a little bit of curve to the clubface is called the bounce or the skipper, and those are called that because if you think about if you have the shaft a little bit more for word in this leading edge will have the tendency to dig in and grab into the ground, and then if you have it a little bit more shaft a little bit more vertical, you’ve got the protection almost like this barrier that the balance is going to give you, it’s going to keep the club from digging in too much. So, that is the first thing to point out, is it just we need to understand those two things to be able to effectively play these tougher shots, these heavy green side rough shots.
The second thing, now that we know that the balance is important for this is the ball sitting down, you’ve got the super munchy crunchy thick rough, you don’t want the club grabbing there are and getting hold. You want to keep it from digging in there too much. The momentum of the club coming down into the grass is going to be enough to get down in there far enough to get it out, so you don’t want to have the clubface square and have those leading edge exposed to you. Rather, you want to be able to use the balance, so knowing that you need to use the balance, probably it’s not going to be the best idea to say, use your lob wedge, your sterling irons lob wedge for this type of shot, whereas you think you need it the lob wedge to get it up high. The lob wedge actually have less balance than the sand wedge, so even if you needed a high shot here, you’re probably one of grab the sand wedge because we designed and that sand wed in most all sand wedges are going to have more balance on the bottom of the club then lob wedges, so grab the wedge with the most balance and in this case, the sterling irons, it is the sand wedge, so use your sand wedge, and then basically, you want to play it like a bunker shot. So normally, when you have a ball here in the grass, you hit the club or hit the ball, and then maybe you take a little divot or brush the ground after it’s coming out first. In the bunker, generally, you want to hit one, two – I’ll come closer here – you want to hit maybe 1 to 2 or 3 inches behind the wall, and in the bunker, in the case of the bunker, you hit the sand and the sand gets deflected and the ball pops out. I don’t really know what’s going on with the rough, but basically, you want to play that shot the same. So, use your sand wedge, and that what you want to do is open the clubface, so when you open the clubface, if it is sitting here square, flat like this, you got the leading edge exposed or the leading edge is leading away, if you open the clubface, you got the balance protection. So, that’s what you want to do, basically. But, when you do that, mind the lie angle and this is actually another key point that is a really important to understand about as far as how to play this shot and shots around the green in general. The lie angle is super important because you can have the clubface be square and flat, and if you have the club up right, the club is going to point left. If you have it flat like this, it’s going to point to the right. So, when you open the clubface – let me back up here, one key thing is that the ball is going to start out wherever the club – pretty much on a center strike, wherever the clubface was aimed at impact, that’s going to be the primary determinant of the direction of the strikes, so it’s going to start where this clubface starts. So, if you – maybe this is a little better angle for this – so, if you have the club here and the leading edge is square, when you’re looking down on it, if you open that up to get more loft, the club now actually points to the right, so you either have to somehow or another, you have to lower the handle enough so that the clubface points back where you want the ball to start. So, and you won’t have the advantage of using these out on the golf course. So, you just kind of got to eyeball and maybe practice a little bit so you can open the clubface, expose the balance there to keep the club from really digging in the rough, and then maybe lower yourself enough to where you think that that is about where despite this leading edge pointing out to the right now, the actual clubface is pointing straight. So, that’s I guess what I’m going to say about that. So, I think that is enough to cover the topic there.
So, let’s just recap, understand your wedge, leading edge is going to dig, the balance is not going to dig as much, use of the wedge, we don’t want the club to dig down into this thick rough and get hung up in there, we’re going to prevent that from happening, so use your sand wedge, use your sterling irons sand wedge, it’s going to have the most balance, it’s going to be the easiest club to play the shot with, and then you just play it like a bunker shot. You set up, and then you open the clubface, and then that’s going to expose that balance again, and then you just mind the lie angle, mind where – let me try from this angle, you open the clubface, the club is going to point out this way, suddenly, you just lower the handle so that appoints more straight towards your target – and that is what you’ve got to really pay attention to, not so much the line, even though these lines will be – the groove lines will look like they are pointing out but [0:08:29] the clubface or leading edge pointing out to the right, where the clubface is pointed in the 3-D space, that is what’s going to really make a difference at impact, and then [0:08:45] make a swing, and you hit one, 2 inches behind the ball and it should just pop right up out of the rough and onto the green and it’s just a matter of deciding how much of a swing you want to make at it to get your distance control down.
So, try those things and hopefully, but those things into play, you will be playing these shots from heavy thick green side rough a lot more effectively.