Another Launch question for the multitude

General Discussion
#1

In my bit of playing around with the SC 200 (that I mentioned recently), I smacked a sand wedge shot that really interested me. Normally, I hit it—and all my mid-irons to wedges—extremely high. At least, they look higher than those of others I see at the range.

This shot though, with the SW felt a touch thin. No biggie, not like that’s unusual, but this one stopped! Like it shot a spike out when it hit. It didn’t suck back—that’s always fun to see, even with spinny range balls—but it stopped dead.

After going 120, per the SC. And it actually looked a lot further than the others I’d been hitting. Much lower ball flight than the high-launch irons I usually hit, but if it’s stopping anyway, and going further, this seems preferable.

My question is this: is this just a bladed shot that I can’t possibly repeat? Or might attempts at lowering my iron flight (through advancing my low point, flattening my swing, etc…) give me ~15-20 yards more flight with sufficient spin?

Or is all this something I need to just cough up the money and get a pro involved already?

#2

Sorry for a “duh” answer, but it’s unrepeatable if you can’t repeat it and is repeatable if you can. If that’s how you want to hit a sand wedge, then see if you can recreate it. Assuming this was out on the range though, it’ll be important to see if you can recreate it out on the course. Range balls and range ground conditions do weird stuff, so I wouldn’t necessarily trust the same thing to happen even with the same type of strike.

1 Like
#3

Agreed, and this was off of mats, not grass. Nevertheless, the idea of, “Hey, try and turn some of this elevation into distance,” was an interesting one. I was thinking that this high ball flight was just how it was going to be, with bladed stuff obviously going lower, shooting further, and running a lot more.

The idea that I might get lower flight, longer distance, yet with enough spin to Stop!, is a new one on me. Mainly trying to see if it was a, ‘front club edge hit lower third of ball, sufficient to get spin, but good luck bringing it back within that quarter-inch window,’ kind of strike.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.

#4

thanks for the awesome information.

#5

Couple of things. Clubhead speed and impact position on the clubface. What is lovingly called covering the ball with your irons. In a perfect world, off a clean lie, when you strike the ball correctly, center of the club with a lofted iron, you generate spin. Again the 9-3 drill will help you achieve this as your tempo increases. If you do it correctly with a LW or SW from really short range you get those chippers that take like 2 hops and stop with a titch of roll. I have been really trying to get better with my ball striking and I have been getting up to 8ft of spin on softer greens on full shots! So now, I am working towards building that factor into distances. Not ready yet, On front pins, I am just going with stock center of the green distances. Now, If you are striking higher on the clubface…it wont happen…you have to be somewhere around the bottom 4 grooves. It also won’t happen if the green is sloped front to back of which we have 2 on our course. You really gotta beat your brains in to find consistency and gain confidence that you won’t hit it thin nor fat! I still do that like 8-10% of the time…