The Easy Way To Pick The Right Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles
The Easy Way To Pick The Right Golf Club (Video) - by Pete Styles

If we’ve now understood that yes, we’re going to try and improve our 100 yards and in pitch shots, we now need to consider the club selection. Now for a lot of golfers, they might have three or four different wedges that can all reach these distances when you’re near the green, so it can be a little confusing for golfers about which club is going to be best served. They might think, “Well I could really hit a very hard lob wedge, or a hard sand wedge, or a medium 52 degree gap wedge, or a soft pitch wedge, or even a really soft 99.”

All those clubs could reach the distance, so it gets a bit confusing for golfers, which is different because actually if you are 100 yards away, you’ve probably only got one club that goes that distance and 140 yards away, a different club will go that distance, but actually in this 100 yard range, lots of clubs would go the correct distance, so as a golfer, we’ve got to use our course management decision making process to workout, which is the right shot to go the right distance and actually we don’t just look purely at the distance of the shot, what we could look at is the makeup of the green, where the flag is, where the hazards are, the lay of the green and the wind direction. So if we find the green is sloping towards us slightly, doesn’t have too much danger around the front and the flag is middle to back of the green. I would encourage you there to use a relatively low lofted iron, so it’s something like your nine or your pitch. Land the ball more towards the front of the green and let that ball release up the green to the flag. Generally with that sort of shot, you’ll find it’s a slightly lower risk shot, you miss hits are going to be better and it’s easier to judge correct distance control if you’ve got a bit more room to work with. Now if we now picture a different situation, where we’ve got a smaller green, with more danger around the front and maybe a tail wind, and the flag near the front of the green, you can suddenly picture that’s going to be a lot more difficult, you might be able to picture these type of holes on the golf course that you play on a regular basis and if I’ve just described a hole on your golf course that you don’t like playing into, now you know why, bunker at the front, flag at the front, tail wind, small green. That’s a very difficult proposition and in that respect would probably use a much higher lofted club. So, maybe the sand wedge or even a very hard lob wedge; we’re going to hit that ball a lot higher in the air, in the hope that when it comes down on the green, it stops a lot quicker, but if the conditions allow I would always encourage you to pitch the ball in lower. I think that’s a lot easier way of controlling your distance and only play the super high lofted shot absolutely as and when you need to. It’s nice to be able to play the low one and the high one, but if it demands it, play the high one, all other occasions, try and keep the ball a little bit lower with a less lofted pitch or 99, you’ll find that easier to control your distance. 2016-05-09

If we’ve now understood that yes, we’re going to try and improve our 100 yards and in pitch shots, we now need to consider the club selection. Now for a lot of golfers, they might have three or four different wedges that can all reach these distances when you’re near the green, so it can be a little confusing for golfers about which club is going to be best served. They might think, “Well I could really hit a very hard lob wedge, or a hard sand wedge, or a medium 52 degree gap wedge, or a soft pitch wedge, or even a really soft 99.”

All those clubs could reach the distance, so it gets a bit confusing for golfers, which is different because actually if you are 100 yards away, you’ve probably only got one club that goes that distance and 140 yards away, a different club will go that distance, but actually in this 100 yard range, lots of clubs would go the correct distance, so as a golfer, we’ve got to use our course management decision making process to workout, which is the right shot to go the right distance and actually we don’t just look purely at the distance of the shot, what we could look at is the makeup of the green, where the flag is, where the hazards are, the lay of the green and the wind direction.

So if we find the green is sloping towards us slightly, doesn’t have too much danger around the front and the flag is middle to back of the green. I would encourage you there to use a relatively low lofted iron, so it’s something like your nine or your pitch. Land the ball more towards the front of the green and let that ball release up the green to the flag. Generally with that sort of shot, you’ll find it’s a slightly lower risk shot, you miss hits are going to be better and it’s easier to judge correct distance control if you’ve got a bit more room to work with.

Now if we now picture a different situation, where we’ve got a smaller green, with more danger around the front and maybe a tail wind, and the flag near the front of the green, you can suddenly picture that’s going to be a lot more difficult, you might be able to picture these type of holes on the golf course that you play on a regular basis and if I’ve just described a hole on your golf course that you don’t like playing into, now you know why, bunker at the front, flag at the front, tail wind, small green. That’s a very difficult proposition and in that respect would probably use a much higher lofted club.

So, maybe the sand wedge or even a very hard lob wedge; we’re going to hit that ball a lot higher in the air, in the hope that when it comes down on the green, it stops a lot quicker, but if the conditions allow I would always encourage you to pitch the ball in lower. I think that’s a lot easier way of controlling your distance and only play the super high lofted shot absolutely as and when you need to. It’s nice to be able to play the low one and the high one, but if it demands it, play the high one, all other occasions, try and keep the ball a little bit lower with a less lofted pitch or 99, you’ll find that easier to control your distance.