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Post by compressme on Sept 20, 2014 13:02:57 GMT -5
Ok, seeing as the other thread got locked and I had not had chance to reply I though is start a new topic.
Richie, how do you gap with your shorter irons in terms of the loft?
When I spoke to Richard Kempton he was more in favour of the PW, GW, SW and LW, because of the bounce issues when not having a 56.
You've certainly made me consider leaving the 3 iron, thing is a like to have something to hit low and shape an iron easier than a hybrid, thoughts?
I'm getting a new set the whole way through so need to take me time and make the right choices!
Thanks
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Post by compressme on Sept 20, 2014 13:04:20 GMT -5
I think the Wishon PW would normally come in at 46 degrees.
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Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 22, 2014 8:38:57 GMT -5
Here's my wedge setup:
PW - 47 degrees SW - 52 degrees LW - 60 degrees
You can find some 52 degree wedges with more bounce like the Ping, Cleveland and Titleist have 52 degree wedges that have more of a SW type of grind and 10-12 degrees of bounce. My Edel 52 degree wedge has 16 degrees of bounce.
I think the Wishon Micro Groove wedge only has about 6 degrees of bounce.
If you go with the 52 degree for a SW, the grind will need some more heel-toe relief so you can open the face a little.
I had this discussion recently with one of my clients that won this year. Before we started working together, his bag setup looked like this:
Driver 3-wood 5-wood 3-hybrid 5-PW GW (51 degrees) SW (55 degrees) LW (60 degrees) Putter
We talked about dumping the GW and adding a 4-iron because we need for his Red Zone play (175-225 yards) to improve and he was already a very good Green Zone (75-125 yards) player.
Then this year his Red Zone play improved dramatically and that's how he won on Tour. But, his Green Zone play dropped to below average.
After discussing it with him and his caddie, we decided that he could dump the *3-wood* and use a 4-wood instead.
So now his setup looks like this:
Driver 4-wood (about 240 yards) 3-hybrid (about 227 yards) 4-iron (214 yards) 5-iron (201 yards) 6-iron 7-iron 8-iron 9-iron PW GW (51 degrees) SW (55 degrees) LW (60 degrees)
The idea is that he has struggled with his 3-wood for roughly the past 5 seasons. And we want to keep the proper gapping so he can sustain or even improve his Red Zone play. And the GW will hopefully improve his Green Zone play. He may lose 10-yards or so using the 4-wood instead of the 3-wood, but the numbers indicate that won't be a large issue.
So you may want to consider a 4-wood instead of a 3-wood. I made a Wishon 929HS 4-wood for my dad a couple of years ago. It has 16.5 degrees of loft instead of a 14 or 15 degree 3-wood. He doesn't generate enough club head speed to get the 14 or 15 degree 3-wood high enough in the air and hits the 4-wood far better and actually further than the 14 or 15 degree 3-wood.
3JACK
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Post by ericpaul2 on Sept 22, 2014 10:40:35 GMT -5
The rough idea Richie is working with is creating reasonable gaps in distance between the full swing lob wedge and the longest club not the driver.
Everything else below that is a partial shot and between three wedges, you should have plenty of options (full, 3/4, half swings combined with ball position and shot shape) to hit any distance reasonably. Just relying on four wedges is pretty uncreative in my opinion.
Much easier to get close with a partial wedge shot that doesn't hit the number exactly then trying to use a half swing 3w or 3/4 swing 5w to try to hit something that falls into a big gap in at the upper end.
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Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 23, 2014 8:05:38 GMT -5
The rough idea Richie is working with is creating reasonable gaps in distance between the full swing lob wedge and the longest club not the driver. Everything else below that is a partial shot and between three wedges, you should have plenty of options (full, 3/4, half swings combined with ball position and shot shape) to hit any distance reasonably. Just relying on four wedges is pretty uncreative in my opinion. Much easier to get close with a partial wedge shot that doesn't hit the number exactly then trying to use a half swing 3w or 3/4 swing 5w to try to hit something that falls into a big gap in at the upper end. Thanks. The other part to it is that if you don't hit the partial wedge 'close', you're still likely to: a) find the green b) have a shot at birdie with a putt less than 30-feet long. Trying to hit a soft long iron or gas a long iron on a long approach and find the green consistently and/or hit it close is much more unlikely. As I mentioned in the other thread, I got the idea of using a 52-degree and a 60-degree from Ernie Els and Sang-Moon Bae...both good wedge players and very good around the green. I was having issues when I was using the 56 degree because I would hit my PW about 135-140 yards and then my 56 degree about 105 yards. I figured that the trade-off was that I would improve those shots from about 110-125 yards while seeing a dip in performance on shots where I needed a SW right around the green. But, by my estimation those shots around the green would only dip just a small fraction because I had the 52* wedge design for it and I typically use the 60* LW much more than a SW around the green anyway. I will say that as far as my short game around the green (pitches, chips, lobs, flops and bunker blasts) I've been very good on those shots since I was a junior golfer. But, I also think that many golfers have their mind made up that they want to use a 56* wedge without evr trying something with a lower loft. It's very easy to open the face on the modern wedges to add some loft. 3JACK
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Post by pavaveda on Sept 23, 2014 9:44:12 GMT -5
I've been thinking of going to that D, 4W, 3h, 4-P, GW, SW, LW set-up for a while now. The 4W replacing my 3W, and 3h replacing my 5W. I find that I don't go to my 3W very often at all, and often choose 5W instead, even if I know it's not going to get me there—there is just less chance of duffing the 5W over the 3W. And I hit my driver just about as straight as my 3W. But I miss the 3 iron I had to remove in order to add the GW, which I really like having—It goes higher than a choked-down PW for me and distance is more consistent. I feel like there is too big a gap between my 5W and 4 iron.
Richie's research, and the story about his client, has pretty much convinced me it's the right change to make.
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Post by compressme on Sept 26, 2014 15:03:26 GMT -5
Thanks for the input guys.
How does this sound?
8 iron 38 degrees 9 iron 43 degrees Pw 48 degrees SW 54 degrees LW 60 degrees
Obviously with the right bounce on the SW.
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Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 26, 2014 15:07:23 GMT -5
Sounds fine to me.
There's nothing wrong with carrying a 54-degree. Many Tour players do that.
3JACK
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Post by teeace on Sept 27, 2014 5:54:46 GMT -5
Watching Ryder Cup shows how great those guys are with wedges. Amazing.
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Post by Richie3Jack on Sept 29, 2014 8:55:37 GMT -5
Watching Ryder Cup shows how great those guys are with wedges. Amazing. Yes, and they are playing alternate shot and match play. And I wrote about this in my Ryder Cup articles...the game changes statistically there and it becomes very important to hit the Short Game shots well and save par if you look at the trends of the Ryder Cup, particularly in the 4-some format. US team beat the Euros 5-3 in the 4-ball format. That's more akin to playing on the PGA Tour or playing a mini-tour event or playing your club championship. Thus, short game play isn't nearly as important in 4-ball play. But, the US lost 1-7 in 4-some format. 3JACK
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Post by teeace on Oct 1, 2014 6:51:45 GMT -5
Watching Ryder Cup shows how great those guys are with wedges. Amazing. Yes, and they are playing alternate shot and match play. And I wrote about this in my Ryder Cup articles...the game changes statistically there and it becomes very important to hit the Short Game shots well and save par if you look at the trends of the Ryder Cup, particularly in the 4-some format. US team beat the Euros 5-3 in the 4-ball format. That's more akin to playing on the PGA Tour or playing a mini-tour event or playing your club championship. Thus, short game play isn't nearly as important in 4-ball play. But, the US lost 1-7 in 4-some format. 3JACK I have made bit of homework here. Only about 30 rounds from tour and my players and it seems very clear that they hit average of 10 wedge shots (20-120y) each round. That's more than a half of holes per round Now to understand that importance is to count how often they got 0, 1, 2 or more shots after that wedge shot. % for zeros is so low we can forget that, but 1 and 3 shots are the interesting part. 1's seems to be between 3 and 6 and 3's between 0 and 2 generally. That relation seems to have full correlation to the score, or at least 90% I of course agree that if you hit all the greens with longer irons and got only 3-5 wedges to the greens at one round, the influence is not so high, but it seems to be very rare to be able for that, as we saw in Ryder Cup. Players will miss some greens always and they don't get all par 5's to the green at second shot.. no matter how much they practice. Those guys who are hot at that day/week can get the average of 15-16 GIR, but in that case they seem to have still 5-7 wedges per round.
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Post by ericpaul2 on Oct 1, 2014 9:05:16 GMT -5
Teeace...I don't think you're accounting for the meaning of proximity to the cup from the wedge shot. The PGA tour stats show that the very best wedge players average 10' from the cup, while the mediocre (T79) is 15'. It just so happens that 15' is about the knee of the curve for putt make percentage (i.e. below 15', the make percentage increases very rapidly, while beyond 15' it decreases slowly). Even then, the difference in make percentage between 10' and 15' is 16% (from 38% to 22%). The expected putts between those two distances is only 0.1 strokes difference. The point is that on any given round, a player may randomly get more wedge shots closer or make more putts, or vice versa, but over time the difference between a decent wedge player and a great wedge player is only 0.1 strokes per round.
Further, I disagree with using a distance range of 20-120y for this discussion. From 50y and out, those are partial full shot wedges where the make up of your set (# of wedges) might make a difference. Below 50y, a play may be using a "wedge" but at that point he's playing what I consider a pitch shot, at which point they're picking either their most lofted wedge, or their least lofted wedge to get more roll and depending on the lie. For a great many players, there are significant differences in setup and swing mechanics compared to a partial full shot. Missing the green that results in using a wedge on the next shot is a different animal than not being able to reach the green on the preceding shot and being left with a wedge into the green from 50y or more. What you've done is effectively match the Mark Broadie analysis, which defines short game from green to 100y, even though this encompasses several different skill sets, in order to elevate it's importance.
Finally, you can do as many small sample sizes "tests" all you want, the reality is that Richie has completed the statistical analysis on much larger sample size to show that the correlation between his Danger Zone shots and Adjusted Scoring Average is greater than from his Green Zone shots and Adjusted Scoring Average. In other words, the average Tour player that improves their Danger Zone shots will improve their expected score more than players that improves their Green Zone shots...period.
The only caveat is that no one is "average"...I'm 100% sure that when Richie works with Tour players, he provides each individual with a recommendation on what part of their game could result in the largest improvement in scoring. If it's wedges, I'm sure that's what is stated, though he is clearly indicating that this is rarely if ever the case.
The real question that started this discussion (and now hijacked a second thread) is whether, for an amateur, carrying 4 wedges actually makes a significant difference compared to carrying 3 wedges. I suspect it might be variable depending on the course, but most amateurs don't have time to worry about that.
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Post by teeace on Oct 1, 2014 9:23:11 GMT -5
Finally, you can do as many small sample sizes "tests" all you want, the reality is that Richie has completed the statistical analysis on much larger sample size to show that the correlation between his Danger Zone shots and Adjusted Scoring Average is greater than from his Green Zone shots and Adjusted Scoring Average. In other words, the average Tour player that improves their Danger Zone shots will improve their expected score more than players that improves their Green Zone shots...period. Things I've sai are just pure facts about importance and effect of all wedge play they got in their round. Also pure math about rounds when they hit those well and make that 4-6 shots different to the bad rounds.
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Post by Richie3Jack on Oct 1, 2014 9:54:01 GMT -5
They're not facts Tapio. You don't understand statistical data and how it works. You are arguing against math. You are essentially arguing against facts.
As far as amateurs and 4-wedges go, it depends a bit on the course and their handicap level.
Part of the issue with gapping the long approach shots for some amateurs is that their skill level is so low that they are not really 'gapping' those long approach shots because they have little chance of finding the green. Instead it would be more beneficial for them to find a long club that they could consistently advance towards the hole.
I built a 4-wood for my dad. He hits it about 190 yards. He was using 3-woods and the 3-woods at 14-15 degree of loft is too low for him to get the ball airborne. His odds of finding the green from 170-200 yards away are not very good. But he gets those shots frequently and the mere ability to consistently advance that 4-wood towards the green has shaved a lot of strokes for him. He doesn't carry 4-wedges, but I wouldn't be against it. However, I don't think it would have that much of an impact because the primary benefit is using it on full shots and I don't think he would have many shots per round where he would need a GW.
Even still, for a golfer of his handicap, the part of the game that will translate to the most improvement is with the driver. If he hits that well, his odds of shooting lower scores increase dramatically compare to him playing any other part of the game well.
3JACK
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Post by ericpaul2 on Oct 1, 2014 15:08:17 GMT -5
The estimate you make about being 4-6 shots difference is where you make the most egregious error. You keep assuming the player can somehow convert those attempts to down to two shots to hole out. That's impossible, even at the lower ranges. The question isn't even how many shots you hit from certain ranges, it's how much better can you do by carrying a fourth wedge. The argument is...not much better, certainly a good portion of that is putting.
Meanwhile, if you carry four wedges and leave out a 2H or 5W, you could very well have a 30-35 yard gap in that range. Considering greens are about the same length, your chances of missing those greens are extremely high, and now you're scrambling with and expected stroke total of 2.5 at best.
The point being, pick your clubs to provide reasonable gapping between full high lofted wedge and longest possible club (whether that's 190y or 250y) and not based on a preconceived notion that "wedges are very important because we shoot them a lot". I never want to be in the situation where I don't have the right club at any distance below my three wood max distance.
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